Cleveland's John Hay High School looks ahead to impactful visit from CIM Orchestra

The first CIM Orchestra concert of the year might look like just another rental, but it is not. Not to the students of Cleveland’s John Hay High School.  

For them, the orchestra’s Sept. 20 visit to their school, which entails a public concert guest conducted by Anthony Parnther, is something special, an event with truly life-changing potential.  

“I think it will be important for our students to see that this [music] can be your career, too, if you have the ambition for it,” said Monica Utley, one of three principals at John Hay, also known as Cleveland Early College High School. 

Never mind that John Hay, home to a beautiful, 1,600-seat auditorium, meets CIM’s very real need for concert space while its own Kulas Hall undergoes renovation.  

Never mind, too, that the school is located less than a mile away from CIM, well within Cleveland’s University Circle.  

What matters is that John Hay is home to some of the region’s best and brightest, all of whom met rigorous academic standards to attend and are now busy training for collegiate studies in medicine, architecture, and design.  

What matters is that many of those same students are also keenly interested in music, even as their actual experience with live classical music may be limited, as their school no longer boasts a music program. 

“I know some of them play every day,” Utley said. “They just don’t have a class or a teacher aligned to their natural talents...  

“They’ve probably been to a concert of some kind, but for them to go and listen to an orchestra, that’s unusual.” 

The last variable in that potent equation is Parnther, music director of the San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra, whose plan with the CIM Orchestra is to perform works of wide appeal by Robert Schumann, William Grant Still, and John Williams, including a selection from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.   

A gifted Black conductor and bassoonist with a dynamic personality and impressive film conducting credits that include Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Encanto, and The Mandalorian, Parnther stands to inspire listeners of all ages in a way other conductors might not.  

“I’m looking forward to people being exposed to someone else of color doing these amazing things,” Utley said. “He’s doing something that’s not typical, and that’s really exciting.”  

_{Photo courtesy of Eric Hanson/Richard L. Bowen & Associates, Inc.}

Friday, September 20  

7:30pm | John Hay High School Auditorium  

CIM Orchestra  

Anthony Parnther, guest conductor  

   Kulas Foundation Visiting Artist  

SCHUMANN   Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 97, “Rhenish”  

STILL   Symphony No. 1, “Afro-American”  

WILLIAMS   Adventures on Earth from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial   

Reserve free seating passes at cim.edu/events.