This month's Tremont Art Walk from 6-10 tonight (later in some galleries) offers a group show titled Three of a Kind, featuring some unusual ceramics-based works by Tom Bartel, Candy Depew and Kirk Mangus (shown), at the Asterisk Gallery (2393 Professor Ave., 330.304.8528). The show runs through June 9. Across the street, Atmosphere Gallery (2418 Professor Ave.) will show paintings by European painter Yarek Godfrey. The former Kelly-Randall Gallery has been reborn as the Brokebridge Gallery (2678 W. 14th St.), referencing the nearby construction that caused its closing as a full-time gallery, which will present limited-run shows. A group show comprising painting and pen and ink work by Jeffrey Paul Gadbois, painting by James Michael Hurley, painting and pen and ink works by Thomas Rossino, ceramics by Yumiko Goto and furniture designs by Bobby Sabo shows only from 6-9:30 today and tomorrow; the ensemble 5West will provide a jazz backdrop to the showings. Go to tremontartwalk.org for more info. - Anastasia Pantsios

THURSDAY, MAY 8

Cleveland Orchestra

Rimsky-Korsakov's popular symphonic suite Scheherazade highlights this week's Cleveland Orchestra concerts, conducted by Houston Symphony music director Hans Graf. The three programs, at 8 tonight and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday, will open with Anatoli Liadov's Kikimora, Opus 63 and Dvorak's Cello Concerto with soloist Desmond Hoebig. The 11 a.m. concert tomorrow will feature the Liadov and Rimsky-Korsakov pieces. Tickets: $24-$83. Box office: 216.231.1111. - AP

FRIDAY, MAY 9

Zarbang: The Percussions of Iran and Afghanistan

Iran! Afghanistan! Hives of total evil and violence, right? Wrong! Both countries have ancient and sophisticated cultural traditions. Those traditions are the basis of Zarbang: The Percussions of Iran and Afghanistan, founded in 1996 to introduce Persian (e.g. Irani) percussion to global audiences while integrating it with other musical traditions. Its concert, Persian Qawwali, integrates Sufi poetry with trance-inducing percussion intended to take listeners to a higher state of spiritual awareness. And you want to "obliterate" these people? Hillary, please! The ensemble will show its skills on an array of exotic percussion instruments, along with its regional versions of flute, fiddle, bagpipe and hammered dulcimer, at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's Murch Auditorium (1 Wade Oval Dr.) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: $35, Cleveland Museum of Art members $33. Call 888.CMA.0033 or go to clevelandart.org/tickets. - AP

Tommy

Near West Theatre's mission is to involve a variety of performers - experienced and green, young and old, all races, ethnicities, genders, socio-economic groups. Its spring musical, Tommy, opening at 7:30 tonight, is the perfect vehicle for this mission, as the work, based on the Who's famous "rock opera" about the "deaf, dumb and blind kid" who becomes a cult leader, offers a hodge-podge of offbeat character roles ranging from the dangerous Acid Queen to the devious Uncle Ernie. It runs at 7:30 Thursdays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through May 18 at the St. Patrick's Club Bldg. (3606 Bridge Ave., Ohio City). Tickets: $6. Call 216.961.6391 for reservations. - AP

SATURDAY, MAY 10

The Lit launches Muse and Barn Owl Review

Literary writers across the country mine a magazine called Poets and Writers for news about their world. The Lit - the Cleveland-based literary organization formerly known as the Poets and Writers League of Greater Cleveland - will celebrate the launch of a Cleveland-based magazine that aims to do the same thing on a quarterly basis. They'll celebrate the launch of Muse: A Quarterly Journal of The Lit at a party tonight. Muse promises a calendar of literary activities throughout Ohio, a bulletin board of writing opportunities, a way to determine legitimate markets for work, and a chance to read about working writers in the state and their successful techniques. They'll also do book reviews of "publications that rarely reach the traditional press." The same party will also celebrate the launch of Barn Owl Review, an independent literary annual published in Akron. Join local writers including Amy Bracken Sparks, Shurice Gross, Emily Dressler, RA Washington, Michelle Rankins, Maj Ragain, Toni Thayer and Nin Andrews for cocktails at 7 and a reading at 8 at the Lit (2570 Superior Ave., Suite 203). Reservations not required. For info, call 216.694.0000. - Michael Gill

Leine & Roebana Dance Company

The final concert in Dance Cleveland's 2007-2008 Icons and Innovators Series is decidedly an innovator, a Netherlands-based modern-dance company, Leine & Roebana, performing its latest work, "Sporen" ("Traces"). "We dissect the body into its constituent parts, put it back together and invite it to dance," say the choreographers. The result, judging from an excerpt on YouTube (Google Leine & Roebana "Sporen"), is much like Merce Cunningham's choreography, with an emphasis on the cool and impersonal. Claudia La Rocco of The New York Times found "Sporen" vaguely sci-fi and reminiscent of The Matrix. She implied that the work took itself too seriously but praised the dancers for their skill and described the set as "a gorgeously shifting landscape of light, including periodically illuminated panels." Writing in The Washington Post, Sarah Halzack said the dancers "masterfully executed the demanding movement idiom, limply flailing one moment and in the next jumping with the precise technique and buoyancy of a ballet dancer." She described the score as a "hodgepodge" that was appropriate to the series of vignettes that make up "Sporen." Leine & Roebana's US tour hits the East Coast - Boston, New York, Washington, DC - and the West Coast - San Francisco - but makes only one stop in the Midwest, in Cleveland. The 8 p.m. performance will include both live and recorded music. It's at Playhouse Square's Ohio Theatre. Tickets are $15 and up. Phone 216.241.6000. - Elsa Johnson and Victor Lucas

WEDNESDAY, MAY 14

Hessler Poetry Reading

After a one-year hiatus, the Hessler Street Fair is coming back May 17-18. Its theme is, appropriately, "Welcome Home." One of the regular features of this community-based retro street party that feels like you've entered a time capsule and flown back to 1969 is poetry. Poets were invited to submit work for the Hessler 2008 Poetry and Prose Annual which will be on sale at the fair. To kick things off, poets who were selected for the annual will read their work at Mac's Backs (1820 Coventry Rd., 216.321.7323) at 7 tonight to compete for prizes to be announced at the end of the readings. The top three winners get to read their work on stage at the fair. Go to Hesslerstreetfair.org for info. - AP