Copious Notes

Bianca Spriggs, shown here in a 2000 photo, was a recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. © Herald-Leader file photo by Sam Richie.

The Kentucky Foundation for Women has ­awarded 10 Artist Enrichment Grants totaling more than $24,000 to “Central Kentucky feminist ­artists and arts organizations committed to creating­ ­positive social change throughout the state,” ­according to a news release. The release says the grants “provide opportunities for feminist artists and arts ­organizations to enhance their abilities and skills to create art that advances social justice in Kentucky. Applicants may request funds to develop their skills, participate in artist residencies, explore new areas or techniques, and/or build a body of work.”

The honorees are:

Philis Alvic, Lexington: $2,000 to create an exhibition titled Portals, exploring openings, ­transformations and passages in feminist weaving.

Arwen Donahue, Carlisle: $4,900 to ­create a book manuscript, with watercolor and ink ­illustrations, combining memoir, oral history ­interviews with artist-agrarian women.

Joanna Thornewill Hay, Frankfort: $3,500 to work with a mentor to write a book based on ­Stories From the Balcony, her oral history project with white and black people who attended the Grand Theatre in Frankfort during the era of segregation.

Rebecca Gayle Howell, Lexington: $3,000 to archive her recently completed body of feminist ­social change manuscripts, photographs and digital files, and use new and traditional media.

Chialing Hsieh, Mount Sterling: $3,500 to record and distribute a CD of works for viola and piano by contemporary American female ­composers.

Josephine Sculpture Park, Frankfort: $1,500 to support a feminist production of The Tempest, focusing on the female characters and led by female artists.

George Ella Lyon, Lexington: $1,000 to complete a CD of original songs in the folk tradition called Every Time You Speak the Truth (You’re Making Justice in the World).

Anna P. Murphy, Frankfort: $1,000 to create and exhibit a series of paintings depicting strong female figures juxtaposed with detailed lace and patterning.

Bianca Spriggs, Lexington: $2,043 to attend a national conference, participate in discussions and network with writers and literary organizations.

Doris Thurber, Frankfort: $2,000 to create batik wall hangings depicting myths and stories that show the roles women play in the physical and spiritual worlds.

Project descriptions were provided by the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Joe Fields-Elswick, playing Stephanie (Kachermeyer) Murphy, writes in her journal as other characters talk about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan at a rehearsal of "Bringing it Home: Voices of Student Veterans" last fall at UK Buell Armory. The play, renamed "Civilian," was presented at the New York International Fringe Festival this month. © Herald-Leader photo by Rich Copley.

Students in the University of Kentucky’s Theater Department were treated to a lot of New York experiences while they were there late this month to present their oral history play, Civilian, at the New York International Fringe Festival. They rode the Staten Island Ferry daily, visited Columbia University and construction at Ground Zero and endured an earthquake and hurricane.

The Virginia-centered Earthquake that rattled the East Coast last week and Hurricane Irene both impacted the UK Theatre’s visit, the latter unfortunately cancelling their last performance, which had been scheduled for Sunday. But writer and director Herman Daniel Farrell III said the event was an overall positive experience for the UK group, including being interviewed by The New York Times.

“This was such an interesting, fantastic and strange (seriously, an earthquake and hurricane in one week!) experience for all involved,” Farrell said in an email.

Civilian is a play based on interviews with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned and enrolled at the University of Kentucky. The play, which has been presented several times in the last year-an-a-half at UK, was a collaborative project between the theater department and the university’s Nunn Center for Oral History and Veteran’s Resource Center.

Farrell wrote:

The audiences were enthusiastic and we received some decent reviews. We performed at the Bleecker Theatre, an off Broadway house, that was also FringeCentral, the main ticket selling location of the 14 venues of the Fringe.

The cast and crew of students and graduates of the UK Theatre Department stayed out at the Navy Lodge in Staten Island (thanks to arrangements by Tony Dotson, director of the UK Veterans Resource Center) and came into Manhattan every day via the Staten Island Ferry. Many of them toured the construction site surrounding Ground Zero and visited the 9/11 Memorial preview site. Our theatre was only 20 something blocks away.

On our opening night, Tony Dotson, along with Jonathan Herst and Tyler Gayheart, the veterans portrayed in the play,   attended along with their spouses.  Doug Boyd of the Nunn Center for Oral History at UK also attended that night. The next night, Doug chaired a panel up at Columbia University’s Butler Library that included Tony Dotson, Tyler Gayheart and Herman Farrell. We discussed the process involved in creating the play from oral history interviews of veterans. The director of the Columbia oral history center hosted the event.

For our third performance, Stephanie Murphy, who is one of the military personnel portrayed in the play, attended the performance with her husband. Jim Dao, the National Correspondent for the New York Times attended the 4th (earthquake night) performance and also conducted interviews with the cast and production team. His piece will be appearing early this week –

Farrell noted that the Wednesday performance was delayed by the quake, but it sounds like the experience was moving in much more positive ways for the students involved.

Vice-mayor Linda Gorton, artist Marjorie Guyon and mayor Jim Gray at a press conference to introduce "Nation of Nations" at Lexington City Hall. © Lexington Herald-Leader photos by Rich Copley.

Marjorie Guyon doesn’t think of her new art project as an art project.

“I’m calling it a democracy project,” Guyon said. “I’m using this because they’re so visually attractive. They grab you.”

Three of the 10 panels in "Nation of Nations."

They are 10 panels with 6-foot, 8-inch figures – think Greek statues – in various poses and words from patriotic songs such as My Country ‘Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful and the phrase, “Have Mercy on Us,” in Cherokee, Chinese, English, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Swahili, Latin, Russian and Haitian Creole. They were written by Lexington residents who speak those languages to demonstrate the diversity of the Lexington community.

To Guyon, a centerpiece of the project called Nation of Nations is a box with the question, “How can we form a more perfect union?” and pieces of paper next to it for people to write suggestions.

The exhibit is currently on display at the Lexington Government Center.

“What Marjorie has done is another episode, another high point in her career,” Mayor Jim Gray, himself an art collector, said at a Monday afternoon press conference unveiling the exhibit. “It has an extraordinary theme that resonates with everyone today.”

Vice-mayor Linda Gorton said, in an interview after the press conference, “The government center is for the people. The people own it, and it’s a great venue for art.”

She and Gray pointed out that the lobby and mezzanine of City Hall are becoming a venue for art and will be part of the Gallery Hops as well as open to the general public.

Guyon thinks of the suggestion box-style question as a key to the exhibit's stay at City Hall.

Guyon wants her exhibit to be a catalyst for discussion. She says the project is still a work in progress with ideas for future manifestations to be largely dictated by people’s response to the exhibit. She can envision things like answers to the question “How can we form a more perfect union?” being read at the annual Fourth of July Celebration at Transylvania University or running on the scrolling marquee at Triangle Center.

“I hope people will come in here and give us their ideas,” Gorton said. “Talking about how we can each contribute our own piece to become a nation of nations together is what we can do.”

The piece, which has already been shown in New York, will be on display at the Government Center through April 22, and it is open to the public. After that, it will be installed in the W.T. Young Library on the University of Kentucky campus for a year-long exhibit.

Gary LeVox and Rascal Flatts played a sold-out show at Rupp Arena on Jan. 27. Photo by Mark Cornelison | Herald-Leader staff.

The afternoon of Feb. 6, I was standing in line at the Singletary Center for the Arts box office behind a handsomely dressed couple that looked like they had just come from church to see the final performance of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of Porgy and Bess.

When it was their turn to be served, the man held out his credit card, and the ticket agent said, “I’m sorry. This performance is sold out.”

That’s become a more common occurrence at Lexington-area shows recently. Just this weekend, Rupp Arena presents a sold-out performance by country star Jason Aldean Friday night, the Lexington Opera House hosts two sold-out performances by theBeatles tribute show Rain and Saturday night’s concert by violin legend Itzhak Perlman and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is so sold out even people who know people couldn’t get tickets.

This follows recent sold-out or near sold-out shows at those venues by artists such as pop star Chris Isaak, comedian Kathy Griffin, the touring production of Spamalot! and country stars Rascal Flatts, Rupp’s first non-UK basketball sell-out of 2011.

So, is the sell out back? Is a recovering economy starting to show up at the box office?

Well yes and no, venue directors say.

Yes, things do seem to be better than they were in the depths of the great recession in 2008 and ‘09. They also see other factors from a string of very popular acts to a pure desire on consumers’ parts to go have fun to ticket prices coming back to earth.

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The last decade, there was a piece of spam that would pop up in my email box every few months from various friends warning about proposed cuts to cultural funding – i.e., the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It would usually be followed by a sheepish apology after the sender was notified the email was a hoax – to what purpose, I do not know – and there was really no serious discussion of eliminating cultural funding, because for more than a decade, there hasn’t been. After the early 1990s flare-ups over works by Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, federal cultural funding has stood relatively unchallenged except for economic adjustments.

Until now.

And unlike the mid-’00s, when those spam notes seemed to come out of the blue, you could have seen some of the current proposals coming as Tea Party candidates won significant victories, including Rand Paul’s victory in the 2010 campaign for Kentucky’s open Senate seat. With promises of limited government and reduced government spending, cultural programs appear to be back on the chopping block.

To be exact, proposed GOP cuts, released Friday, would eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports PBS TV (KET in Kentucky) and National Public Radio (WUKY-FM 91.3 and WEKU-FM 88.9 are the primary outlets in Central Kentucky). It would also include heavy cuts to the NEA and NEH, amounts vary depending on what you read, and advocacy groups such as Americans for the Arts are sounding alarms that some proposals will call for total elimination of funding for those groups. (Update, 7:30 p.m. Feb. 14: President Barack Obama’s budget also has significant cuts to the NEA and NEH but increases funding for public broacasting.)

Arts leaders in Kentucky are sounding alarms too.

KET’s website features a call to action from executive director Shae Hopkins, stating, “Federal funding provides nearly $2.9 million, or 14 percent of KET’s budget. That’s only $0.76 per Kentuckian.” The statewide network was also running spots over the weekend urging viewers to contact officials and protest the proposed cuts. The area public radio stations are also urging listeners to contact state congressional leaders through their websites.

In a message to supporters, Kentucky Humanities Council executive director Virginia G. Carter urged people to contract congressional leaders about a proposed $12 million cut to the NEH saying, “The Kentuckians who took the time to contact Congress about what the humanities meant to them and their communities helped save the NEH in the mid-1990s when it was threatened with elimination. This time, we need a similar outpouring of support, and fast!”

This time around, to cultural leaders, the threat seems real.

Full disclosure: Rich Copley provides regular commentary and occasional stories to WEKU-FM. He receives no financial compensation from the station.

Christina Aguilera does her thing to the national anthem at Super Bowl XLV. Photo by Mark Cornelison | Herald-Leader staff.

This is the post in which I will actually advance an idea from my sister – trust me, no one will find this more bizarre than her. Anyway, she chimed in on a Facebook chat about the latest horrendous rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner by a pop star at a major sporting event – Christina Aguilera’s Cher-channeling, memory-lapsing performance at Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Karen suggested: “Let’s just have the entire stadium sing. It’s much more moving! Isn’t that what they do in other countries?”

That is perfect. In addition to other countries, it is what we often hear at high school sports events and other gatherings where the anthem is played. Yeah, the guy behind you may not be able to carry a tune in a bucket and there may be a woman a row or two over trying to do her best Whitney. But collectively, it is invariably moving to hear a collective rendition of the national anthem, particularly in these days when we can’t seem to be unified in much of anything else.

Whitney Houston’s much-loved rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner at Super Bowl XXV in the midst of the Persian Gulf War, is often seen as the event that started the current trend of major sports events trying to book marquee stars to sing the anthem. The Kentucky Derby even got in on the action a couple years ago. But those Whitney-like winning renditions are few and far between. Too often pop singers, who for the most part are not trained singers, are overmatched by the difficult anthem and end up with a black mark on their resume.  Aguilera, who not only made an embarassing spectacle of herself but also flubbed the lyrics, is just the newest member of the club.

Sure, there are plenty of people capable of tastefully nailing the anthem. I remember going to a New York Mets game and hearing a Metropolitan Opera soprano blow Shea Stadium away. But, sad to say, events such as the Super Bowl are more interested in star power than musicianship when they book anthem singers.

So, if they are not going to give us a performer who can actually do the anthem justice, how about giving us the sound of tens-of-thousands of people singing The Star-Spangled Banner in unison. That would be kind of spectacular.

Jon Stewart speaks to the crowd his Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear on the National Mall in Washington, Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010. Copyrighted AP Photo by Carolyn Kaster

My Christmas-New Year’s vacation was bookended somewhat by TV critic David Bianculli‘s conversation with Terry Gross on Fresh Air about the best television of 2010.

This primarily occurred because I caught the original airing on Dec. 22 and then it was rerun on Fresh Air Weekend Jan. 1. But both times I heard it, he said a couple things that really struck chords with me, despite the fact he failed to mention FX’s terrific Kentucky-based show, Justified.

The first was about Jon Stewart, whose The Daily Show was on Bianculli’s 10-best list. He talked about, “how valuable his show is and how entertaining it is,” which brought Gross to an ongoing debate about Stewart: is he practicing journalism on the show, or can he claim to just be a comedian. Bianculli said:

” … he is a journalist, by my definition, and asking questions and preparing for interviews and structuring interviews and conducting them not only as a journalist should, but as few journalists on television do. So I don’t give him a free pass by saying he’s a comic. He’s too good for that.”

Few “journalistic” shows on broadcast or cable are as funny as The Daily Show. But while Stewart’s job title is comedian, Bianculli is absolutely right. Over time, he has refined his skills as an interviewer specifically and a commentator in general. As an interviewer, he demonstrates a knowledge and curiosity you usually only see in long-form interviewers like Gross and Charlie Rose spiked with an impoliteness that allows him to to ask pointed questions many other interviewers either shy away from or broach from such a hyper-partisan perspective they are hard to take seriously. It helps that a lot of the show’s humor is centered on exploiting BS politicians and others often spew, so he has no trouble sniffing it out when someone says it to his face, whether it’s CNBC host Jim Cramer or President Barack Obama.

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Jacob Yates, a 17-year-old junior at the School for Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School, has organized a benefit concert for Haitian earthquake relief. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Click play to hear a conversation with Concert of Hope organizer Jacob Yates.

[podcast]http://copiousnotes.bloginky.com/files/2010/02/100219podcast-haiti.mp3[/podcast]

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

UPDATE: Ben Sollee has been added to the lineup for this performance.

Jacob Yates found the sheer numbers of the Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti — at least 230,000 dead and 1 million homeless — staggering, and he wanted to do something.

“I started thinking of ways I could try to help, even though I’m a 17-year-old in high school,” said Jacob, a junior at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Lafayette High School. “I decided since music is pretty much what I do with my life, that’s the direction I needed to go. I decided on a benefit concert.”

Impresario is a new role for Jacob, a cellist, pianist and singer. But he made his initial move like a veteran producer: He secured a star.

“The first thing I did was go upstairs and e-mail Everett McCorvey,” Jacob said. “Even though there were no details, he agreed to do it. And once he agreed, we got the place, and we just went from there.”

McCorvey, director of the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre and one of Lexington’s most visible artists, said, “When he called me and explained what he wanted to do, I wanted to help. I am so impressed with this young man and his desire to make a difference.”

The Concert of Hope on Sunday night at Centenary United Methodist Church boasts a marquee lineup, including emcee Elizabeth Dorsett of WKYT (Channel 27); Louisville-based jazz pianist Harry Pickens; the Lafayette High School Choir, directed by Ryan Marsh; the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras strings, conducted by Kayoko Dan; and new UK voice professor and international opera star Cynthia Lawrence.

Like McCorvey, Lawrence feels a personal connection to the tragedy in Haiti.

She said she and her husband, Mark R. Calkins, a voice teacher at Berea College and Centre College, “know of friends who are still digging out in Haiti and feel a bit helpless here. … If a performance of mine can encourage people — even in hard times, here — to help, that will be the success.”

Proceeds from the concert will benefit the Versailles-based Northwest Haiti Christian Mission.

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Owensboro native and Audio Adrenaline frontman Mark Stuart was visiting the orphanage in Haiti that is the center of the band’s Hands and Feet Project when Tuesday’s catastrophic earthquakes struck.

Mark Stuart leads Audio Adrenaline in a February 2000 concert in Louisville. Photo by John Sommers II.

“The Haitian people are numb, and sadly, very used to death,” Stuart wrote in an e-mail distributed by Hands and Feet. “However, this has created what seems to be a hypnotic state.  I’ve never been in a situation where you feel SO helpless, fearful, and small.  The tremors are coming again as I type this.”

While most news has been coming out of the Hatian capitol of Port Au Prince, Stuart said there was substantial damage and loss of life near the orphanage in Cyvadier, on Haiti’s south coast. He recounted a teenage nanny at the orphanage who escaped her school because she was near the door when the quake struck but lost many classmates as the building collapsed. At the orphanage, the project’s website reported cracks in the building and that all occupants are staying outside, even at night.

The Hands and Feet Project was started in 2004 by Audio Adrenaline, which formed at Kentucky Christian College in Grayson. It was named after the band’s song “Hands and Feet,” widely considered a Christian rock classic. Hands and Feet is seeking donations in the wake of Tuesday’s tragedy.

Heather Parrish led the most successful show of the year for Studio Players, the summertime production of "Always, Patsy Cline." Photo by Mark Cornelison | Herald-Leader staff.

New Year’s Day 2009, I assumed by New Year’s Eve I would have written about at least one Lexington arts group closing its doors. The economy was buried nose-first in the ground and theaters and other arts organizations were closing their doors around the county. While Actors Guild of Lexington did give us plenty of offstage drama, there actually were no fatalities here as far as arts groups go, and some even thrived despite the nation’s foundering fortunes.

The poster child for doing quite well, thank you very much, was Studio Players. In the depths of our national despair, Studio put up a winter show about Mary Todd Lincoln it thought would probably have limited appeal. And “The Last of Mrs. Lincoln” was a sold out hit that had to add performances to accommodate the audiences.

And that’s pretty much how 2009 went for Studio, the pinnacle of the year being the summer production of “Always, Patsy Cline” that added numerous performances including unprecedented, for Studio, Wednesday shows.

Studio was not alone in bucking trends. The Lexington Ballet went out and hired a new company of professional dancers, the ballet’s first pro troupe since the early part of this decade. Paragon Music Theatre presented its first two productions directed by new artistic director Robyn Peterman Zahn at the Lexington Opera House.

Now Lexington and Central Kentucky were not immune to economic challenges. Donations to campaigns cooled a bit and the Kentucky Arts Council has had to endure several cuts due to state cuts. But, everyone came out alive.

Of course, there were other big arts stories this year:

Scott Terrell conducts his first Masterclassics concert as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic in September. Photo by Matt Goins.

A new maestro: After two years of searching, the Lexington Philharmonic named Scott Terrell its new music director. He succeeded George Zack, who held the Philharmonic’s baton for more than three decades, and so far, it seems the change has done the orchestra good.

“This orchestra is coming alive,” Herald-Leader critic Loren Tice wrote, reviewing November’s MasterClassics concert. “There is a sense of cohesion, of belief that there is first-rate music being made here.”

The new face has given the Philharmonic a chance to rebrand itself with a more youthful profile, helped by a group of hip, young soloists to start Terrell’s debut season. In all, it has been a profound change for Lexington’s flagship arts group.

Now-departed Actors Guild of Lexington artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kim Shaw. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Actors Guild melts down: Lexington’s one-time flagship theater had a very different year. Actors Guild of Lexington has long been angling to become the area’s fully-professional theater for adult audiences — Lexington Children’s Theatre has been a professional house for years. In May, it announced plans to make that move, but less than a month later, the bottom fell out. LexArts, exasperated after years of AGL’s financial roller coaster, withdrew annual general-operating funding from the theater. That nearly-$70,000 hit sent the theater into a tailspin, with both artistic director Richard St. Peter and managing director Kimberly Shaw eventually leaving to pursue other opportunities.

This fall, AGL has presented an abbreviated and altered schedule from what was announced in the spring. The December production of “The SantaLand Diaries” was reportedly sold out, and Actors Guild says it is making plans for 2010. But none have been announced.

It should be noted that at the same time this story has played out, other area theaters including the ones mentioned above plus The Woodford Theatre, Balagula Theatre and Children’s Theatre have thrived.

Abraham Lincoln played by Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, left, and Henry Clay played by George MGee of Georgetown put the finishing touches on their costumes outside the entrance to the Kennedy Center. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

“Our Lincoln” in Washington: Many Lexington artists and groups go to perform in other areas on celebrated stages such as Carnegie Hall and even Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. But taking 375 performers from a diverse ensemble of groups to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington was a whole new level of ambition.

The Kentucky Humanities Council pulled it off, traveling – despite the epic ice storm that befell Central Kentucky – on the first days of February to put on a show for 1,463 people. The performance, narrated by Bob Edwards and including the Lexington Singers and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, is now available on DVD from the Humanities Council Web site.

Film incentives pass: In June, the state General Assembly passed a bill providing financial incentives to filmmakers who shoot in Central Kentucky. The incentives – a 20 percent refundable tax credit for production and post-production expenses for feature filmmakers who spend at least $500,000 in Kentucky – are seen as essential to attract filmmakers. An immediate result was Disney’s “Secretariat” chose to come to Kentucky for filming in October.

New works: It’s always important to remember new performing arts works, because they help keep the disciplines vital and relevant.

This year started with the Lexington Ballet’s production of artistic director Luis Dominguez’s “The Magical Tales of Beatrix Potter” in March and concluded with The Woodford Theatre’s original holiday show, “The Christmas Presence.” In between, Actors Guild launched Silas House’s second work for the stage, “Long Time Travelling;” Pioneer Playhouse director Holly Henson presented “The Infamous Ephraim,” about Danville physician Ephraim McDowell’s historic abdominal surgery; the UK Opera Theatre premiered composer Joseph Baber and librettist James W. Rodgers’ opera “River of Time,” about young Abraham Lincoln; the Lexington Singers premiered “A Bluegrass Tapestry,” which was 11 songs accompanying the photography of Scott County’s James Archambeault; the Lexington Ballet presented “The Koln Concert,” set to Keith Jarrett’s iconic jazz concert album and the UK Symphony premiered Lorne Dechtenberg’s “Token of Affection.”

Other headlines

Kayoko Dan addresses the CKYO audience at her first concert, Nov. 15. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Lexington’s Michael Shannon was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for “Revolutionary Road.” … Lexington musical theater artist Christopher Tolliver was fatally shot at Lexington Green. … The New York Philharmonic played a sold-out show at Danville’s Norton Center for the Arts. … Lexington Children’s Theatre celebrated its 70th anniversary. … The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras named Kayoko Dan its new music director. … Former UK Opera star Reshma Shetty landed role on the USA TV network’s series “Royal Pains.” … LexArts announced Horse Mania will return in 2010. … UK’s Cliff Jackson was named “coach of the year” by Classical Singer magazine. … Winchester’s Jason Epperson, runner-up on Fox’s “On the Lot” film-director reality series, shot his feature film debut, “Unrequited,” in Central Kentucky. … Norton Center completed a $3 million rennovation. … The Men of Note big band played its last gig. … Former Kentucky State University drama teacher and area director Jack Parrish died. … Norton Center director George Foreman announced he is leaving for a University of Georgia job. … The Radio City Music Hall Rockettes came to Rupp Arena for the first time with the “Radio City Christmas Spectacular.”