Dozens of Diverse Musicians Will Appear at 5th Annual Heights Music Hop

The 2016 Heights Music Hop featured garage rock at the Washington & Lee Auto Service station. (Photo courtesy of Jim Metrisin)

Thu 9/7-Sat 9/9

No matter where you call home in Northeast Ohio, there’s something appealing and buzz-worthy about going to Coventry and its surrounding business districts. Whether that’s to discover new music at the Grog Shop or see an independent film at the Cedar Lee Theatre, the area just feels like a creative hotbed.

Tapping into that artistic sensibility is community development organization FutureHeights, which is behind the annual Heights Music Hop. The multi-venue event raises awareness of different business areas via live music — everything from hip-hop, punk and soul to classical and barbershop quartet.

This year’s Heights Music Hop expands to three days at various Cleveland Heights business districts — Coventry Village (Thu 9/7), Cedar Fairmount (Fri 9/8) and Cedar Lee (Sat 9/9).

CoolCleveland talked to FutureHeights executive director Deanna Bremer Fisher about the Heights Music Hop.

How does the Heights Music Hop fit into the FutureHeights mission?

We’re a community development organization, so it’s our mission to promote a vibrant and sustainable future for our community. Part of that vibrancy includes the local independent businesses that we have in our walkable business districts, and supporting our residents, many of whom are artists.

What’s the history of the music festival?

This is the fifth year for the festival and the impetus was really to show off Cleveland Heights as an arts and culture center. We’ve got fantastic business districts, we have the highest concentration of artists in Cuyahoga County, and a lot of those are musicians. So we wanted to invite people to our community to experience our local businesses and to experience great music, a lot of which is hyperlocal drawing from the region as well.

How has the Heights Music Hop evolved since its inception?

Initially we called it Heights Music Hop because even though we started in one business district, it was never our intent to just have it in that one district. It took us a couple of years and we decided the best way we thought to expand it would be to keep it one contiguous festival, but a different night in a different district. Our districts are close together, but you really can’t walk from one to the other easily. Our first year we were in the Cedar Lee business district only, and I think we only had six venues and a couple thousand people. This year we’re in three business districts – Coventry Village business district on Thursday, Cedar Fairmount business district on Friday and Cedar Lee Business district on Saturday. We have more than 30 venues, and now I think we’re looking at close to 10,000 people.

Was there a concern whether the audience would follow when you expanded it to three different districts?

Yeah, last year was the first time we had it in two districts — Cedar Fairmount on Friday and Cedar Lee on Saturday. I think it went really well. A lot of people went to both evenings or just went to one of them. But the whole idea of the festival is that you can experience a wide variety of music by hopping around to different venues in the district and that certainly was what people were doing.

What was the idea about adding the Coventry Village Business District?

Coventry really wanted to be a part of it and of course they have the Grog Shop. So Grog Shop and B-Side are participants in this year’s festival. We again wanted to showcase our walkable business districts. Coventry is certainly one of those, so we decided to add them this year.

Tell us about the live performances people can expect at the Heights Music Hop.

Everything from classical music to R&B, hip-hop, jazz, rock. So it’s a wide variety of musical genres and the performances are staggered. You really can make an evening of it and visit several different venues enjoying food and beverages from the various Cleveland Heights establishments as well.

What kind of venues are being used for the Heights Music Hop?

Actually there are some conventional music venues such as the Grog Shop where you’d expect to hear music. Some of them are restaurants and bars where you might expect to hear music, but also there are retail shops participating such as Washington & Lee Auto Service station, which is a garage. So there are a lot of unusual venues as well.

Please tell us the garage will have, well, garage rock.

(Laughed) Exactly. Last year they participated and it was a lot of fun.

That type of experience really seems to epitomize what the Heights Music Hop is all about.

Yeah, another aspect of this is on Saturday evening we’re partnering with the Grog Shop to put on a silent disco at a vacant lot at Lee and Meadowbrook. That’s the one thing that has a cover charge of $10 to participate. You get your choice of wireless headsets from three different DJs. That’s three different genres of music. You choose which one you want and dance to your own music. It’s going to be great.

Heights Music Hop

Cleveland Heights, OH

Cleveland Heights, OH 44106

Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

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