Pianist Mitsuko Uchida is certainly a familiar figure around Severance Hall by now. Since making her debut with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1990, she's performed with the ensemble dozens of times, including a multi-year, 10-installment cycle of Mozart's voluminous piano concertos which she not only soloed in but conducted from her piano bench. And although there's Mozart on the program tonight and Saturday — his Symphony No. 40 - Uchida will be there to play Bartok's Piano Concerto No. 3. Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra will round out the two 8 p.m. concerts. In between, the orchestra will play Bruckner's Symphony No. 9 at 11 a.m. tomorrow. Music director Franz Welser-Möst conducts all three programs. Tickets: $24-$83. Box office: 216.231.1111. — Anastasia Pantsios

THURSDAY, MAY 22

The Gamblers

Two years ago, the Cleveland Museum of Art's Viva and Gala series presented its first multi-week run of Russian drama — but not its last. It continues its Masters of Russian Drama project with its production of early-19th-century writer Nikolai Gogol's The Gamblers, opening at 7:30 tonight at Kennedy's at Playhouse Square (1501 Euclid Ave.). Terence Cranendonk and Fabio Polanca play the leads in the 1843 satirical play in which a professional gambler turns out not to be the only character trying to play a con game. It runs at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets: $25, CMA members $23. Call 888.CMA.0033. — AP

Poetry with Nin Andrews & Sarah Willis

The regular series of poetry readings at the Betram Woods branch of the Shaker Heights Public Library (20600 Fayette Rd., 216.991.2421) features two local women poets this month. Youngstown's Nin Andrews has translated the work of French poet Henri Michaux as well as published several books of her own work, while Sarah Willis, a sometime essayist for The Plain Dealer, won accolades for her 2000 novel, Some Things That Stay, including the Cleveland Arts Prize. The program starts at 7 p.m. It's free. — AP

FRIDAY, MAY 23

SPACES Gallery talk with Language Foundry

SPACElab at SPACES Gallery (2220 Superior Viaduct, 216.621.2314) is a room at the back of the gallery allocated for experimental installation-style work. Currently artists Andrea Joki and Christopher Auerbach Brown are occupying the space with their project Papersound. They'll talk about the project and field questions tonight at 7 p.m. That will be followed with a presentation by the Tremont-based mixed-media performance ensemble the Language Foundry, offering the second part of a three-part series called Perceptive Discourses. Titled "without revealing the fruits of our spirited labors we are nothing more than bodies around a dinner table," the piece incorporates performance, poetry, sculpture and music. It's free and open to the public. — AP

Two Plays by Gao Xingjian

Cleveland Public Theatre has long been known for presenting material you won't see anywhere else in the region, a mission it continues with the presentation of two plays by Chinese-born (and 2000 Nobel Prize winner) Gao Xingjian, who has lived in France since the mid-'80s. CPT executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan directs The Other Shore, while Holly Holsinger helms Between Life and Death. Both plays eschew traditional dramatic structures, showing the influence of absurdist playwrights such as Ionesco and Beckett, whose work Gao has translated. Actors take multiple roles in The Other Shore, a work that grapples with abstract concepts, while Between Life and Death uses dance, monologues and visual images to relate a woman's end-of-life memories. The double bill opens at 8 p.m. tonight in Cleveland Public Theater's Gordon Square Theatre (6415 Detroit Ave.) and runs at 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays through June 14. Tomorrow Ohio University professor Marion Lee will give a talk on "Gao Zingjian: The Voice and Hand of a Self." Tickets: $10-$18. Call 216.631.2727. — AP

Alexander Ghindin

When Alexander Ghindin won the prestigious Cleveland International Piano Competition last year at age 30, he already had an impressive array of achievements under his belt. He'd won the Moscow Young Pianists' Competition by the time he was 14, and at 17 was the youngest winner ever of the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Since then he's joined the Moscow State Philharmonic as a soloist, played with orchestras around the world and recorded 15 CDs. He returns to the city of last year's victory to perform a concert at the Cleveland Institute of Music's Mixon Hall at 8 p.m. Not surprisingly, it's sold out. Tickets were going for $25-$250; maybe you can get one from a scalper. Do they have those guys with the "I need tickets" signs around their neck outside classical music concerts? — AP

Cleveland Pops: Salute to Armed Forces

The Cleveland Pops Orchestra held its first Salute to the Armed Forces concert in 2001, the first year of George Bush's presidency. It's as if they knew that the military would soon need morale-boosting. For its eighth-annual salute, the CPO will be joined by the United States Army Field Band and Chorus and the Medical Mutual Gospel Choir for an evening of uplifting favorites including an Armed Forces medley and, for those who can't wait for July 4th, the 1812 Overture. It's at 8 p.m. at Severance Hall (11001 Euclid Ave.). Tickets: $19-$69. Call 216.765.7677 or the Severance Hall box office, 216.231.1111. — AP

WEDNESDAY, MAY 28

Trio Medieval, Cantus

Cleveland's Trinity Cathedral (2230 Euclid Ave.) will be hosting a very special event when Trio Medieval and the nine-voice male vocal group Cantus share a bill as part of the Cleveland Museum of Art's Viva and Gala series. The only other show the two groups are doing together is at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. For the program, each of the ensembles will perform the music for which it's been acclaimed: Trio Medieval's repertoire spans medieval polyphonic music from England and France and traditional Norwegian music to newly commissioned contemporary music, while Cantus' repertoire ranges from early classical music to pop tunes to modern world music. Then, the groups will add an exclamation mark to the evening when they blend their talents for a pair of pieces. Tickets: $35, CMA members $33. Call 888.CMA.0033. — AP