On the {hopefully temporary} demise of Red {an orchestra}

It was with great sadness that I learned of the difficulties facing Red {an orchestra} and which led the board to ‘suspend’ operations. Was I surprised? Not very. Frankly, I was surprised it lasted as long as it did. The powers that be (and I am not referring to any one person in particular, as I’m not all that familiar with their management/organization) never quite seemed to have a good grasp of who they were, where they were, and what they really wanted to do. Too many little niggly details messed up, when they weren’t even necessary, in the first place.

The one constant, however, was the supremely high level of professionalism in the music they performed. No matter what else they tried (and which faltered a good many times) the music was always superbly performed. The musicians played with astonishing cohesiveness and intonation. Red’s music director, Jonathan Sheffer, brought us new and rarely-heard music that many of us in the audience would willingly have listened to on other occasions.

Unhappily, it was the ‘expensive out-of-town soloists’ that finally did them in. Combined with a rather-typical Cleveland March blizzard. Blizzards (or extremely heavy snow storms) are not exactly unusual for this location, especially in March. Would Red have done better by using local soloists? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m frustrated, however, that they didn’t even try.

Having seen and heard almost all of Red’s concerts during the first five years of its existence, I can’t think of one that couldn’t have been equally as good if local soloists had been engaged. (The opening concert used puppets, which might be an exception.) Frequently, sophisticated electronics were employed, but all too often they didn’t work properly, which ended up confusing the audience rather than entertaining them.

They tended to carry the ‘curtain speech’ to extremes, frequently delaying the start of the concert. Audience members complained that it was inconsiderate at best, or even rude when they would arrive on time, or even early, only to have the start of the concert delayed as much as 30 minutes for all the non-musical details to be worked through.

The Cleveland Orchestra, which plays on international stages, rightly brings in world-class artists. They have to. Red did not. Apollo’s Fire, which plays very special repertoire, brings in artists, from time to time, but only if there is no one here of equal quality.

Red isn’t solely to blame for this phenomenon, however. OperaCleveland, the Cleveland Play House, and other entities with ‘Cleveland’ in their name, have brought in ‘out-of-town’ performers, and we have so many wonderful, terrific artists of all types and descriptions right here in our area, who long for, and are deserving of being presented on local stages.

Why do we always have to think that we’re not good enough? I don’t understand this. Artists who choose to live here deserve to work here, as well. We need to acknowledge their presence and know who they are, and support them, so they’ll continue to stay here and work here and help to keep our community vibrant and alive!

A good many of these artists are teachers, as well, opening up the wider world to our students. We’d be much the poorer without them.

I say, support your local artists!

From Cool Cleveland contributor Kelly Ferjutz artswriterATroadrunner.com
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