Cleveland
Cleveland is the most populous municipality in the state of Ohio with approximately 479,000 inhabitants. Founded at the end of the 18th century, it has been an eminently industrial city, focusing its activity on the metallurgy sector.
Due to its geographical location and its previous business tradition, it is currently a logistics center where different economic actors converge, giving rise to new market sectors such as tourism and financial services.The city offers many things to do and explore. Get your tickets with Musement and discover Cleveland.
Cleveland is home to several major cultural institutions, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Cleveland Orchestra, Playhouse Square, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Known as "The Forest City" among many other nicknames, Cleveland serves as the center of the Cleveland Metroparks nature reserve system. The city's major league professional sports teams include the Cleveland Browns, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Cleveland Guardians.
Theater and performing arts
Cleveland's Playhouse Square is the second largest performing arts center in the United States behind New York City's Lincoln Center. It includes the State, Palace, Allen, Hanna, and Ohio theaters. The theaters host Broadway musicals, special concerts, speaking engagements, and other events throughout the year. Playhouse Square's resident performing arts companies include Cleveland Ballet, the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Cleveland Play House, Cleveland State University Department of Theatre and Dance, DANCECleveland, the Great Lakes Theater Festival, and the Tri-C Jazz Fest. A city with strong traditions in theater and vaudeville, Cleveland has produced many renowned performers, most prominently comedian Bob Hope.
Outside Playhouse Square is Karamu House, the oldest African American theater in the nation, established in 1915. On the West Side, the Gordon Square Arts District in the Detroit–Shoreway neighborhood is the location of the Capitol Theatre, the Near West Theatre, and an Off-Off-Broadway playhouse, the Cleveland Public Theatre. The Dobama Theatre and the Beck Center for the Arts are based in Cleveland's streetcar suburbs of Cleveland Heights and Lakewood respectively.
Music
The Cleveland Orchestra is widely considered one of the world's finest orchestras, and often referred to as the finest in the nation. It is one of the "Big Five" major orchestras in the United States. The orchestra plays at Severance Hall in University Circle during the winter and at Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls during the summer. The city is also home to the Cleveland Pops Orchestra, the Cleveland Youth Orchestra, the Contemporary Youth Orchestra, the Cleveland Youth Wind Symphony, and the biennial Cleveland International Piano Competition which has, in the past, often featured the Cleveland Orchestra.
One Playhouse Square, now the headquarters for Cleveland's public broadcasters, was initially used as the broadcast studios of WJW (AM), where disc jockey Alan Freed first popularized the term "rock and roll". Beginning in the 1950s, Cleveland gained a strong reputation as a key breakout market for rock music. Its popularity in the city was so great that Billy Bass, the program director at the WMMS radio station, referred to Cleveland as "The Rock and Roll Capital of the World". The Cleveland Agora Theatre and Ballroom has served as a major venue for rock concerts in the city since the 1960s. From 1974 through 1980, the city hosted the World Series of Rock at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
Jazz and R&B have a long history in Cleveland. Many major figures in jazz performed in the city, including Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, and Billie Holiday. Legendary pianist Art Tatum regularly played in Cleveland clubs in the 1930s, and gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt gave his U.S. debut performance in Cleveland in 1946. Prominent jazz artist Noble Sissle was a graduate of Cleveland Central High School, and Artie Shaw worked and performed in Cleveland early in his career. The Tri-C Jazz Fest has been held annually in Cleveland at Playhouse Square since 1980, and the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra was established in 1984. Joe Siebert's documentary film The Sax Man on the life of Cleveland street saxophonist Maurice Reedus Jr. was released in 2014.
The city has a history of polka music being popular both past and present and is the location of the Polka Hall of Fame. There is even a subgenre called Cleveland-style polka, named after the city. The music's popularity is due in part to the success of Frankie Yankovic, a Cleveland native who was considered "America's Polka King".
There is a significant hip hop music scene in Cleveland. In 1997, the Cleveland hip hop group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony won a Grammy for their song "Tha Crossroads".