Alastair Willis talks to the Lexington Philharmonic audience about Beethoven and the weather before Friday night's concert. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Alastair Willis looked at the group assembled in the Presidents Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts, and for a moment, he looked like he might have no idea what to say to the people.

Then, pre-concert chat moderator Joe Tackett asked him to tell the audience about himself.

“I always got the report cards that said, ‘He could be good, if he practiced,’” Willis, the ninth candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic, said to knowing laughter.

And he was off, delivering one of the most relaxed, entertaining, and simultaneously insightful pre-show gab session of the conductor search. He told the crowd about his days in the Bristol University Music Society (you do the acronym), his big sister Sarah who plays French Horn in the Berlin Philharmonic, and even parried with Tacket over the infamous bass concerto question longer than any other candidate — he could program all six bass concertos Tackett deems worthwhile in one season . . . could.

But the Seattle man — via Cincinnati, via Houston, via England, via Russia, etc. — wasn’t all droll humor, as he thoughtfully considered questions like the roll of the orchestra in a community: “There’s not one set answer for what the role of an orchestra in a community is, because the community determines that.”

Onstage in the Singletary Center concert hall, Willis opened the concert telling the audience Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, which was on the program, contained, “all the weather conditions you have recently had here.” Introducing Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, he noted that Golijov has been called the “Beethoven of this generation,” and reminded the crowd that Beethoven was once a contemporary composer.

Discussing his current career as a full-time guest conductor, he told the pre-show audience that the No. 1 goal of a guest conductor is, “to get invited back, because you’ve got to put food in your refrigerator, right?”

Come to think of it, being invited back was sort of his goal here, too.

Your thoughts?: Click here to tell the Philharmonic what you thought of Willis.

Review news: Due to deadline constraints, Loren Tice’s review of last night’s show could not be ready for Saturday’s paper. But it is already up on LexGo.

More music: If you liked last night’s concert, or feel like you missed something and want to make up for it, there are two real good opportunities this weekend:

• Gil Shaham and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra perform at 7:30 tonight.
• To get more of the Latin flavor of the first half of last night’s show, you may want to catch the La Catrina String Quartet at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Singletary Center recital hall.