FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 2, 2006

UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, OHIO - The Cleveland Chamber Symphony (CCS), the award-winning contemporary music ensemble and mainstay of the classical music scene in Cleveland for more than 25 years, will perform at Gamble Auditorium at Baldwin-Wallace College, Kulas Musical Arts Building, 96 Front Street in Berea on Sunday, April 9th at 4:00pm. The concert is free and open to the public.

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony, in its second year of a professional residency at Baldwin- Wallace College, will present a program that includes Venetian Games by Witold Lutoslawski; Bird of Four Hundred Voices by Dennis Eberhard; Sinfonietta by Loris Chobanian; and Clawhammer by Gerald Plain.

The concert will feature two exciting soloists, one familiar and another new to Northeast Ohio audiences. Award winning cellist Regina Mushabac is soloist for Loris Chobanian’s Sinfonietta. Ms. Mushabac won the prestigious Concert Artists Guild Award and has given highly acclaimed performances in Europe, Central America, South America and throughout the U.S.

Liana Gourdja will perform Dennis Eberhard’s Bird of Four Hundred Voices. Ms. Gourdja is a native of Russia and currently a graduate student at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She has won several performance awards, including First Prize at the Hudson Valley String Competition, First Prize Winner at the competition of the Society of American Musicians, Second Prize at the Corpus Christi International String Competition, and Special Prize for the Best Chamber Music Performance at the California Young Artist Competition.

The music director and conductor of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony is Steven Smith, the former assistant conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra and current music director of the Santa Fe Symphony.

Thanks to its unique mission and vision to commission, perform, record and promote the dissemination of musical works exclusively by composers of our time, no other institution has contributed so much to advancing the art of contemporary, primarily American, music. While the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's current number of over 170 World Premieres of new works primarily commissioned by the CCS ranks at the top of the list of all orchestras over a comparable period, the commitment goes further by giving repeat performances, often in multiple locations locally, regionally and nationally. The CCS's authoritative work in the recording studio leads to the production and distribution of a significant body of compact disc recordings, further insuring a permanent and widely available legacy of the Chamber Symphony's extensive contemporary repertoire.

The Cleveland Chamber Symphony’s excellence has been recognized repeatedly with numerous prestigious awards including ASCAP’s Edwards Award for the strongest commitment to American Music. It has consistently earned significant support from individuals, government, and distinguished private foundations including the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ohio Arts Council, The Ohio Board of Regents, The Cleveland Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, The Kulas Foundation, the John P. Murphy Foundation, The Bascom Little Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, The Cleveland Federation of Musicians, The Recording Industry Music Performance Fund and others.