Tommy’s New Year’s Day Pancake Breakfast raised $5700 for Heights Arts!  A record number of pancake eaters descended on Tommy’s for the ninth annual pancake breakfast.   Many waited in line outside in the cold cold morning, but warmed up quickly once seated and sated, tipping lavishly.  Enjoy these photos from the event.

Thank you to Tommy, the human pancake batter machine, for his boundless generosity.  Thanks to AJ and Rob, who volunteered to cook on their day off, and to the more than 50 volunteers who served, bused tables, washed dishes, cleaned up, and did whatever necessary to feed more than 500 people in 4 hours.  Some volunteers simply showed up and offered to help, and some have been helping out all nine years.  And thanks Ron the Flower Clown, who delighted children of all ages.

A special thanks to the anonymous person who tipped a $100 dollar bill.  What a delightful and generous surprise!!!!!!

Breakfast with 500 of our best friends of the arts is a great way to start off the new year.  Here’s to the rest of the year being as warm, prosperous, and fun as the very first day. - Peggy Spaeth, Heights Arts

Ring in the holidays with the River Valley Ringers! River Valley Ringers is an auditioned community handbell choir of ten accomplished musicians with long histories of performing throughout the area.

Cleveland Heights resident and national recording artist Kelly Chapman began her journey as a young teenager “hookin’ up” in a Detroit hotel room, followed by single motherhood interspersed with terminated pregnancies, irresponsible use of drugs and alcohol, poor judgment and abusive men. Now, Chapman is a beautiful, highly successful business executive who follows her faith, not her heart, in choosing the path to healthy relationships.

In the past 16 years, how many Cleveland orchestras have performed all over this country and have been heard regularly on four countries’ national radio networks? One. And it’s not the Cleveland Orchestra. It’s Apollo’s Fire.

Certain films have become true holiday traditions and are associated with Christmas almost as much as Santa. TV stations hold marathons featuring beloved classics such as “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “A Christmas Story” while other holiday films from the past have faded from memory.

The Cedar Lee Theatre will be reviving the all-but-forgotten 1967 holiday film FITZWILLY starring Dick Van Dyke and Barbara Feldon with two very special screenings on Dec. 6 at 2 p.m. and Dec. 7 at 7 p.m.

With a mission to build community through the arts, CityMusic Cleveland offers music to please everyone, whether you’re new to classical music or a seasoned concertgoer. That's why CityMusic's annual wintertime production is called “Not-Your-Usual-Holiday Concert."

The Apollo’s Fire family concerts are back by popular demand! The program “A Day at Vivaldi’s Orphanage,” designed for our youngest music lovers, includes 45-minutes of baroque music, audience participation and instrument demonstrations. Concerts are followed by punch-&-cookies reception. All tickets are only $5! Concerts are in Cleveland Heights and Rocky River.

Join St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 2747 Fairmount Blvd, will hold free November concerts:

Congratulations to Kathleen Cerveny, winner of the 2008 Haiku Death Match, part of the Joy of Text Festival presented by Heights Arts.  To see more photos from the event, please visit the Jay Levan photo gallery on our website www.heightsobserver.org.

Six years ago there was an empty storefront in the historic Cedar Lee building, and the fledgling Heights Arts asked landlord Jonathan Forman if it could be used for a temporary holiday sale of work by local artists. The positive response to the sale led to the launching of Heights Arts Gallery, which has presented six annual exhibits of regional art ever since. But every year the gallery returns to its roots, and gathers prints, paintings, photographs, ceramics, glass, jewelry, fiber, books, ornaments, CDs, and more for the sole purpose of selling quality hand-crafted work by regional artists for the holidays.

One is tempted to reach over and turn the sheet music pages for Cleveland Orchestra violinist Isabel Trautwein as her fingers flutter over the neck of her violin during Schubert's String Quintet in C major.

That kind of intimacy distinguishes the Heights Arts House Concert series, brainchild of Heights Arts Executive Director Peggy Spaeth. The $35 to $40 concerts offer a sharp contrast to formal concert halls, an alternative greatly appreciated by the audience, says Spaeth. “One person said that in the past, this kind of concert was for royalty. So she is tickled to be royalty at such a reasonable price!” Proceeds from the concerts benefit the nonprofit Heights Arts.

When the ill winds of the foreclosure crisis rendered Northeast Ohio ground zero in the massive economic game changer, Richard Stewart was on the story. A 1984 Heights High graduate, Stewart recently won an Emmy from the Great Lakes Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in the category of Public/Current/Community Affairs.  Stewart is executive producer of the documentary Don't Borrow Trouble for production company Broadcast Media Ideas. The 30-minute video examines how the foreclosure crisis impacted Northeast Ohio and how Cuyahoga County government fought to combat the problem. The show, produced for the Cuyahoga County Commissioners, aired on public access TV in the Cleveland area.

Called “a marvel” by the Plain Dealer, the professional chamber orchestra CityMusic Cleveland has two exciting free concerts in November for music-lovers of all ages.

At Heights Youth Theatre we've got cable, though not TV. That's why you won't see The Wire, just Peter Pan connected to it. Because while we've also got The Sopranos singing, American Gladiators moving heavy scenery, and a veritable Lipstick Jungle in our make-up room, our shows aren't taped for the tube. They're staged up-close and in-person, each one that can't quell-that-smile kind of entertainment all ages love. Sure beats a day at The Office.

Doug Jacobs of Orange and Jack Stratton of Cleveland Heights play drums in the University of Michigan's Groove ensemble, a collegiate take-off on the Broadway show "Stomp," which comes to Beachwood Oct. 19. Groove members play garbage cans, ladders and toothbrushes, and even evoke melody from empty propane tanks. Groove adds video as well.

The Heights Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1983 by Robert Bergantino, then director of music at Cleveland Heights High School, has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and is pleased to announce its five-concert 2008-2009 season. Many works are new to HCO and perhaps to their audience also. Anthony Addison, principal conductor, will lead four of these concerts; the fifth will be led by guest conductor, Christopher Lees, Associate Conductor of the Akron Symphony Orchestra. A highlight of this season is a chamber music program. Each of the other programs features a soloist.

On Wednesday, September 3, "The Oddy Festival" premiered to Cleveland Heights audiences in Coventry's Historic Centrum Theater. The play was "Vestibule," written, directed, produced by, and starring Cleveland native Matt Greenfield. The plot and set-up of the play was appropriate for Oddy Fest: one man, alone, waiting for a blind date to show up. Just like "Young Man," in "Vestibule" Greenfield and other members of the new Oddy troupe (Peter Nalepa, Justin Walters, LaJuan Foust and others) have searched and waited for theatrical opportunities outside Cleveland, only to return to their hometown. After three years in South Florida, Greenfield returned this summer to tap into Cleveland Heights' burgeoning theatre scene and produce his own work.

CityMusic Cleveland, a professional chamber orchestra that gives free concerts in communities around Northeast Ohio, has deep roots in the Heights. The idea of taking classical music to people where they live, dispensing with all the formality usually associated with it, and eliminating the ticket price that keeps many away began as a conversation in a Fairfax Road backyard. Many of the fast growing organization’s participants, founders, musicians, members of the board, artistic advisory council, community outreach committee, host families, volunteers, and donors, are Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights residents. Fairmount Presbyterian Church, a neighborhood landmark for more than 30 years, provides rehearsal space, and the spare but elegant stone sanctuary known for its concert hall acoustics, is one of CityMusic’s regular performance venues. Locals fill the pews and shout "Bravo! Bravo!" every time they play there.

Music lifts the spirit and brings people together. But for some Judson Park residents, listening to music and reminiscing was not enough to express their passion for opera and operetta. So, they began to learn choruses from some of the world's most famous works, including "The Barber of Seville," "Die Fledermaus," "The Pirates of Penzance," and "Carmen." "It's a joyous thing. Singing together has become an essential part of our lives at Judson," said residents Ilse Strnisha and Wilmah Lapham, who with others have been participating in the Judson Chorister program for more than five years.

What do Grandma Moses, Nancy Pelosi and Elli Fordyce have in common? And who is Elli Fordyce?

All three women achieved career success later in life. Grandma Moses began painting at 67. Speaker of the House Pelosi entered politics at 47. And Elli Fordyce, who has been performing as a singer and actress in films and television for just over five decades, has just released her first CD, Something Still Cool, at 71.

The Western Reserve Chorale (WRC), a Cleveland Heights based choral group, has announced the appointment of Dr. J. D. Goddard to the position of music director effective July 1.

After a six-year hiatus, Cleveland Heights’ legendary private investigator Milan Jacovich is back. In King of the Holly Hop, Les Roberts’s 14th novel of the series, Milan attends his 40th high school reunion where a former classmate is found murdered. Everyone, it seems, had a motive to kill Dr. Phil Kohn, but the prime suspect is St. Clair High School’s most successful graduate, playwright Tommy Wiggins. In the process of investigating the murder, Milan uncovers secrets about his former schoolmates that he would prefer to have left buried.

I sat down over coffee with Les Roberts to discuss the book's release. Though he has aged along with his fictional investigator, Roberts looks youthful with a full head of silver hair and is smartly attired in a Hawaiian shirt. Unlike Milan, who can be a bit rough around the edges, Roberts is soft spoken and thoughtful.

See where the Heights Observer has been lately! Send us your photos: info@futureheights.org.

Cleveland Heights resident Ralph Solonitz began doodling at an early age.

Fast forward 55 years, thousands of dollars in therapy and he still can't stop doodling.

I originally became acquainted with Eli Cohen, the compassionate disc jockey of “Eli’s Expert DJ Service” at the karaoke nights he hosted at Champps in Lyndhurst, where he continues to work. Cohen is also the energetic host of karaoke at the B-Side Liquor Lounge in the Coventry Village. Cohen took the time to sit down with the "Heights Observer" and offer some insight into how he has harnessed the popularity of the karaoke phenomenon.