Name: Ohlsson Plays Rachmaninoff
Start: 2026-07-16T19:00:00
Location: Severance Music Center

Semyon Bychkov

Garrick Ohlsson

The Cleveland Orchestra

This fusion oratorio speaks with a fresh and bold voice, incorporating a variety of musical styles seamlessly woven into a unified whole. Johnson sets a wide range of poetic and soulful texts by poets including Michael Dennis Browne, Lesléa Newman, Hildegard of Bingen and Rumi. Passages from Matt’s personal journal, interviews and writings from his parents Judy and Dennis Shepard, newspaper reports, and additional texts by Johnson and Browne are poignantly appointed throughout the work.

Considering Matthew Shepard

Severance Music Center

The Cleveland Orchestra returns to Cain Park! Join us for a free community concert in the heart of Cleveland Heights, performed under the direction of Black Panther conductor Anthony Parnther. Enjoy classic favorites, from John Williams to Dvořák, as well as new pieces you might not have heard before.

The Cleveland Orchestra recognizes and thanks Jayne M. Zborowsky for her support of this concert.

2026 Cain Park Community Concert

A work of audacious technical demands and lyrical beauty, Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto was composed when he was just 17. Longtime Cleveland Orchestra friend Garrick Ohlsson revisits this work that helped put Rachmaninoff on the map as a composer and performer. Conductor Semyon Bychkov bookends the program with Smetana’s love letter to his homeland and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony, which bursts with optimism from the first note to the last. 