Up next:
Sunday, April 27, 2025 – Community Concert in the Thwing Center atrium (CWRU), 4-6pm. 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland 44106. Our free community concerts feature an array of local traditional music talent.
Matt Harmon (left) is a Cleveland-based singer-songwriter known for his clever, lyrically rich storytelling that weaves together keen observations of the human condition. Matt’s songs touch on themes of astronomy, nature, love lost and found, and the unwavering companionship of a good old dog. Drawing inspiration from the great singer-songwriters, Matt’s intricate wordplay works in conjunction with an articulate guitar playing style rooted in the bluegrass flatpicking tradition.
Steve Madewell is a seasoned musical performer. He has a myriad of interesting life experiences as an outdoorsman, a public official, and musician. Inspired by nature and local history, he calls his originals “Songs from the Heartland”. He has four solo albums of original compositions: Haunted, Hometown Blues, Arrow Creek, and Rivers and Trails. He has performed throughout Ohio with destination shows in multiple states and several other countries. From remote wilderness lodges to large theaters, he is comfortable on any stage.
THANK YOU for coming and making this another great year!
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Come on down to the Waterloo Arts District on Sunday, December 22, 2024, 1-5 p.m. NEOMHA will be participating in Cleveland Rocks: Past, Present and Future’s Winterloo on Waterloo 2024. In addition to NEOMHA’s afternoon long Jam at the Treelawn Social Club, there will be a series of concerts in several locations all along Waterloo. Until 5 all events are free and open to all. At 5:30 there is a ticketed concert by The Ohio City Singers in the Treelawn Music Hall. To learn more about the day’s festivities go to CLEVELANDROCKSPPF.ORG
Live Music from NEOMHA
Waterloo Sculpture Garden
16006 Waterloo Rd. – Cleveland 44110
Information about the Waterloo Arts Fest
Wishing you a sunny, joyous 2024 filled with music and laughter. We can’t wait to see you at the Lake Erie Folk Fest, February 15, 2025!
NEOMHA’s performers at the 2024 Waterloo were:
For all that you do to support traditional music, we here at NEOMHA are thankful, every day of the year. Thank you for supporting traditional music events in Northeast Ohio.
In 2024, the Lake Erie Folk Fest created a new home and new partnerships. We had been looking for a few years for the right space to allow the fest to grow, to make it accessible to our large and growing community, and to help us meet our goal of sharing the music we love with younger audiences.
We hope you’ll come visit us in February, when LEFF brings its folk music festival for the second year to Case Western Reserve’s Thwing Center, in partnership with WRUW-FM, Case Western Reserve University’s college radio station.
In its first eight years, the Lake Erie Folk Festival grew to be a cornerstone of Northeast Ohio’s traditional music community, thanks to the support of people like you.
The festival has drawn visitors from five counties and three states to Greater Cleveland in the otherwise dark days of February, a bright spot in the cultural calendar and an important anchor in growing and sharing the riches of the region’s traditional music scene.
The Case Western Reserve University campus is in the heart of Northeast Ohio’s largest arts and culture hub, and WRUW is the preeminent college radio station in our region. We’re happy to be bringing all the resources of this new home and partnership to our traditional music community.
Plans for next year’s festival on February 15, 2025 include all the free daytime workshops, performances and jam sessions that you’ve grown to love, as well as an evening concert packed with local, regional and national talent.
We’ll make sure you have all the details you need for directions, parking, programs and more, so keep up with the Lake Erie Folk Fest website as we get closer to festival time – we’ll have lot of fun news to share.
We can’t wait to see you in February!
NEOMHA presented JamFest at four fun spots in the Waterloo Arts District on September 22.
This casual event included jams at four establishments, representing bluegrass, jazz, old-time, and Celtic traditions. It was a new event – four events actually – for NEOMHA, and we appreciated your presence!
At Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Association, we are dedicated to preserving and celebrating traditional music in its many wonderful forms, and we know you care about that musical heritage, too. We have been building our music community, expanding our programming and bringing music to new audiences and new spaces all year long. Now we’re busy planning our biggest event of the year, the Lake Erie Folk Fest, and we’re excited about all the great music we’re going to bring to share with you.
We’re incredibly grateful to serve such a talented and enthusiastic community. Whether it’s Lake Erie Folk Fest, music in the community, collaborations with other festivals, outreach to schools or educational offerings for students, your support helps to make it all possible.
For all you do to support traditional music, we here at NEOMHA are thankful, every day of the year. Thank you for supporting traditional music events in Northeast Ohio.
Live Music from NEOMHA
Concert 6pm – Free
Old-Time Jam to Follow
Bring Your Instrument!
Enjoy traditional folk, old time, gypsy and gypsy jazz classics with Meredith Pangrace, accordion, and Chris Yohn, fiddle.
Waterloo Sculpture Garden
16006 Waterloo Rd. – Cleveland 44110
Live Music from NEOMHA
Concert 7:30pm – Doors Open at 7pm
Free Afternoon Events
Bring Your Instrument!
Music workshops, concerts, jam sessions, food & concessions. Come explore, learn, and share! Visit LakeErieFolkFest.com for complete schedule.
Shore Cultural Center
291 E. 222nd St., Euclid, Ohio
2020 and 2021 were hard! No festivals, no jams, no dances – and we really missed all that. But look at the great things that did happen here at NEOMHA!
Old Music for a New World
On the gorgeous lawn of First Baptist Church in Cleveland Heights, we put on a five-concert outdoor series from May 2021 to September 2021. The concerts were bring-your-own-picnic, socially distanced events and boy, was there some wonderful music in the evening air.
Music From the House on the Hill
In June 2020, we produced our first-ever livestream concert, to rave reviews. Thanks for tuning in, plus helping us employ local musicians. It was great to “see” everyone online – and we also developed new capacity and technology to reach new audiences, which will help us continue to spread the love for folk music through our mission. If you missed it, or just want to relive the moment, you can catch it all here.
Folk Community Summit
We hosted 49 enthusiastic and engaged people from every facet of our folk music community – musicians, dancers, venue owners, producers and fans – in an online folk summit that let us come together to dream, discuss and make some big plans. And we’re already acting on some of those plans, specifically ideas to help bring more youth into our community, diversify both our audiences and the music we present, and support education initiatives. Got more great ideas you want to share, while we’re in this process of dreaming and innovating? We want to hear from you! Send us an email.
Carry On
In August we launched this fantastic YouTube program, which brought live, FREE programs to students in grades 6-12 every week. Hosted by YouTube sensation Hal Walker, the series presented a new musical talent each episode. Best of all, the series is still available online, along with a free study guide for each episode.
We featured musicians from all around the world – and from right here in Northeast Ohio, with at least 25% of the musicians presented being local, and the entire series offering an exciting range of diversity. We’ve gotten great feedback from students. We paid lots of artists. And we went the extra mile to support our teachers, offering them free educational resources to pair with each episode. You can check it out here.
Nellie McKay Concert
We managed to have one COVID-friendly live event in 2020, when we presented our first socially distanced live concert with nationally acclaimed artist Nellie McKay. What a beautiful day for an outdoor performance, and what a wonderful audience. We also showcased a local opening act and got to introduce a nice group of newcomers to NEOMHA, in line with our mission of supporting musicians and building our folk music community.
COVID meant a big pause in so many things we love, like our festivals and concerts. But it also gave us opportunities to find new ways to support our folk music community. We’re so glad to be doing this work together! If you want to help us keep the music playing, we would welcome your gift to NEOMHA.
We know we can’t do any of this without you. Your support, your time, your energy and ideas – they have all helped to make this hard year possible, and even inspiring. We didn’t just get through this – we got better, paving the way for new and good things to come.
As our live music and concert events return – fingers crossed – we still need you. Your gift, in any amount that’s meaningful to you, would mean so much to our mission and our work this year. We have a lot to be proud of, and a lot to look forward to. Thank you for your generous support.
Your friends at NEOMHA
PS: If you prefer to send a check, it can be made payable to NEOMHA and mailed to 10848 Chillicothe Rd, Kirtland, OH 44094.
Please donate to Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Association to help ensure the vitality of folk music in Northeast Ohio!
The Northeast Ohio Musical Heritage Association provides venues and opportunities for the performance, sustenance and preservation of folk music in Northeast Ohio through the creation of inspiring experiences that stimulate a personal love and appreciation of folk music.
