COLLAGE: Music and Poetry is a multi discipline performance experience which takes the audience on an electrifying journey through spoken poetry woven in and around music. This program features poet Mwatabu Okantah and the poetry of both Okantah and Langston Hughes.

Described by the Washington Post as “completely engrossing powerful and elegant” The Cavani Quartet has dedicated its artistic life to  communicating the joy of discovery in the service of some of the most powerful music ever written. “Their artistic excellence, their generous spirit, and their fervent ambassadorship for great music make them unique among America’s greatest string quartets.” The Cavani Quartet continues its unique journey maintaining an energetic balance between performing masterpieces by composers such as Mozart, Beethoven and Bartok; collaborating with living composers; and creating new programming that joins music, poetry, and dance. The quartet continues to inspire and shape the musical lives of the next generation through their acclaimed Art of Collaboration Seminar which emphasizes a “team -work” approach. The quartet’s thirty year legacy has garnered impressive recognition including the Ohio Governors Award for the Arts, Musical America Magazine’s Young Artists of the Year, Naumburg Chamber Music Award, The Cleveland Quartet Award at Eastman and the ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. The Quartet has been featured on NPR Performance Today and St Paul Sunday Morning, and “Says You”. In addition the quartet has commissioned, premiered the music of more than thirty living composers, and collaborated with some of the greatest artists of our time including Alisa Weilerstein, Itzhak Perlman, Sergei Babayan, Jaime Laredo, Joseph Kalichstein, Sharon Robinson, Kim Kashkashian as well as members of the Cleveland,Takacs, Juilliard, Tokyo, Ying, Emerson, Cleveland, Amadeus and Guarneri Quartets. For more than 30 years, the Cavani String Quartet served as faculty and Artists- in -Residence at the Cleveland Institute of Music.where they developed and curated nationally acclaimed programs for student ensembles devoted to the serious study of chamber music.