- [Narrator] Production of Applause an Ideastream Public Media is made possible by the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.

(jazz music) - [David] Coming up.

The Cleveland Museum of Art is known for its visual art.

But how about the performing arts?

Stick around for a short history of CMA's musical past and present, plus learn how a comic book creator taps into the talent of the Cleveland Institute of Art.

And hear how the music of Nathan Paul meets the poetry of Orlando Watson.

Hello again, I'm Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

Welcome to the latest and greatest addition of Applause.

(jazz music) Since first opening its doors in 1916, the Cleveland Museum of Art became renowned worldwide for its visual arts collection.

But two years after opening, the Cleveland Museum began another lesser known legacy when the New York Philharmonic performed there in 1918.

In 1922, the museum's curator of music, Pulitzer Prize winning composer, Douglas Moore asked, "Is there not a real service that a museum "may render to the community by offering a musical standard "as well as a pictorial one?"

So began a century of the performing arts inside the Cleveland Museum of Art.

And more recently outside.

(playful music) - [Man] The Performing Arts Series is a perfect companion to what the visual arts collection is itself.

(playful music) - As director of CMA's Performing Arts Series Tom Welsh, wanted to build on the museum's musical tradition in 2009, when the Cleveland museum of art welcomed back visitors to the then freshly renovated East Wing Galleries.

(playful music) - [Tom] We all knew that we wanted to have a celebration and out of this came the idea to create Solstice.

It was a really fun high energy night, sort of a spasm of love and music and energy and a ton of fun.

And we knew immediately that this should be, could be an annual event - [David] Following the success of Solstice on CMA's front lawn, the museum took the live music to the streets with a new summer program in 2013.

- [Tom] We added a series called City Stages.

And that is free wall family-friendly outdoor world-class concert programming of bands from all over the planet.

And that means close the roads, put up the beer tent put a giant stage out there and welcome bands from all over Africa, Central and South America, the Caribbean and have a fun in the sun summertime night.

- [David] However, despite more than a century of performing arts presented by the Cleveland Museum of Art, something was missing.

(gentle music) - [Tom] The one thing that our predecessors had not done was commission new work at a high level.

That is to say all the presenting institutions around the world.

One aspect of being a major force in performing arts is to commission and create or clause to create new compositions.

And the Cleveland Foundation came to us and said we'd like to explore that idea with you.

And they said, let's go on this journey together.

- [David] The result is the Creative Fusion: Composers Series featuring a group of international composers from Japan to Italy, Serbia to Chicago, Africa to Turkey.

- [Tom] So in a partnership, we organized a plan to invite six composers from all over the world to this museum, with the idea that if we turn composers loose, what would we get?

- [Cenk] Oh, I totally jumped at it.

Tell any artist, "You can do whatever you want pretty much "and we're gonna fund it and we're gonna produce it.

"We're gonna make it happen."

That was pretty much the request.

So of course I jumped on it.

- [David] One of the first composers to finish the commission is Cenk Ergun, a Turkish composer who's lived in the United States and Europe.

- [Tom] I think of all the composers of his generation.

He doesn't sound like anybody.

And nobody's sounds like him.

- [Cenk] Besides the fact that it had to be somehow informed by the museum or the city.

There were no strings attached.

- [Tom] I think he has such a singular voice that we immediately thought to invite Cenk to the museum to see what would inspire him.

- [Cenk] So it was just wide open.

And all I had to do was decide what I wanted to do.

So I think that's kind of unique - [Tom] To my surprise, he was taken immediately overwhelmingly by the architecture of the building, specifically the Ames Family Atrium.

- [Cenk] I had some free time between rehearsals and talking to people where I had to do nothing.

And I just sat here and listened and observed and I really fell in love with the space even more.

For me what's special about here is, well, it's vast.

It feels very big and spacious.

I feel free.

So that's great.

- [David] In may of 2019, Ergun premiered his piece, Formale featuring a chamber choir, a children's choir, three harps Accords, and four trombones.

Performers spread throughout the immense space of the atrium allowing the audience to wander among them.

It was unlike anything Ergun's ever written.

- [Cenk] Most of the work I've created has been for the concert stage, where all the performers are in one place and the sounds coming from one place.

So that was actually the most important influence on how the piece took shape was the fact that it's in the space and the performers are several feet away from each other.

In the case of the two trombone duets, it's I think it's close to 300 feet.

So covering these big distances and trying to make some sense over such a vast amount of space was the big challenge.

- [David] The audience was impressed.

- [Woman] It was really an incredible experience.

It was as he described it very meditative and it changed throughout the hour and just hearing the different vocal pieces and the children's choir and all aspects so that it was absolutely amazing.

- I thought it was really very mesmerizing and it reminded me of Tibetan monks and the horns that they use in their ceremonies.

Very much evocative of that.

- People were very quiet.

Lots of people just milling about very quietly and the tones of the instruments would come through.

And it would just make me feel like I was really being uplifted into a new environment - [David] The Cleveland Museum of Art relaunched its performing art season earlier this year following a hiatus due to the pandemic.

And now plans are afoot for more public music performances presented by the museum this summer.

(soft music) The next performance in CMA's Composer Series is scheduled for later this year featuring the music of a Serbian composer inspired by a Byzantine masterpiece of the Madonna and Child.

Stay tuned to a Applause later this year for more on that composition.

Meanwhile CMA's university circle neighbor, The Cleveland Institute of Art is where a local comic book writer went looking for an up-and-coming illustrator.

We set our making it team to CIA to get the story.

- It's just really fun to make comics and learn about comic making from other great artists.

- [Keith] Being an entrepreneur, I know that no one knows everything and I certainly know less than most.

I knew I could learn.

And I knew I could connect with people who have the skills to help me develop.

(playful music) My name is Keith Harris and I'm President of FutureGen Comics, LLC.

FutureGen Comics is an independent comic book and character development company that focuses on helping you to be the hero you are meant to be.

So we'll take a photo of you develop it into a superhero character, build it into a superhero story all with your approval and create a comic book or holster just for you.

You gonna have a business size collection of comic books.

It occurred to me that there may be an opportunity for me to try and develop my own comic book characters and my own comic book universe.

I just can't draw.

So, (laughs) I knew I needed help.

Just through word of mouth, I connected with a couple of local artists.

As we figured out more and more of what we were gonna sell.

We started to bring in more people until we got out to where we are today in which we've engaged with the Cleveland Institute of Art.

They were able to connect us with some fantastic young artists.

They've really been able to push us to the next stage of the business.

- Hi, my name is Maya Langlois and I am a comic intern at FutureGen Comics.

And I'm also a senior illustration student at CIA.

I'm very passionate about art and I know that's what I wanna die as my job.

FutureGen Comics has helped me a lot in that.

So I met Keith actually through the school.

They had a internship fair and we hit it off from there.

And now I'm his intern.

Keith gets a written script for me and I draw out quick sketches that I basically get proofed by Keith and the writer.

And then once that's proofed, I go to phase two which is inking those sketches.

So I try to draw over the rough sketches as cleanly as I can so it's readable.

And then I scan that and then I put in the colors digitally and then I add the shading and the highlights digitally.

So it really pops.

And then I send that over to Keith once it's formatted and he prints it out.

And then we have like a fully fleshed comic.

Yeah.

- Currently we have three artists from the institute interning with us.

We're looking at bringing on two more.

Maya is very eager to learn about developing comic books and her talent is undeniable.

She did an amazing job with the comic that she was commissioned to do.

- I had sketched and then inked over and then scrapped and then sketched and inked over again.

And then finally I sent it to Keith and he said he loved it.

And it was the most gratifying.

He ever was like, yes my comic is good enough.

- You know, running a business is not always exciting.

It's kind of the technical day to day things can really wear you down.

But bringing on board these interns, their excitement and their energy is really contagious.

That energy just makes you wanna do more.

I hope we can and have a very long relationship with the students here at Cleveland Institute of Art - [David] FutureGen Comics, is just one of the dozens of Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs featured in our Making It series.

To meet more, visit arts.ideaideastream.org.

(playful music) On the next Applause, get to know Amber Ford photographing Northeast, Ohio, and developing as an artist in residence at moCa Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Plus meet a librarian from Sandusky who moonlights as a jewelry design with her 3D printer.

And the Cleveland orchestra goes contemporary with a piece by a 21st century, Austrian composer all this and more on the next Applause.

The art of India took a new turn when the south Asian nation shrugged off British rule in 1947.

At the a Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts an ongoing exhibition captures the spirit of that artistic transition.

- [Narrator] The first of the Peabody Essex Museum's new South Asian art galleries just doesn't feel right.

There are low oppressive ceilings and stereotypes and tropes abound.

It's uncomfortable.

- I want people to walk through the galleries and ask that question of, when we repeatedly see images of people and cultures that are different from us and they're repeatedly shown in a particular way how does that change the way we see others who are different from us?

How do they foster prejudice?

- [Narrator] Most of this work was produced in the 19th century, while India was under British occupation.

When Indians were as much an object of classification as they were of interest.

From photo albums that portray Indian people almost as specimens to sculpture, which both enchants and troubles Siddhartha Shah, the museum's South Asian art curator.

- I see so much beauty in this figure.

He's so realistic and lifelike but over the period that he's been here he's been painted darker and darker over the years he's been made more and more other - [Narrator] But move on from here into galleries that reveal a renascence of Indian art spanning the latter half of the 20th century.

And it's - A real contrast, a big explosion whereas in the 19th century it's how outsiders are viewing India and its people.

But in this gallery, it's about how Indians are viewing themselves for themselves.

- [Man] Tell me about the insulation.

- [Siddhartha] I wanted it to be overwhelming at times because India is overwhelming.

India is a very, very overwhelming place with moments of solitude and contemplation.

- [Narrator] As you might have gleaned already Shah approached to these galleries with both a curator's clinical eye and with a deep sense of personal history - People are often surprised that I am, I went to John's Hopkins for my undergrad.

And so then people assume that I'm a physician.

I'm not a physician.

I've never taken biology.

I'm also not an engineer.

I don't actually understand anything about engineering.

- [Narrator] What he understands acutely though.

And as we see here is how Indian artists responded to the events and consequences of 1947.

That's when the British left India and a lawyer who had never even been to the country divided the region into the Islamic nation of Pakistan and the secular nation of India.

It came to be called partition.

- The line he drew went through communities split up families, millions of people were displaced and millions of people died.

In India, it was both a moment of celebration and a moment of deep trauma.

The birth of the nation was a very bloody birth.

And the image behind me by Tyeb Mehta, is a visualization of that.

You see that line dividing the canvas and it's both the line across the subcontinent as well as the severing of limbs and tremendous violence.

- [Narrator] This collection comes from Chester and Davida Herwitz a Worcester Massachusetts couple who became so enamored with Indian artists in the 1970s they collected thousands of pieces.

It was a time when few inside or outside India were paying attention to the art scene but when it was electrifying - [Siddhartha] They were amazing teachers.

Their art schools in India were thriving in the fifties and sixties.

- [Narrator] One of India's most famous 20th century artists, MF Hussain painted these works.

Part of a 29 part series on the Mahabharata, an ancient poem of 1.8 million words.

- We're literally standing in the middle of an epic right now.

- [Siddhartha] The climax is a war, a very very intense battle between two factions of the same family.

Where nobody even the victors don't really win there's loss on all sides.

And so it actually made for a great metaphor for partition - [Narrator] But where there is carnage, there is also quiet contemplation, as the galleries slip into spirituality - India's known for yoga, meditation, contemplation.

So I have these moments where people are seeing that aspect of our culture, where some people have emphasized the differences of the various religions in India, others have emphasized the universality of them.

- [Narrator] Which is the essence of the story?

As we see in these galleries and in this art presented by a curator who knows it chapter and verse - For me, this was really personal.

And what I wanted to just show is that is India not monolith.

We are complex beings just like everybody else is complex.

- [David] During the pandemic, local performance poet Orlando Watson wrote new music with a baby on his shoulder.

Meanwhile, his most recent recording includes a track responding to black lives matter.

Watson and instrumentalist Nathan Paul joined Ideastream's Dan Polleta for Applause Performances.

- [Dan] What's here the first piece that you guys put together for us.

Orlando this is a song that you wrote last year.

Its inspired by a legendary piece that Billie Holiday been made famous.

Tell us about your interpretation of strange fruit.

- Oh man.

Yeah.

My adaptation of strange fruit.

I felt it appropriate to utilize the same title in respect to Billy holiday and also Nina Simone who has a great rendition of it also.

But basically I was inspired to write this of course if you couldn't tell, I'm a young African American male 29 years old.

I don't wanna consider myself a historian or a history buff per say, but I do take great interest in world history, African American history especially, and just drawing some parallels between things that were happening 1939 and things that were happening in 2019 and still continue to happen in 2020 with recent events such as Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Eliza Mclean, the list goes on.

So I was trying to draw parallels between things that were taking place then and things that still continue to take place now regarding police brutality.

♪ Uprooted, replanted and plucked for profit ♪ ♪ It's proven that we are by far the ♪ ♪ Strangest fruit in this field ♪ ♪ Where fear is the farming tool ♪ ♪ Used to damage any good produced ♪ ♪ By my fruitful population.

♪ ♪ So we tend to inherit the habit ♪ ♪ To never look cops in the face, ♪ ♪ Just face forward, head down ♪ ♪ Disguise yourself as dead.

♪ ♪ At least they cant kill you twice, right?

♪ ♪ I've come to this conclusion ♪ ♪ From consuming news surrounding countless black lives.

♪ ♪ Immortolized with Instagram captions ♪ ♪ On what seems to be a weekly basis but ♪ ♪ I've seen ♪ ♪ I've flesh flooded with shells ♪ ♪ Along the shoreline of our lineage ♪ ♪ Like blackness is a body of water ♪ ♪ Where crooked cops love to camp out ♪ ♪ I've watched war commence on colored kids ♪ ♪ Who whither like acres of daffodils ♪ ♪ Anchored in bodies of bloody water ♪ ♪ Where the deceased are greeted with a deep indifference ♪ ♪ I've witnessed temperamental white teens ♪ ♪ Being tamed with tasers ♪ ♪ But black babies with empty hands are often times pacified ♪ ♪ With gunfire ♪ ♪ I've even seen people pull their phones from pockets ♪ ♪ And purses like pistols to shoot indisputable proof.

♪ ♪ But Facebook footage is never a footprint ♪ ♪ For indictment here ♪ ♪ The reality is that hands up are not ♪ ♪ Gunshots turn our torsos into hashtags ♪ ♪ Therefore we format tribute tweets ♪ ♪ In attempt to retract that trauma ♪ ♪ But that trick is never a treatment for our trail of tears ♪ ♪ Especially when our fleshes known to float ♪ ♪ On cement against our consent ♪ ♪ As if we ain't already considered what ♪ ♪ Three fifths a chip off the old block ♪ ♪ Way too black to block old bleach ♪ ♪ We preach on platforms digital ♪ ♪ Repost are pivotal to ensure ♪ ♪ That the violent visuals are visible ♪ ♪ See how sick this political climate is critical ♪ ♪ From transatlantic missions made miserable ♪ ♪ Meanwhile, meanwhile, we watch dozens of broken bodies ♪ ♪ On breaking news swing swing ♪ ♪ Swing from a nightly noose headlines ♪ ♪ Headlock by journalists who dared stock our stories ♪ ♪ With repetitious privilege ♪ ♪ Preventing us from ever forgetting just how well our limbs ♪ ♪ Make peace with pavement ♪ ♪ Proving that we in fact paint with pallets ♪ ♪ Of pathological poverty ♪ ♪ From memory from trauma ♪ ♪ From trying to fit into this sweet home Alabama ♪ ♪ Georgia is still on my mind ♪ ♪ Mississippi has four eyes and is somehow still blind ♪ ♪ To all of the strange fruit falling from Louisiana skies ♪ ♪ And I'm supposed to act as if everything is peachy keen ♪ ♪ After apple seeds of deep-seated racism ♪ ♪ Have mutilated my family tree ♪ ♪ For centuries on end ♪ (gentle music) - Orlando, we mentioned that you've got your start, you were working at Tri-C.

The reason you went to Tri-C was cuz you wanted to be a drummer.

And you actually started playing drums in church.

I'm wondering now that you're a performance poet, is there any particular element of what you learned playing music in church that you find you draw on now?

- Everything man.

Everything.

Seriously I'm not even exaggerating, but I think the church element or gospel musicians have a unique disposition and maybe a slight advantage because you initially have to learn to play by ear and rely on your innate ability to hear and...

Interpret what is going on and what's appropriate to play.

And then from there you receive training, but within gospel music, is so many styles, so jazz, you might have Latin, you might have like a Latin gospel, salsa song, in the same service, reggae, so you learn to play like various ways and techniques.

And I started playing drums when I was about four years old.

I think that's when my parents got me my first drum kit and for a long time, that's all I really wanted to do.

I just wanted to be a touring musician, a session drummer for like a RnB artist like Chris Brown and Usher man.

That was it.

Poetry just kind of like fell out of the sky.

Just kind of just happened.

And I'd been rolling with it ever since but I did attend Tri-C I studied with Ray Perello.

- [Dan] Wow.

- [Orlando] You know Ray?

- [Dan] I do.

- [Orlando] Okay.

Awesome.

Everybody knows Ray, everybody loves Ray Everybody loves Raymond.

(both lauging) But I studied with Ray from a few years probably like four or five years.

And he got me prepared to go to Youngstown State University where I study music for a short period of time.

And it was a great experience, man.

I don't play so much anymore, but I still utilize the concept of rudiments, the concept of rhythm timing.

I apply all of that to my verbal work, my poetry and everything.

So I think that kind of gives me a slight distinction and maybe a slight edge.

So.

- Nathan Paul Church music you're no stranger to it.

You actually were involved in a gospel album when you were 14.

What about your experiences playing in church?

How does that influence what you do today?

- Well, just the whole way of looking at life, just approaching it.

Well, my father used to always tell me his life is about relationship and that's what he talked about in church.

Since we're talking about it he just said, he always taught me.

He says, it's about his relationship with God and everything.

And so that's what I try and do with my music.

It may be abstract or weird sometimes but that's just because I'm unique.

But outside of that I really do try and make it accessible to people.

And to be honest with you, I wanted to heal people of cancer when I was playing music earlier that was the original intent.

I would literally play imagining myself, healing their body.

And I went to college and you get a little sidetracked and talking all theory and all this.

And I've just been spending all this time trying to get back to the source of what I'm naturally inclined to do.

(gentle music) I remember when we first met and you made my eyes Inflate with infatuation, from the onset My heart died late to and let you live inside.

- [David] You can watch this entire Applause Performance and others on demand via the PBS app.

Hope you enjoyed this week's show.

Am Ideastream Public Media's David C. Barnett.

Stop by again next week for another round of applause.

- So then I'd have space enough to string satans rings around your ribs, racing to drip honeymoon from Cosmos and hand you comics about the dozen your dimples dipped as deep as milky waves while your smile perched on the ledge of your lips.

And I latched onto every single word you uttered while you stuttered - [Narrator] Production of Applause an Ideastream Public Media is made possible by The John P. Murphy Foundation, The Kulas Foundation and by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga arts and culture.