Cleveland lands another $10m (how do they do it?)
UncategorizedBarely a month goes by without the Cleveland Orchestra receiving another major gift.
Press release:
Today, The Cleveland Orchestra announced a $10 million gift from The Milton and Tamar Maltz Family Foundation to support improvements and future development of Blossom Music Center, the Orchestra’s summer home.
This generous gift will fund infrastructure renovations and operating needs for this beloved 55-year-old music venue, located in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Projects currently include new Pavilion seating and VIP box upgrades, improved lighting and signage, as well as the creation of a rideshare parking lot. The Cleveland Orchestra will also use some of the funding to develop a long-term plan aimed at transforming the guest experience at Blossom Music Center, for a refreshed strategic vision of this important venue.
“There is nothing more magical than experiencing a live performance alfresco by one of the world’s greatest orchestras, The Cleveland Orchestra. Seeing all the families sitting on the lawn and enjoying the evening, perhaps attending a classical music concert for the first time, brings Tamar and me great joy,” said Milton Maltz.
The more interesting question is how come the Met Opera seem unable to do the same sort of thing………………
Gosh I went to Blossoms music Centre in the 70’s to see Joni Mutchell. The smell of pot was overpowering. Times have changed.
Joni Mutchell [sic] must have been much of a muchness. Seriously, though, the odor of cannabis is somewhat less prevalent at an all-Beethoven concert…
Eliz- Who calls Canbis pot ? I never heard a Joni Mitchell. Did she write Woodstock with her Cousin – the Joni Mitchell?
For all of the criticism on these pages about orchestras performing film and video game music, you know what they play at Blossom? Film and video game music. It helps pay the bills and likely helped bring in this donation because funders love to hear stories about the orchestra performing to 25,000 patrons.
Yes, film and Broadway and video game music, but also “regular” classical music that is no different than what is performed at Severance Hall–except that Mahler 8 is better at Blossom than squeezed into Severance!
Yes, I heard them play The Planets several years ago. And what wonderful experience hearing it at night, under the stars.
Keep filling your Boards of Trustees with very wealthy individuals committed to the community. Milton Maltz is one of about 55 ‘Resident Trustees’ on the Board of the Orchestra
It is absolutely imperative that every penny be spent on female composers, female conductors, female janitors and custodians, and female parking lot attendants. If they do not do so, I will refuse to ever again travel to the ghetto that is Cleveland.
And if they do, you’ll visit Cleveland twice a week, right?
Have you been to to the University Circle neighborhood, home od Severance Hall recently? It’s the furthest thing from “ghetto,” unless you mean an area densely replete with restaurants, museums, cultural amenities, academic institutions, shopping, and upscale housing. It’s great. You should go some time if you haven’t been. Challenge your preconceived notions. Not enough of us do that these days.
And always – always! – favor the same politics, the same ideology, the same mindset, too. Step away just a bit from the pre-approved narrative (as Harry Potter’s JK [Joanne Kathleen] Rowling did), and race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc, have a way of fading into the background. Funny how that works.
I do hope you have warned them.
I think it’s called “civic pride” which is a concept that used to be plentiful but which is increasingly rare.
Happily, Clevelanders continue to retain the fierce sense of civic pride in the orchestra first engendered by George Szell. Even though the population of the City of Cleveland and its metropolitan area has plummited since the 80s, there is a still a great deal of wealth and philanthropy in the area. The Maltzes also underwrite a beautiful museum of Jewish history in town among many other worthy causes.
It also helps that it’s an excellent orchestra that plays in a very good sounding hall.
Just another instance of US arts and culture being a playground for the ultra wealthy. A city of Cleveland’s size in Ger……
Sorry. I was temporarily taken over by another poster.
How do they do it? They don’t play pops, they’re not Woke, they don’t pander to the lowest common denominator, but take the high road EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. They command donor respect because they are worthy of it. Wait til the orchestras from wealthier cities start reporting red ink and even insolvency after they went all in on wokeness and LAO mandated crapiness.
You obviously haven’t looked at the schedule for the Blossom Music Festival. Not sure how playing the sound track from the Lord of the Rings movies is taking the high road EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.
Over 20,000 will attend the Two Tower movie/concert weekend, for each performance, (3) including my wife and me. TCO performing this, allows me to attend a Shostakovich 10th in the Winter at Severance lead by someone like Klaus Micaela
Rather odd to hear people speaking of civic pride in Cleveland. The organization Seeds of Literacy has found that 66% of Cleveland’s residents are functionally illiterate, defined as unable to read at a fourth grade level. A foundational cause is the legacy of human slavery that became a racially informed class system.
Another cause is the dichotomies of wealth in the USA due to a system of unmitigated capitalism. We thus have wealthy donors who exercise their “civic pride” by having concert halls named after themselves, like the Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve University, while so many residents live in abject poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 1-year estimates show that nearly 105,000 people in the City of Cleveland lived in poverty in 2021. Of those, more than 33,500 are children. At 45.5 percent, Cleveland has the highest child poverty rate of any large U.S. city with population greater than 300,000.
By European standards, Cleveland with its metro population of 2.7 million would have three or four full time orchestras and at least one full time opera house. Civic pride is not rich people putting their names on concert halls to assert their status among other rich people. Civic pride is the educational quality and cultural infrastructure created by social democracy, a form of government used by every developed democracy in the world except the USA.
Cleveland is home to internationally renowned Apollo’s Fire, a professional early music ensemble, and is also home to several more professional smaller classical music ensembles. In addition CLE is home to 5 music conservatories, 2 of which are in the US top 10. CLE is also home to many community orchestras, one of which, I’m a member of. Lastly, more dollars are spent on classical music, per capita, than ant where else in the US.