Last week we helped spread the word about the Cleveland Orchestra's new Center for Future Audiences, launched with a gift of $20 million from the Maltz Family Foundation. This week, it seems, word is spreading across the national classical music landscape.

Writing in the Baltimore Sun, classical music critic Tim Smith reports, "There's enough bad news in the classical music business that any good news seems extra good. So it is with word from the Cleveland Orchestra, which has launched something called the Center for Future Audiences, an initiative that aims to put into real action what so many people just talk about -- getting new and younger audiences into the concert hall."

The Center for Future Audiences, he explains to his readers, will attack the problem of skyrocketing admission prices with heavily subsidized tickets: deep discounts for the 18-34 set, free tickets to lots of events for children under 18. The orchestra will also arrange for free bus service from some suburbs to the concert hall, a terrific gesture, Smith adds.

"Every step that any orchestra makes to connect to the disconnected is obviously valuable, potentially invaluable," Smith explains. "Orchestras that don't try new things, bold new things, are likely to find themselves not just out of touch, but out of business, in the years ahead."

Read the rest of the sheet music here.

Slashfood, a popular online magazine devoted to food and drink, recently touted Cleveland's efforts to combat health, economic and foreclosure problems by launching multiple urban farming projects.

Citing the just-announced $1.1 million pilot program to fund the Cleveland Urban Agriculture Incubator Project, the writer notes that "Cleveland is planting seeds to counter the serious problems of obesity, food deserts and urban blight."

Supported by the USDA, the City of Cleveland, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Ohio State University Extension Service, the new six-acre plot in the Kinsman neighborhood will be tended to by 20 local residents.

The farm will be two short miles from chef Doug Katz' Fire Food and Drink, the story points out. "I absolutely would love to use what they grow, and will promote that it's grown here in the City of Cleveland, right in our backyard," says Katz of the program.

Read all the juicy details here.

If you didn't have an opportunity to attend the Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference held here two weeks ago, we urge you to read this thorough rundown in Next American City.

Reporting for the mag is Cleveland-based sustainability writer Marc Lefkowitz, a frequent Next American City contributor.

Cleveland was chosen to host the conference, explained keynote speaker Alex Kotlowitz, not simply because the city is plagued by foreclosures and vacant properties, but rather because Cleveland is "pushing back."

Lefkowitz writes that Kotlowitz was particularly inspired by Cleveland Housing Court Judge Raymond Pianka's efforts to adjudicate and fine banks in absentia. And during a session titled "Re-Imagining America's Older Industrial Cities," the writer quotes Presley Gillespie of Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation as saying they are "taking a page from Cleveland" by demolishing vacant properties to turn into community gardens. "We're talking about cities that are smaller but stronger," adds Gillespie.

The conference kicked off with tours of Cleveland's vacant land reuse efforts, which earned attention for creating a common language and roadmap for change, Lefkowitz says.

Read the entire conference report here.

Boasting the highest score and largest circulation in its expenditure category, the Cleveland Public Library snagged top honors in the annual Library Journal Index of Public Library Service (LJ Index). Crunching numbers in the categories of library visits, circulation, program attendance, and public Internet usage, the index ranks more than 7,400 library systems around the nation.

"This is great news for our Cleveland community," said Felton Thomas, director of Cleveland Public Library. "Our goal is to provide our patrons easy access to our collections, programs, and computers, and we're honored to receive this recognition."

In the liner notes, however, the Journal warns that recent cuts in state library funding will doubtless impact the standing of Ohio libraries in future rounds of the LJ Index.

Check out all the winners here.

Santé, the Magazine for Restaurant Professionals recently announced its winners of the 2010 Santé Restaurant Awards. Currently in their 13th year, the Santé Awards were created to recognize excellence in restaurant food, wine, spirits, and service hospitality.

Claiming three of the 88 awards were Cleveland restaurants Parallax and Table 45, which won in the "Innovative" category, and Moxie, which took honors in the "Sustainable" category.

"At Table 45, we take the newest and most unique flavors from around the globe and combine them in entirely different ways to produce dishes that are unlike anything else our guests have ever tasted," said owner Zack Bruell. "Every time we create a new menu, it is an experience in culinary innovation. We are delighted to have Santé recognize our efforts."

Cleveland diners looking try these award-winning restaurants, as well as 87 other members of the Cleveland Independents restaurant group, are in luck. This year's Cleveland Restaurant Week runs from November 1 through 14, with participating eateries offering special three-course prix fixe meals for just $30.

See the complete list Sante' award winners here, and participating Restaurant Week eateries here.

In its second annual ranking of "America's Smartest (and Dumbest) Cities," the Daily Beast website credits Cleveland as the 17th smartest big city with one million people or more. That puts us ahead of Chicago (#24), Atlanta (#28), Dallas (#41), and Las Vegas (#55).

Crunching figures that take into account per-capita numbers of libraries, residents with bachelor's and graduate degrees, nonfiction book sales, and institutions of higher education, the survey determined the comparative IQs of America's metropolitans.

The CLE+ numbers:

Metropolitan area population: 2,091,286

Bachelor's degrees: 17%

Graduate degrees: 10%

Year-to-date adult nonfiction book sales: 2,024,000

Thanks to a reworked formula, Cleveland jumped from its last-year position of #31.

See the other smart (and not-so-smart) cities here.

Thanks to an extraordinary financial gift from the Maltz Family Foundation in the amount of $20M, the Cleveland Orchestra has announced the formation of the Center for Future Audiences.

With the stated goal of having the youngest orchestra audience in the country by 2018, the symphony's centennial, the endowment will remove the financial barrier standing in the way of Cleveland's youth by subsidizing or offering free admission to young concert-goers.

"It's incomprehensible to think of Cleveland losing this Orchestra," said Milton Maltz, President of the Maltz Family Foundation. "This would be equivalent to stopping the heartbeat of this great city. Over the decades there have been many contributors to our Orchestra. It is now this generation's turn to continue to uphold the tradition. It's the right thing to do. It's our responsibility."

"The Maltz Family's extraordinary generosity is deeply appreciated," added Gary Hanson, the Orchestra's Executive Director. "The Foundation's philanthropy is a vote of confidence in the future of the Orchestra and will be an inspiration to others who care deeply about our community."

Read the Orchestra' official release here.

Discussing a season of rarely travelled Vatican artifacts on tour throughout the nation, arts reporter Eve M. Kahn writes in the New York Times about an upcoming stop at Cleveland Museum of Art.

Here is an excerpt: "On Sunday [October 17] 'Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe' opens at the Cleveland Museum of Art, with a half-dozen Vatican loans. Displayed are marble sarcophagi and tomb fragments from the fourth century, a boxed collection of Holy Land souvenir rocks assembled around 500, and a ninth-century lidded silver vessel made to hold St. Sebastian's skull."

The exhibition, on view in the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall until January 17, 2011, will provide American audiences with an unparalleled opportunity to see 135 extraordinary works of late antique, Byzantine, and Western medieval art, including precious metalwork objects, paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts, drawn from public and private collections as well as church treasuries across the United States and Europe. Several of these spectacular works have never been seen outside their home countries.

The Times quotes Holger A. Klein, a curator of the Cleveland show, as saying that the Vatican officials "were surprisingly open to the idea" of lending. "They are not sending the actual relics" of saints' bodies, he added. "They are not sending bones."

Unearth the whole story here.

It was Oscar Wilde who penned the phrase, "There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Only a fool would protest that that very phrase is the raison d'être behind this very section. So it's fitting that this item from the Wall Street Journal deals with the Great Lakes Theater Festival's repertory production of Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" and Shakespeare's "Othello."

Written by WSJ drama critic Terry Teachout, the review glowingly covers recent productions of the plays at Cleveland's Hanna Theatre in PlayhouseSquare.

"Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater Festival is mounting handsome stagings of both plays in collaboration with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, where the two productions originated this summer, and as I watched them in close succession earlier this week, I was struck by how smoothly they fit together."

Of the Shakespeare production, Teachout wrote, "This is a blood-and-thunder "Othello" that roars down the track at several hundred miles an hour, and though it's short on poetry, it lacks nothing in the way of thrills and chills."

In addition to singling out set designer Nayna Ramey, the critic goes on to wax poetic about the theater itself.

"Built in 1921, the Hanna Theatre was taken over two years ago by the Great Lakes Theater Festival. The original 1,421-seat proscenium-arch house has now been turned into a fully up-to-date 548-seat thrust-stage theater whose performing space and public areas flow together seamlessly, thus encouraging audience members to show up early and use the theater as a meeting place. (They do, too.) Rarely have I seen a happier marriage of old and new."

Read the rest of the playbill here.

Turns out that Positively Cleveland's popular "Flee to the Cleve" Twitter posts are more than good-natured bits of information -- they are award-winning nuggets.

Positively Cleveland, the Convention and Visitors Bureau office for our fair city, recently snagged three RUBY Awards from the Ohio Travel Association. Shorthand for Recognizing Uncommon Brilliance in the Travel and Tourism Industry, the RUBYs recognize outstanding advertising, marketing and public relations efforts.

This year's competition took place during the Ohio Conference on Tourism, with nearly 130 entries submitted by 40 businesses and organizations.

Positively Cleveland won three RUBY Awards for its work in the categories of Website Design, Electronic Media, and Social Networking Campaign.

Check out the complete list of winners here.

Cleveland's progressive stance on urban farming continues to draw positive national attention, proving that even this crisis boasts a silver lining.

In her article titled "Faded glory: Suffering cities take aim at urban blight," MSN Real Estate reporter Melinda Fulmer shines a bright light on Cleveland's attempt to reinvent its future be reimagining its vacant property.

Of the ground-breaking Ohio City Farm she writes: "In years past, this industrial city probably wouldn't have embraced such a back-to-basics business as beets and beans. But after decades of heavy job and population losses -- and a particularly rough ride in the foreclosure crisis -- this six-acre urban farm on a former public housing tract has become symbolic of the many imaginative ways a shrinking city can reinvent itself when heavy industry leaves."

The article quotes OCNW executive director Eric Wobser as saying, "I think urban farms like this one will reposition the way people think about Cleveland. The local food movement has really caught on fire here."

Fulmer credits Cleveland as the first large shrinking city to adopt a master plan that acknowledges its reduced footprint and attempts to redesign a more vibrant and sustainable future around it.

And what's more, that progressive and sustainable policy, including the city's recent ordinance allowing chicks and bees, is precisely the type of efforts that attract new residents. She quotes Neighborhood Progress' Bobbi Reichtell in the following paragraph.

"This encouragement of a greener future — through 56 urban-farming and green-space grants on city-owned vacant property — is catching the eye of younger eco-friendly entrepreneurs, who have big dreams for more sustainable livelihoods in the city. The city has been very progressive. They recognize the scale of the challenge they face."

Dig into the entire story here.

The avant-garde mash-up of two radically different Cleveland legends -- the Happy Dog Saloon and the Cleveland Orchestra -- has been garnering big props, both locally and nationally.

In addition to a widely aired shout-out on NPR's Weekend Edition, the Happy Dog's recent classical music experiments, where chamber music pros take to the very small stage, caught the attention of the New York Times.

In an article titled, "The Key Was B Flat; the Beer Wasn't," the Old Gray Lady praises the Cleveland Orchestra's unconventional method of winning new fans.

"Anyone popping in for a quick beer at the Happy Dog bar in Cleveland on Wednesday night and expecting the usual fare -- polka, country or indie rock -- would have been surprised," the reporter writes.

Read the liner notes here.

To listen to David C. Barnett's NPR piece, click here.

While Jonathon Sawyer and Greenhouse Tavern failed to come away with the top Burger Bash prize at this year's Wine & Food Festival in New York, he did manage to make a meaty impression on Wall Street Journal reporter Charles Passy.

In his post following the well-attended burger bonanza, Passy wrote,

"To us, a great burger can be a creative affair, but it still has to retain its essential burger identity -- namely, 'a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat,' to quote Jimmy Buffett's "Cheeseburger in Paradise." And that's exactly what the aforementioned lamb burger from chef Jonathon Sawyer of Cleveland's The Greenhouse Tavern accomplished. Lamb is a mighty flavorful meat, so it's hard to top -- literally -- in burger form. But that's why Sawyer's selection of the super-stinky French cheese proved such a smart idea. "If it smells like your foot, you know it works," Sawyer told us.

Read the whole stinky post here.

At a recent gala held at the Toledo Museum of Art, the American Institute of Architects Ohio Convention announced its 2010 AIA Ohio Honor Awards to honor outstanding work in the field. Nearly four dozen Ohio firms submitted twice that amount of design work in hopes of snagging top honors.

Cleveland-based firm Westlake Reed Leskosky was a big winner, securing two out of three available Honor Awards for work both in and out of state. Claiming a Merit award for its design of Gordon Square bus shelters in Detroit Shoreway was Cleveland firm Robert Maschke Architects. Other Cleveland winners include Vocon, Kordalski Architects, and Richard Fleischman + Partners.

See the entire list of winners here.

In last week's issue of Pop City (yes, it's a sister IMG publication), writer Deb Smit reported on our dear publication.

"Fresh Water launches this month with the goods on Cleveland, news as it pertains to innovation, jobs, healthcare, lifestyle, design and arts and culture," she writes." The bubbly, blue homepage comes to life each Thursday with a fresh issue featuring vibrant photography and stories on the people shaking things up and the great places to visit."

Smit even encourages smitten Pittsburghers to subscribe. Thanks, Pop City!

Read all the news that's fit to pop here.

While foodies were busy scarfing down burgers in Brooklyn, judges like David Lynch, Roman Coppola and Morgan Spurlock were in downtown Manhattan picking the winners of the very first Vimeo Awards ceremony at the SVA Visual Arts Theater in Chelsea. Just nine short films were selected out of 6,500 entries submitted from around the globe.

Snagging one of those nine prizes was local artist and Cleveland Institute of Art professor, Kasumi. Her short, "Breakdown the Video," which combines old footage from the 1940s and 1950s, snagged top honors in the Remix category.

Read about the other winners in the New York Times here.

Grab a small popcorn and check out Kasumi's short film here.

Designed by local graphic design studio Rini Uva Lee, and published in partnership with the Cleveland Public Library and Cleveland Public Art, Plain Dealer writer Steven Litt's "Designing a Better Cleveland" is a pocket-sized guide to urban design and how public spaces are created in the city.

"Designing a Better Cleveland" is an outgrowth of a program called Civic Design & Inspired Infrastructure, which was held last year at the Cleveland Public Library through the annual series Spectrum: The Lockwood Thompson Dialogues.

"With so many major civic investments that have the potential to reshape the city's landscape taking place over the next several years, we believe that a book like this provides an easy to read, but still thought-provoking tool for Clevelanders who want to be engaged in these public processes," explains says Greg Peckham, executive director of Cleveland Public Art. "Designing a Better Cleveland is for everyone -- from neighborhood residents and elected officials to corporate leaders, design professionals and civic institutions."

A book release party will take place on Thursday, October 14, at 5:30 pm at Cleveland Public Art, located at 1951 West 26th Street.

Designed to recognize and share creative government initiatives around the country, Bright Ideas recently selected its first crop of notable programs. Created by The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, the program recognized Neighborhood Progress' Strategic Investment Initiative as a Bright Idea.

This year's crop of Bright Ideas was chosen by a team of expert evaluators made up of academics, practitioners, and former public servants. Selected from a pool of nearly 600 applicants including smaller-scale pilots, 2010 Bright Ideas address a range of pressing issues including poverty reduction, environmental conservation, and emergency management.

"For over 20 years we have been honoring the country's most creative public sector initiatives through our Innovations in American Government Awards Program," said Anthony Saich, director of the Ash Center. "The creation of Bright Ideas was a natural next step to shed light on an even greater number of noteworthy programs and practices across our nation and to encourage practitioners to make these ideas work in their own backyards."

Read all about Bright Ideas here.

In the world of road food, Jane and Michael Stern are widely regarded as the First Couple. Through their decades of work for magazines like Gourmet, radio programs like The Splendid Table, and their own catalogue of food travelogues, the Sterns report on all that is delicious and important.

This month, reporting for Saveur magazine, the Sterns turn their tasteful gaze to Northeast Ohio.

In the article titled "The Best Places to Eat in Northeast Ohio," the hired tasters praise the region's "local traditions and ethnic enclaves," which, they lament, are fading away all too fast elsewhere in the country.

Special attention is bestowed upon Shaker Square's Balaton Restaurant, Parma's Little Polish Diner, and Cleveland's West Side Market, about which the Sterns say, "It's a feat to get out of Cleveland with any appetite at all if you spend time grazing around the city's sprawling, century-old West Side Market."

Read the entire mouthwatering article here.

Described by the Wall Street Journal as the centerpiece of an "ecosystem to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship," Cleveland's JumpStart Inc. is praised for its ability to help early-stage start-ups attract crucial venture funding.

With economic assistance from Ohio's Third Frontier program, JumpStart provides entrepreneurs in the fields of technology, health-care and clean-technology with much-needed financing and professional mentoring.

In the WSJ article, JumpStart Ventures president Rebecca Braun explains the organization's metrics for success. Unlike most conventional VC firms, JumpStart does not invest for financial returns, she says. "Follow-on funding is our key metric that we look at."

Proof of success is in the numbers: Since launching in 2004 JumpStart has invested $16.5 million into nearly 50 companies. Those companies in turn have raised about $120 million in follow-on funding.

Read the entire article here.