Clef Notes Chicagoland Journal for the Arts

Clef Notes Chicagoland Journal of the Arts serves as  Chicago's premier resource for arts and culture coverage with feature stories on music, art, theater and dance.  We provide departments that cover a wide range of the creative muse. Clef Notes examines innovations in culture while at the same time, looks back to the history of art and culture to inform on what they mean to us today.  Our publication brings news, interviews with renowned concert artists and editorials, essays and analysis on a wide variety of subjects all touching art, the artisan and the muse.  In addition, we provide a digest of cultural offerings within the Chicagoland area in the pages of our Cultural Almanac, which features previews, reviews for current running performances and comparative listings of arts events throughout the city.

 

Innovation is a peculiar sort of thing. It often starts out along a very narrow, speculative pathway until it opens up to a vast world of ideas and discoveries. The best innovations are that sort. They seemingly hide in plain sight, and when all is said and done, we find we can’t imagine how we ever lived without them. That kind of creative, outside-the-box innovation is what arts and culture thrives on. It can spur on entirely new movements like Martha Graham’s innovation did with modern dance, or it can create completely new artistic media altogether. In Chicago, free-thinking innovation has generated an immeasurable wealth of artistic yield. And Clef Notes’ Winter 2012 is all about the innovative, outside-the-box thinkers that thrive in the city’s arts and culture landscape.

Take, for instance, the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Before their innovative model for artistic support, many of the finest arts ensembles in the city practically struggled just to maintain a stable home-base, let alone the caliber of brand strengthening marketing and state-of-the-art technical support that the Harris provides its constituent groups.

The net result is a vast battery of fine arts institutions with access to a world class platform that permits the luxury of developing and presenting new and varied programs of cultural experience for us to enjoy. Clef Notes previews the newest benefit of the Harris’ brand of innovation in this  issue. This winter, they bring Chicagoans the world renowned Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center to Millennium Park to launch an exciting three-year residency as the cornerstone to an outstanding music platform. 

We also take a look at the vital work of visionary architect Harry Weese in the ongoing restoration of The Auditorium Theatre of Roosevelt University. As one of the crowning jewels in Chicago’s storehouse of cultural treasures, the theater owes much of its legacy to Weese’s innovative thinking and instincts.

Of course, innovative thinkers aren’t exclusively found in traditional arts and culture. In fact, sometimes it’s just that outside-the-box innovation that can elevate a discipline to art in its own right. That was certainly the case with the groundbreaking work of legendary designer Charles James. In this issue, we get an opportunity to take a close look at the Chicago History Museum’s newest exhibition Charles James: Genius Deconstructed. The new exhibit examines James' groundbreaking design and indelible influence on the field of fashion today.

It’s a fact that inventive and groundbreaking ideas and perspectives permeate arts and culture, and I believe it’s that kind of thinking that inspires and promotes innovation in the world-at-large. For that, I am most happy to be able to bring you our own innovation in the pages of Clef Notes Winter 2012. I hope that it inspires you to go out and enjoy some of the wonderfully creative minds at work in Chicago’s arts and culture community this season.

Sincerely,

D. Webb

Publisher