Musical Chairs Plus Performance & Pop-up

Musical Chairs Plus Performance & Pop-up
Sponsored by Isabel & Lawrence Smith

Inon Barnatan, piano
Gilles Vonsattel, piano
Philip Setzer, violin
Hsin-yun Huang, viola
Dillon Scott, viola
Paul Watkins, cello
The Dolphins Quartet, Shouse ensemble
Trio Dolce, Shouse ensemble

A favorite of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, Musical Chairs comes from the imagination of Shouse Institute Director Philip Setzer. Shouse groups, made up of emerging professional ensembles, are deconstructed and reassembled as fellows are challenged to perform together for the first time. Each group will include one special member and coach from our outstanding line-up of Festival artists.

Strings and Things: The Whimsical Works of Ruth Adler Schnee  

Pop-up Gallery Sponsored by Kathleen Block

Cranbrook Art Museum’s pop-up exhibition, Strings and Things: The Whimsical Work of Ruth Adler Schnee, showcases the work of textile and interior designer Ruth Adler Schnee (CAA MFA Design ‘46). Curated by MillerKnoll Curatorial Fellow Bridget Bartal, this selection of textiles and ephemera highlights Cranbrook Art Museum’s illustrious collection of Adler Schnee’s work, particularly focusing on her textiles from the late-1940s and 1950s. Distinctive for her use of color, pattern, playfulness, and whimsy, Adler Schnee’s textiles helped define mid-century modernism as we now know it.

Born to a German Jewish family in Frankfurt, Germany, her mother’s Bauhaus training and creative circle of friends developed Adler Schnee’s interest in vibrant use of colors, rich textures, modern form, and the thoughtful study of architectural space from an early age. Following the Nazis’ Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938, the Adler family fled to the United States and settled in Detroit. First studying fashion design at Cass Technical High School and interior architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, Adler Schnee received an MFA in Design from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1946, becoming one of the first women to receive this degree. She went on to found a design consulting firm and modern design shop in Detroit with her husband Edward Schnee, launching a business which brought good design to American consumers for over half a century. Adler Schnee continued to design well into her nineties, passing away on January 5, 2023 at the age of 99 years old.

The Schnees are founding board members of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival and the 2025 festival theme Blueprints in Sound honors their legacy. Musical Chairs Plus ticket holders will also have exclusive access to visit examples of Adler Schnee’s work exhibited in Cranbrook Art Museum’s summer exhibition, Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US in advance of the concert.