Robust Support for Performing Arts

Paul Westlake, trustee, and Suzanne Westlake recently made a significant gift in support of the performing arts program at the CMA. In recognition of their generous support, the upper performing arts spaces (including Gartner Auditorium) at the museum have been named in their honor and are known in perpetuity as the Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center. 

Performing arts has been a part of the CMA since the museum’s founding in 1916. Just two years after the CMA’s dedication, the board of trustees chose to include music programs among the museum’s activities, making the CMA one of the very first art institutions to have a dedicated music and performing arts focus. That same year, the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Jospeh Stransky, performed at the CMA. In 1921, Thomas W. Surrette became the first curator of music at the museum, and performing arts became a standalone area here. 

For more than 100 years, the performing arts department has offered wide-ranging programming, now including classical and contemporary music, jazz, global music, dance, and film. Often, performances are thematic and directly related to exhibitions and the permanent collection, augmenting these offerings and providing avenues to connect with new and younger audiences. 

CMA members for decades, the Westlakes have contributed philanthropically alongside Paul’s service on the board of trustees, where he has participated for more than 10 years and worked on many museum architectural projects, notably designing the renovation of Gartner Auditorium for the 2010 reopening of the space. The Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center honors the CMA’s performing arts legacy, creates awareness and enthusiasm for performing arts at the museum, and ensures that the department continues to flourish in a beautiful space.

Thanks to the Westlakes’ thoughtful philanthropy, the museum remains a premier institution nationally and internationally, creating meaningful and transformational experiences for audiences in perpetuity. 

In the Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center’s Gartner Auditorium, the CMA partners with the Cleveland Chamber Music Society this spring to present the esteemed Jerusalem Quartet, performing the complete Shostakovich Quartet Cycle over five concerts from April 21 to 30. Enjoy an interview with the group about the monumental occasion here.

How has the quartet prepared for this series of concerts?
This is our third time performing the Shostakovich cycle around the world in 30 years. These opuses are rooted deeply in our minds and souls. This time, the whole preparation process focused on what can or should be performed differently for creating an even stronger message, character, and atmosphere.

This is the first time the Shostakovich Quartet Cycle is performed in entirety in Cleveland. What do you think the audience gets from hearing all 15 quartets in a short span of time?  
Coming back to your cultural city to perform this great, maybe the most important, quartet cycle of the 20th century over 10 days makes this project intense both for the public and for us. To experience this cycle chronologically in such a short period of time creates a much stronger, deeper, and more powerful impact on the audiences. In every piece, you get closer to the Shostakovich spirit, you receive more easily his ideas, you start to understand better his musical language. In a way, you get transported to a different world of sonority and atmosphere. 

Shostakovich wrote these quartets over a span of nearly a half century, from the 1930s to the 1970s. How does this body of music reflect world history? 
For more than five decades, Shostakovich was the foremost composer active in the former Soviet Union. The only possible way to succeed in making such an incredible career in such complicated times is living a double life, and that’s why it is so important in Shostakovich music to be able to receive “hidden” messages, to read between the notes and lines. His symphonies, for example, were mostly created as a reaction to major national events, and his quartets are the most personal and intimate pages of his life’s diary. Most of the quartets were dedicated to his family members, closest friends, and colleagues. One can also feel the development in the composer’s writing, which mirrors the development in the history of the Soviet Union.

2025 marks 30 years since the founding of the Jerusalem Quartet. What’s the secret to maintaining a strong bond as an ensemble? 
Being “married” for 30 years is always challenging, and do not forget that in a string quartet, there are four partners. Our love and dedication to this magical ensemble, and to the endless repertoire from great masters beginning with the father of string quartets, Joseph Haydn, have kept us together all this time.

The Jerusalem Quartet has a long history of performing in Cleveland, but this is its first time at the CMA. What is most exciting about this debut?
We have performed many, many times in Cleveland in the past decades. This kind of a cycle debuting now evokes special emotions, and we are looking forward to presenting this amazing music to the old-new audience of Cleveland.