Festivals featured
By Jane Kaufman
Spaces in Northeast Ohio will be bathed in color, surrounded by sound and wafting with aromas of freshly cooked food this summer.
People will dance in the street under the iconic chandelier at Playhouse Square during the Tri-C JazzFest. Artists and craftspeople from across the country and locally will converge to present their wares, play and sing.
As Canvas looks ahead to upcoming festivals, we talked with several event leaders about what attendees can expect for 2022.
Tri-C JazzFest
After moving to a virtual platform in 2020 and to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights on a smaller scale in 2021, Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland will be back at Playhouse Square June 23 to June 25.
“This is our homecoming,” says Terri Pontremoli, director of the Tri-C JazzFest. “We’re excited about the fact that we’re going to be in the theaters – the beautiful theaters again with our national acts – and outdoors, we will have the stage and under the chandelier and people dancing. And we will feature probably somewhere between 16 and 19 local jazz bands.”
Headlining the festival will be John Clayton, conducting an all-star big band, vocalist and guitarist John Pizzarelli, and Anthony Hamilton, who will perform a night of rhythm and blues, along with Brian Culbertson, known for smooth jazz.
Pontremoli says festival goers can expect to hear a wide range of styles that are related to jazz. There will be food trucks and a cooking tent called the jazz kitchen, which will feature local chefs doing food demonstrations with the help of jazz musicians, she says. There will also be interviews with writers and musicians.
“It’s going to feel pretty much like it used to feel,” she says.
The festival will also feature 85-year-old Eddie Palmieri, whom Pontremoli described as “one of the finest pianists.” She says Palmieri is “so much fun and so energetic.”
Northeast Ohio natives Joe Lovano and Sean Jones are also headlining.
“Both of these players are terrific, wonderful players, great musicians,” Pontremoli says. “We haven’t had them at our festival for some years. It seemed really fitting that in our homecoming, we brought them back.”
The JazzFest also features Dominick Farinacci, whom Pontremoli refers to as “an artist-in-residence for us.” He is from Cleveland, now lives in New York City and teaches at Cuyahoga Community College. Farinacci will play with his group, Triad, and will perform in a double-bill concert also featuring French vocalist Cyrille Aimée.
Ghost-Note will deliver a funk-inspired concert, and New Mexico singer-songwriter Raul Midón will also take the stage.
And as an educational component, the Tri-C JazzFest Academy is offered to students ages 11 to 18, where at the end of its summer academy they perform at the festival.
“They come here, they interact with all the artists that we bring in for master classes throughout the year and also at the festival,” Pontremoli says, adding those students often go to other cities to make their careers. “But we make sure that they come back, they perform and they teach. … It’s like the circle of life. It’s beautiful.”
Connections are sometimes made at the JazzFest with life-changing implications for those young musicians.
Pontremoli relates that Farinacci met jazz musician Wynton Marsalis at the JazzFest when Farinacci was 15, after someone literally pushed Farinacci into Marsalis’ dressing room and told him to play. Marsalis was impressed and eventually landed Farinacci a four-year scholarship to The Juilliard School, when Marsalis was running its jazz program.
Because of that educational intent, JazzFest aims to be accessible to those of all ages and income levels, with some free components.
“Our mission is to bring world-class jazz to Cleveland to provide educational opportunities for students of all ages, and from all walks of life,” Pontremoli says. “We really take that very seriously. And then to serve our community. So that’s why having free components is really important – because not everybody can afford to buy tickets.”
If you go
• Tri-C JazzFest Cleveland starts with an 8 p.m. show June 23, and runs from 3 p.m. to midnight June 24 and June 25, all at venues in Playhouse Square in downtown Cleveland. Free outdoor events; ticketed events at indoor venues. For passes, visit jazzfest2022festivalpass.eventbrite.com. For tickets to individual events contact Playhouse Square box office at 216-241-6000. For additional information and updates, visit tri-c.edu/jazzfest.
Art by the Falls
Valley Art Center’s 38th annual Art by the Falls returns to Riverside Park in Chagrin Falls June 11 and June 12, for the first time since 2019.
“In 2020, the festival had to be canceled along with everything else that was happening with the pandemic,” recalls Rebecca Gruss, executive director of Valley Art Center in Chagrin Falls. “In 2021, the festival was reimagined because of the pandemic still going on.”
Artists in 2021 popped up at two locations at farmers markets at Triangle Park in Chagrin Falls and at Geauga Fresh Farmers’ Market in South Russell.
“So, 2022 is the first year that we’re really bringing it back post-pandemic and full force,” Gruss says.
With more than 120 artists committed to exhibit at the juried show, some will be international, including Kenyatta Ray from Heverlee, Belgium. There will also be a children’s art tent and an interactive public art experience, specifically a mural designed by muralist and festival exhibitor Pam Spremulli of Chagrin Falls.
“We’ll have live music and delicious fare from some of the finest eateries around,” Gruss says. “From an art perspective, we’ll have everything from large sculptures to jewelry, painting, pottery and mixed media, there’s so much that’s coming this year.”
In addition, the festival will include a demonstration tent, where artists will present their process for festival goers, and a raffle where the prize is original art by one of the exhibitors.
“I think what really makes this festival so unique is its location in this charming setting by the waterfall in the center of historic Chagrin Falls,” Gruss says, including its proximity to shops and restaurants. “It’s walkable.”
The show is supported by more than 100 volunteers.
“We just know it’s going to be good weather,” Gruss adds.
Valley Art Center is a nonprofit organization that provides art classes year-round to children and adults by more than 30 instructors. It holds at least five exhibits per year and has a gift shop featuring local artists.
If you go
• Valley Art Center’s Art by the Falls is from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
June 11 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 12 at Riverside Park in Chagrin Falls. Free admission. In addition, Canvas will host a booth at Art by the Falls on both days. For more information and updates, visit valleyartcenter.org.
Art in the Village
Howard Cohen, co-founder and president of Howard Alan Events in Jupiter, Fla., is orchestrating the 31st annual Art in the Village with Craft Marketplace outdoors at Legacy Village in Lyndhurst June 4 and June 5.
The show took place in both 2020 and 2021, with protocols for COVID-19 in place. It features about 100 artists, with part of the show juried and part featuring affordable crafts.
“We want to offer both because some people want to buy expensive art, some people just want to buy affordable stuff,” Cohen says. “So we found in Cleveland, the best thing to do is to cater to both groups.”
Traveling exhibitors, he says, are often career-changers.
“We have former doctors, lawyers, teachers, college professors, retailers, etc., who gave up their secure jobs to do what they love, their passion, their art, and they love sitting there in their booth all day long, talking about it, discussing how they created it, what inspired them to make it,” he says.
He adds that children who come to the Northeast Ohio show are unusual in their level of interest and knowledge.
“They’re very astute,” he says. “In most places we go around the country, kids are into technology. … In Cleveland, they’re more interested in the art.”
Cohen, who stages art shows from Fort Lauderdale to Aspen, also speaks of a unique symbiosis among Cleveland patrons of the arts and the traveling artists.
“Not only do they buy from the artists, they open their doors and they have them stay there for the weekend instead of staying at a hotel,” Cohen says. “Nowhere else but this show do I hear that, where the people living in the area want to be part of this whole art scene, and they invite the exhibitors to stay in their homes.”
If you go
• Art in the Village with Craft Marketplace is from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 4, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 5, outdoors at Legacy Village, 25001 Cedar Road in Lyndhurst. Free admission. For additional information and updates, visit artfestival.com.
Cain Park Arts Festival
At Cain Park, which canceled its festival in 2020 and scaled it back in 2021, the annual arts festival will be held at a larger scale this year, though not quite as large as it was pre-pandemic, says George Kozmon, director of Cain Park Arts Festival.
“We’re still wanting to give a little bit more breathing space for everybody,” Kozmon says, adding the Cleveland Heights city-sponsored arts festival will host up to 120 visual artists rather than the pre-pandemic number of about 145. In 2021, when there were 85 artists, audience feedback was “almost uniformly positive,” Kozmon says.
At Cain Park Arts Festival, which is from July 8 through July 10 at the Cleveland Heights park, children are particularly invited to help create a mural of their own design, which has been done for the past few years.
“It’s a pleasure to see kids and families interacting, painting on a wall, which is, I don’t know, 100 feet long or something like that,” Kozmon says. “That’s something we’re going to be doing again to really reach out to the community and engage them.”
Works by students from the Cleveland Institute of Art will be curated into a month-long exhibition at Cain Park’s Feinberg Art Gallery. Performances will take place at both its Alma Theater and Evans Amphitheater during the festival, including by Charlie Mosbrook, Morgan Mecaskey and Friends, Kulture Kids, Spyder Stompers, the Juggernaut Jug Band, the Labra Brothers, Liz Bullock with Gavin Coe, and Jeff Varga and Friends.
“Part of it is the affirmation of what art brings to the table, what community brings to the table, what social gathering brings to the table, and I think we’ve sorely missing that this last two years, as a society,” says Kozmon, a working artist. “And I think art has a power that unifies. It’s the best of what human culture can do.”
If you go
• Cain Park Arts Festival is from 3 to 8 p.m. July 8, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. July 9, and noon to 5 p.m. July 10 at Cain Park, 14591 Superior Road in Cleveland Heights. Free admission. For additional information and updates, visit cainpark.com.
