When we visit a national park, we often hear the “music” of the wind in the trees and tall grasses, droplets of water falling from mossy-limbed trees, birds singing lilting soliloquies from their perches. In addition to Nature’s music, you’ll discover music of a different sort at Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. Surrounded by such urban centers as Cleveland and Akron, you’ll be introduced to concerts, photography exhibits, theatre productions, lecture opportunities, and even a creative writing.
Carlos Jones and the P.L.U.S. Band performing at Howe Meadow, Cuyahoga Valley National Park / NPS - DJ Reiser
Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park hosts a variety of concerts throughout the year, both outside and indoors. You can also listen to traditional roots music with the The Peninsula Foundation Voices in the Valley, and during the summer, the Cleveland Orchestra presents their annual Blossom Festival, with a pavilion seating 5,700 people, and space for about 13,500 more on the lawn.
For you photographers (and photography lovers), several venues offer presentations by local and national photographers in addition to workshops, exhibits, photo walks, an online photo gallery of park imagery, and an annual contest:
- Cuyahoga Valley Photographic Society
- Bees, Bugs, and Butterflies: Pollinating Along the Cuyahoga
- The Gallery
- Online Photo Galleries
Theater productions, lectures, and even creative writing are on tap within and near Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Since its founding in 1968, Porthouse Theatre has entertained scores of Northeast Ohio audiences and provided training opportunities for countless developing theatre artists. Every summer, more than 20,000 guests enjoy the Porthouse experience, picnicking with friends and family on the surrounding grounds or in one of their pavilions before enjoying a professional production in their comfortable 500-seat covered outdoor theatre.
The National Park Service and the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park have a long-standing partnership with the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. [The Conservancy’s] current collaboration is a Poetic Inventory of the insects, birds, mammals, fish, fungi, flowering plants, and other forms of life that make the park their home. Watch this collection grow over time. Contact Wick if you want to participate. Online Emerge and Thread tools let you make a poem about park geology, prehistoric people, and the Ohio & Erie Canal.
