Falling for the arts

September is the beginning of the artful season, and the Heights overflows with beginnings in visual arts, music and theater.

Immerse yourself in the visual arts on Lee Road, on Friday, Sept. 7, when both Heights Arts and the Art Spot at The Wine Spot open new shows with public receptions.

Heights Arts presents Paperworks, featuring regional artists who work rigorously on or with paper. The show illuminates paper as a carrier of artists’ symbols and as a medium in itself, with processes including drawing, cutting, collage, sculpture and pulp. Participating artists include Shelly DiCello, Tom Balbo, Tim Callaghan, Laura Cooperman, Julie Friedman, Sarah Kabot, Margaret Kimura, Michael Loderstedt, Liz Maugans, Pam McKee, Darice Polo, Corrie Slawson, Dan Tranberg, Achala Wali and Trudy Wiesenberger.

The Art Spot at The Wine Spot presents young artists in FIVE: Ash Fiasco, Amanda Pierce, Ben Weathers, Rachel Yurkovich and Tyler Zeleny.

Heights Arts’s popular chamber music series, Close Encounters, begins a new season of concerts presented in intimate and unique venues and performed by world-class musicians who live right here in Northeast Ohio. Cleveland Orchestra violinist and Close Encounters artistic director Isabel Trautwein enlists her colleagues and other professional musicians to perform and to present insightful commentary on their programs.

Cleveland Orchestra members are fiddling around in September to benefit the ongoing programming of Close Encounters. A special concert will be presented on Friday, Sept. 21, at 7:30 p.m., at the Dunham Tavern Museum Barn, by a pop-up bluegrass band known as The Academy of Bluegrass in the Field and consisting of Orchestra members Trina Bourne, Mark Dumm, Henry Peyrebrune and Derek Zadinsky.

In November, Close Encounters presents a chamber music concert programmed by Cleveland Orchestra violinist Sonja Braaten Molloy, who has enlisted Christina Dahl, Mark Jacobs, Charles Bernard, Charles Carleton and Jung Oh to perform Schumann and Schubert with her in a private home.

How many towns the size of Cleveland Heights have two theaters? The daring, dynamic Dobama Theatre opens "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" on Sept. 14. Ensemble Theatre asks you to discover the human element with "The Normal Heart" opening on Sept. 28.

For more details about these vibrant arts programs in the Heights, contact: Heights Arts, 2175 Lee Road, 216-371-3457, www.heightsarts.org; The Wine Spot, 2271 Lee Road, 216-342-3623; Dobama Theatre, 2340 Lee Road, 216-932-6838, www.dobama.org; Ensemble Theatre, 2843 Washington Blvd. (Coventry School), 216-321-2930, www.ensemble-theatre.com.