Season Welcome from the President

A warm welcome to all of you as we return to giving concerts with an orchestra again. Our 2022-23 season (our 18th year) is titled “Colors" – orchestral and chamber music concerts celebrating musical timbres. Three out of four of our orchestral programs this season will be without a conductor, which gives our talented musicians a chance to develop a personal cohesiveness and give an interpretation based on their collective musicianship. Stefan Willich will return to conduct our holiday concert, which features a program of joyous works.

We were able to continue our mission of giving free concerts through the entire COVID-19 pandemic thanks to the generosity of St. Stanislaus, who kept their church open, and our numerous supporters and funders.  Concerts featured chamber groups varying from duets to sextets for whom we commissioned 11 female composers to write new works, as well as 11 female Cleveland artists to design our programs. Many of our performances from the last two seasons can be found on our Youtube channel.

We are incredibly grateful for your generous donations, which have allowed us to continue to present concerts. We continue to enjoy steady support from many local and national foundations as well as government funders, for which we have deep appreciation. As a reminder, while our concerts are “free for all,” your donations are exclusively used to pay our musicians and run our organization, not the venues we are performing in. 

We continue to offer the Clurie Bennis Children’s Outreach Series in local schools, featuring small groups of musicians presenting dynamic, age-appropriate concerts. The series is named for Clurie Bennis, one of the founders who supported CityMusic and our mission in a myriad of ways.

Thank you again for supporting our unique organization that began as an experiment 18 years ago to see whether an organization presenting free concerts could survive.  Our rewards have been to see so many of you at our concerts and your enthusiastic response.

In summary, remember the three A’s: Accessibility – we come to your neighborhoods, Affordability – it’s “free for all,” Amazing – extremely impressive concerts.

Finally, our October orchestra concerts are dedicated to Kim Sherwin, a steadfast and generous supporter of CityMusic who recently passed away.

Warmly,
Ronald Strauss, President of the Board