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By Donald Rosenberg, The Plain Dealer
February 21, 2010, 12:00AM
View full sizeThe finishing touches are being applied to the Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorium, which will celebrate its gala reopening next Sunday after a $6.1 million renovation. MORE STORIES
Good vibrations: Remaking Gartner's acoustics
The rich sights in the Cleveland Museum of Art weren't the only glories that began heading into hibernation or exile in 2005.Music took a hike, too.
As part of the museum's $350 million expansion and renovation, Gartner Auditorium went into a deep slumber in mid-2005 to prepare for architectural and acoustical transformation. The closing sent lovers of classical and world music to Cleveland churches and schools for performances presented by the museum's Viva! & Gala Around Town series.
But, like Kansas after Oz, there's no place like home. The finishing touches are being applied to the Gartner for its gala reopening next Sunday after a $6.1 million renovation. The stage was expanded, the seats replaced (and capacity reduced) and surfaces revamped to bring much-needed acoustical flexibility to the hall.
To mark the Gartner's return, the museum will present local artists in an "Opening Nights Festival" of free performances in March and April.
The makeover was a long time coming. From the moment it opened in 1971 in the wing designed by modernist architect Marcel Breuer, the Gartner proved to be a problem child. The acoustics and narrow stage suited only certain events. The atmosphere was severe and the lighting dark.
Because music has been a crucial aspect at the museum since its earliest decades, officials decided that the Gartner needed to become state-of-the-art. Former deputy director for collections and programs Charles Venable insisted that the Gartner renovation figure prominently in the expansion project.
Former museum director Timothy Rub took part in Gartner design meetings with the Cleveland architectural firm Westlake Reed Leskosky and pushed for board approval of the budget. (Rub left in September to head the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)
The result is a hall that promises to welcome more types of performances than ever.
The design allowed the museum "to turn the space into a multipurpose hall that can respond to all of our needs," says Massoud Saidpour, director of performing arts, music and film.
OPENING NIGHTS FESTIVAL
All events at at the Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard, Cleveland. All programs begin at 7 p.m. unless otherwise noted. Tickets, free but limited to four apiece, are available at the door or in advance at 216-421-7350 or Clevelandart.org/tickets.
Friday, March 12
Joshua Smith, principal flutist of the Cleveland Orchestra; the Greater Cleveland Choral Chapter; members of the Cleveland Orchestra performing with students.
Wednesday, March 17
Contemporary Youth Orchestra; United States Coast Guard Band.
Wednesday, March 24
Shaker Heights High School A Capella Choir; Quire Cleveland; Heavenly Sounds of Grace.
Wednesday, March 31
Organist Karel Paukert; classical Indian dance with Sujatha Srinivasan; members of the Cleveland Orchestra performing Beethoven's Septet, Op. 20.
Friday, April 2
The Cleveland Jazz Orchestra; Flamenco! Fairmount Spanish Dancers.
Saturday, April 10, 1:30 p.m.
Film: "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Wednesday, April 14
Singer-songwriter Baby Dee; Opera Cleveland Chorus; Louis Andriessen's "Workers Union."
Friday, April 16
Cleveland School of the Arts R. Nathaniel Dett Choir; Roberto Ocasio Latin Jazz Project.
Wednesday, April 28
Heights High Barbershoppers; Oberlin Conservatory jazz ensemble; Cleveland Institute of Music strings, led by Joel Smirnoff.
Friday, April 30
St. Ignatius High School Cat-o-Tonics; the Continental Strings Tamburitza Orchestra of Cleveland; Harmonia with the Hungarian Scout Folk Ensemble.
Those needs include chamber music, organ concerts, amplified events, world music, films and lectures. The Gartner is now equipped with such technical capabilities as a sophisticated audio system and theatrical lighting.
Dance and theater events will happen on a level not available in the old Gartner. By hanging a series of drapes on the stage, a proscenium can be conjured in a matter of hours to frame the space and create wings.
Reducing the hall's seating from 765 to 683 makes the auditorium more comfortable and accessible to the disabled.
All of these developments underline the fact that the Cleveland museum -- like only a few others in the United States -- takes music and related arts seriously.
"If anything, the museum has made more of a commitment to music and the performing arts," Saidpour says.
"Moving the performing arts, music and film into one division and moving it from education to the curatorial division was a clear sign the museum respects the music program."
The program has been respected nationally and internationally since the 1920s, when such noted composers as Stravinsky, Ravel and Prokofiev made appearances at the museum. Organist Walter Blodgett nurtured the music series during his tenure of more than three decades, when he added world music, jazz and dance to the offerings.
Blodgett was succeeded by Karel Paukert, a Czech-born oboist and organist who served as the museum's adventurous curator of musical arts for 30 years and created the admired Aki Festival of New Music. Along with former assistant curator of musical arts Paul Cox, Paukert presented some of the most fascinating concerts in the region.
The glistening new stage at the Cleveland Museum of Art's renovated Gartner Auditorium.Saidpour, who arrived at the museum in 1997 as coordinator of performing arts, expanded the world-music program by creating the Viva! series in 1999. He has been helped in the classical realm since 2007 by associate director of music Thomas Welsh, who previously ran New Albion Records and an artist-management firm in San Francisco.
Welsh was attracted to the job here partly because he knew of the museum's long performance tradition.
"To help it expand and aspire to a level of international stature was irresistible to me," he says.
Welsh envisions a range of new program possibilities that meld music and film, as well as dance performances and concerts for larger ensembles that will no longer be crammed onto the Gartner stage, which has been extended by 4 feet.
Saidpour says the 2010-11 season of Gartner performances will be announced in May.
Before then, the museum will present 10 programs in its "Opening Nights Festival," which will include classical, jazz, popular and dance events.
The festival is a way of "inviting Cleveland back to the hall," says Saidpour for what Welsh terms "a huge cornucopia of music."
The Viva! & Gala Around Town series will continue on a smaller basis throughout the city, and the museum will rev up its presentation of gallery concerts.
Saidpour says "Matter of Faith," an upcoming exhibition of medieval objects co-organized with Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, is likely to include an early-music choral concert at a local church.
But the renovated Gartner once again will be the heart of museum's performance activity.
"The focus certainly will shift here," says Saidpour.
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