The Boston-based quiz show Says You recently came to Cleveland to record a series of programs at the Capitol Theatre in the Gordon Square Arts District. Host Richard Sher and the Says You panel played their game of words and whimsy, bluff and bluster, with the help of two Northeast Ohio panelists, culture critic Charles Michener and writer-director Murray Horwitz. Award-winning local blues man Austin “Walkin’ Cane” Charanghat provided the musical accents for this holiday special Says You, which was recorded in front of a live audience at the Capitol Theatre on December 5th, 2010. It originally aired on 90.3, WCPN, ideastream December 19th , 2010 at 12:00pm.
Entire Show : MP3 file
[Listen to 'Says You' Show on 90.3 WCPN Idea Stream]
Photos from Says You Holiday Edition at the Capitol Theatre
Published: Saturday, December 18, 2010, 5:10 AM
View full sizeGus Chan / The Plain DealerThe Cleveland Foundation is awarding a $250,000 grant to the Gordon Square Arts District to begin the second phase of renovations to Cleveland Public Theatre.
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Cleveland Foundation on Friday awarded $12.9 million in grants to nonprofit groups, including $150,000 to support the transition of Cuyahoga County’s government.
The year-end awards show the foundation’s annual giving — about $80 million in 2010 — is back in line with what it was before the economic downturn, said Robert Eckardt, the foundation’s senior vice president for programs and evaluation.
Last year, as the foundation’s holdings dipped, it provided about $2 million less in grants than it had the year before.
At their peak, the Cleveland Foundation’s assets totaled about $2 billion. That fell to about $1.6 billion at the depth of the recent financial crisis, Eckardt said, but had rebounded to about $1.7 billion by Sept. 30.
The Cleveland Foundation, like many college endowments and other substantial grant-making organizations, considers its finances over several years rather than snapshots in time. That prevents sudden drop-offs and sudden rises in grant making, Eckardt said.
Much of the grant money awarded Friday funds economic transformation, public-education reform and neighborhood redevelopment.
Yet $150,000 was set aside as a special grant to help the county.
“The change to a new form of county government is dramatic,” Eckardt said in a prepared statement. “We believe that getting the right people into the right positions is critical for the success of this structure.”
Matt Carroll, who is directing the transition, said the grant was awarded to the Economic Growth Foundation — part of the Greater Cleveland Partnership — and will be spent in three ways:
• About $110,000 will pay for a national search to fill three jobs — fiscal officer, chief information officer and director of development.
• About $20,000 will pay for the ongoing integrity audit that incoming County Executive Ed FitzGerald launched shortly after his election. FitzGerald hired a former FBI agent who is also a certified public accountant for the job. He will submit his report examining possible misconduct and waste by year’s end.
• About $20,000 will pay transition staffing costs.
Carroll said he has had informal talks with other grant-making bodies about funding that would pay for headhunters to help fill other key positions in the new government.
“We are wide open for the best possible people to come in,” Carroll said, adding that interim staff members will fill key positions until permanent workers are hired.
Some of the other grants awarded by the Cleveland Foundation included:
• Three grants worth $970,000 to the lead partners of MyCom, a countywide youth development program. More than half the money — $550,000 — will be spent on activities for children when school is not in session.
• A $400,000 grant to Shorebank Enterprise Group to support Green City Growers, a sprawling greenhouse at East 55th Street and Kinsman Road that will grow lettuce and herbs without using soil. The greens will be sold to local hospitals and food distributors.
• A $250,000 grant to the Gordon Square Arts District to begin the second phase of renovations to Cleveland Public Theatre.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: agarrett@plaind.com, 216-999-4814
[Original Cleveland.com Article] [PDF]
“The Friday@7 concert at Severance was sublime! Thanks to the Happy Dog we had a wonderful evening with friends while experiencing the best that Cleveland has to offer! The concert featured Mahler and showcased a top-notch array of musical talent led by a fabulous conductor. The low bass was phenomenal! Thanks Happy Dog! Thanks Gordon Square!” – Samantha Schartman
“The tater tots rock!!” – Meghan Wilson
YOU’RE CORDIALLY INVITED
to an evening at XYZ & CPT to benefit GSAD
in the heart of the Gordon Square Arts District
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2010
The evening kicks off at the District’s newest establishment:
- 6421 Detroit Avenue (next to CPT)
- Cocktails & hors’ d’oeuvres
and continues to Cleveland Public Theatre
- 6:30 p.m. More cocktails and seating at CPT
- 7:00 p.m. “Connie’s Avant Garde Restaurant”
- for a five-course dinner and theatre
This uproarious musical performance is a unique theatrical-culinary event mixing the ingredients of fine food, wine and ensemble theatre together in a hilarious parody of avant garde grandiosity. Comedy, death, violence and a five-course meal!
Individual tickets: $75
Reservations: Call Maria Asher @ 216.961.4242 x222 or masher@gordonsquare.org
RSVP: by Friday, December 3, 2010
Five-Course Menu
- (With local produce subject to availability)
- Roasted chestnuts and mushroom tartine
- Curried butternut squash soup
- Herbed apple and fennel salad
- Maple-glazed ham with cranberry compote
- Brown-buttered radishes
- Sage-roasted sweet potatoes
- Drunken chocolate Bundt cake
Dietary restrictions: Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant is able to accommodate food allergies and vegetarian needs. Please contact the box office to communicate dietary restrictions in your party. (216) 631-2727 or rcole@cptonline.org.
Published: Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 6:00 AM Updated: Wednesday, December 01, 2010, 9:07 AM
Roger MastroianniPinchas Steinberg conducts a 2005 performance with the Cleveland Orchestra. The maestro returns to Severance Hall this week to lead a program featuring Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto.
A few days ago, Pinchas Steinberg was Turin, Italy, conducting a popular production of Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly.” So successful was the run, in fact, that the presenter, Teatro Regio, added a performance to satisfy demand.
Something similar is about to befall Steinberg this weekend at the Cleveland Orchestra. Concerts haven’t yet sold out, but a special arrangement surrounding his concert Friday already has prompted the rental of an additional bus to transport patrons back and forth between Severance Hall and a West-side establishment known as Happy Dog.
It’s called “Gordon Square Goes to the Orchestra,” and it’s got everyone from presenters and community activists to the conductor himself buzzing.
“This is the kind of thing that happens when you get excited about an area,” said Joy Roller, executive director of Cleveland’s Gordon Square Arts District, a partner in the project. “We’re knitting the city together.”
The arrangement centers on the orchestra’s upcoming “Fridays @ 7″ concert, featuring Steinberg conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 — one of the composer’s most readily accessible symphonies — and the overture to Nicolai’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”
That night, there’s also pre-concert music by bansuri bamboo flutist Steve Gorn and tabla player Hom Nath Upadhyaya, and a post-concert show by the New York Gypsy All-Stars, led by clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski.
PREVIEW
Cleveland Orchestra
What: Pinchas Steinberg conducts works by Nicolai, Nielsen, and Mahler
When: 8 p.m. Dec. 2 and Dec. 4, and 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 3.
Where:: Severance Hall, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.
Tickets:: $25-$117. 216-231-1111 or the orchestra’s Web site.
Concerts Thursday and Saturday follow a traditional format, without the post-concert show, and include another clarinet virtuoso, principal clarinetist Franklin Cohen, performing Carl Nielsen’s Clarinet Concerto, a work he described in a written program note as “a portrait of a very complete person, someone who’s lived and experienced all that life has to offer.”
Essentially, the Happy Dog arrangement is an audience exchange, through which patrons who buy in (for $25, using promo code 8795) can begin or end their evenings at Happy Dog or Severance Hall. Either way, they’ll be transported back and forth between destinations, and they’ll experience both classical and rock music.
Bus service to Severance leaves Happy Dog (5801 Detroit Ave., Cleveland) at 6 p.m., and after the 7 p.m. orchestra concert, patrons can be shuttled back to Happy Dog to hear the Tadpoles and reclusive singer-songwriter Bill Fox. The last bus back to Severance leaves at midnight.
View full sizeJoshua Gunter, The PDA happy crowd at the Happy Dog, courtesy of musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra. This Friday, listeners are being encouraged to attend concerts at both Severance Hall and Happy Dog in the same evening.
“Bill’s sound is more accessible, but it’s still amazing rock-n-roll, and it’s Cleveland,” said Sean Watterson, co-owner of Happy Dog and author of the exchange, explaining his selection of Fox. “It’s a combination of being accessible and the best of what we’ve got to offer.”
Watterson didn’t come up with the exchange out of nowhere. The arrangement stems from the still-blossoming relationship between the orchestra and Happy Dog through which members of the orchestra have been performing classical music in the laid-back setting of the bar.
The idea also builds on Watterson’s often-expressed desire to link the institutions of University Circle with those of his neighborhood, Gordon Square.
“We just sat at the bar and talked about how we can keep innovating,” he said. “We wanted to keep the momentum going, and this kind of jelled.”
For his part, Steinberg said he’s glad to be back in Northeast Ohio, whatever the circumstances, even after the success in Turin. “Every time I say the same thing,” he said. “Cleveland is my favorite orchestra. And I mean it. They are the Rolls-Royce of orchestras.”
But it’s not just the prospect of driving a powerful musical vehicle that’s got Steinberg excited. A devotee of Mahler, he’s looking forward to re-entering the composer’s fastidiously detailed world and especially to re-exploring Symphony No. 1, a work steeped in vocal and folk music.
As for the occasion of “Fridays @ 7″ and the partnership with Happy Dog, Steinberg said he’s delighted not only to be involved but to have an opportunity to hook new listeners on Mahler.
“You have to get the people close to you, so they open their ears and their hearts,” he said. “The only thing you can do is give such a convincing performance that they cannot not listen to it. You grab them and they say ‘Wow.’ Then I win.”
[Cleveland.com Article][PDF]
Published: Tuesday, November 23, 2010, 4:12 PM Updated: Friday, November 26, 2010, 8:57 AM
View full sizeGus Chan/The Plain DealerCars line up to be valet parked at the Capitol Theater for a “Sex and the City” Girls Night Out party and screening in May. The Gordon Square Arts District is being recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts and the National League of Cities.
Gordon Square, the emerging art district in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side, has won big time kudos from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National League of Cities.It has also pulled down $2.7 million in recent federal, state and local grants, which will be used to build or renovate community theaters that are central to its vision of using the arts to revive a city neighborhood. “Lots of good stuff is happening,” said Joy Roller, the district’s executive director. “To me, it’s an acknowledgement that what we’re doing is not only successful, but is a novel approach, a unique approach on how to revitalize an urban core.”
The NEA announced earlier this month that Gordon Square is one of 14 case studies in a new publication, “Creative Placemaking.”
Co-authored by arts advocates Ann Markusen and Ann Gadwa, the document is a project of the NEA’s Mayor’s Institute on City Design. The mission of the agency is to educate U.S. mayors to become the “chief urban designers” of their cities.
The case studies are intended to encourage mayors to think creatively about how everything from loft housing to art galleries can build economic value and encourage investment.
The chapter in the case study on Gordon Square praises the project for helping to leverage an estimated $500 million in related investments on the West Side of Cleveland over the past eight years, much of it in housing, even though Gordon Square is only halfway through a $30 million revitalization.
The project is a collaborative venture among three non-profit organizations, the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization, Cleveland Public Theatre and Near West Theatre.
The goal of the district is to renovate two historic theaters — Cleveland Public and the Capitol — and to build a new home for Near West. By using the arts as an anchor for related retail, restaurant and housing development, the district is sparking new life in a 15-block corridor from W. 58th Street to West 73rd St., with Detroit Avenue as the spine.
The Capitol Theatre, located in the historic Gordon Square Arcade at W. 65th Street and Detroit Avenue, reopened in 2009 as a movie theater after a renovation. Work on Cleveland Public Theatre is ongoing. And the arts district has raised roughly half of the $6.5 million it needs to build a new Near West Theater, designed by Cleveland architect Richard Fleischman, Roller said.
“Creative Placemaking” said the district has ” revitalizing the area’s commercial core with arts offerings and new retail businesses while preserving and adding low-income housing units.”
Echoing the praise from the NEA, the National League of Cities has invited Roller to represent Gordon Square as one of 26 programs from the across the country that will be showcased in its upcoming National Congress of Cities in Denver, starting Tuesday.
In addition to the outside attention, Gordon Square announced it has received a $1 million matching grant from the Fowler Family Foundation and a $500,000 matching grant from the Gund Foundation, both for the Near West Theatre project. Roller said her organization has another $3.5 million to raise before it can build the theater.
“With Near West, we are inching closer to realizing our dream of building a new home for that theater,” Roller said.
A separate grant of $1 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s State Energy Program will be used immediately to air condition Cleveland Public Theatre for the first time, which means it can be used year round, Roller said.
The State of Ohio has also kicked in $200,000 for asbestos removal at Cleveland Public, which will make the theater safer to use, Roller said.
The national attention focused on Gordon Square shouldn’t create the impression that the project has gone unnoticed locally. In June, the district won a Cleveland Arts Prize.
The national recognition for the district offers more proof that “Cleveland should be very proud of this model we’ve created in the Gordon Square Arts District,” Roller said. “It’s good news for Cleveland.”
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