Copious Notes

So, if you’re a Central Kentucky Laura Bell Bundy fan who never got to New York to see her Tony-nominated turn as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde — The Musical, you have another chance, much closer to home.

Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods with Legally Blonde director Jerry Mitchell the opening night of Legally Blonde on Broadway. Photo by Aaron Lee Fineman.

Bundy is going to reprise the role when the national tour of Legally Blonde lands at Nashville’s Tennessee Performing Arts Center June 23-28. Bundy will play Elle in all evening performances, stepping in for vacationing Becky Gulsvig. Bundy, a Lexington native and Lexington Catholic graduate, relocated to Nashville last year after leaving the Broadway production of Legally Blonde in July.

Bundy also reprised the role on tour earlier this year in Washington D.C. and East Lansing, Mich., when Gulsvig was out with an injury.

Outgoing New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel will conduct the orchestra in Danville Thursday night. Photo by Chris Lee | New York Philharmonic.

It didn’t start as a grand plan, although it is an ambitious idea.

Early in his career as director of the ­Norton Center for the Arts at Centre ­College in Danville, George Foreman brought in the Cleveland Orchestra for a concert. The 1983 performance of music by Franz Schubert, Dmitri Shostakovich and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, under the baton of Eduardo Mata, was undoubtedly a coup for the still-young arts center, which has since presented a veritable who’s who of classical and pop artists.

And Foreman wondered: What if he could bring the top five American orchestras to Danville during his career?

Cleveland was a start on the list, which at the time appeared to include the Boston Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“It was such a preposterous idea to bring all the great orchestras to Central ­Kentucky,” Foreman says.

It has been slow going, too.

It was 20 years before the next group, the Philadelphia Orchestra, played the ­Norton Center in 2003. But Foreman’s unofficial series seems to be picking up speed with Thursday’s appearance by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by outgoing music director Lorin Maazel. It took only six years to book Foreman’s third major.

The New York Philharmonic’s appearance will be its first Kentucky concert in more than 35 years. The orchestra’s last appearance in the ­commonwealth was at the University of Kentucky’s Memorial Coliseum in September 1973.

“What fills Memorial Coliseum other than winning Wildcats?” the Lexington Leader review asked, “Obviously the New York Philharmonic Orchestra with Pierre Boulez.”

That concert attracted 9,000-11,000 patrons. It will be a considerably smaller crowd in the Norton Center’s 1,430-seat Newlin Hall on Thursday, but there is still a lot of excitement surrounding the concert by one of the majors.

The infrequency of major orchestra concerts helps explain that buzz, in part. But there is the reason you don’t see major orchestras on the Norton Center or anyone else’s schedule every season.

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Indiana University soprano Kiri Deonarine won the Tri-State Regional Round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions on Sunday at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, beating a field that included two University of Kentucky singers.

Trusty

Mezzo-soprano Andrea Trusty of Ezel, Ky., who advanced out of the Kentucky District auditions in November, finished in third place and won $500.

UK soprano Amanda Balltrip and countertenor Chris Conley competed but did not finish in the money.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Deonarine is the daughter of acclaimed baritone Kim Josephson. She will compete in the national semi-finals at the Metropolitan Opera Feb. 15. Winners in that round will advance to the national finals, a public concert Feb. 22 in which judges will award up to five singers $15,000 each. The Enquirer link above includes video from the competition.

Sean Watkins and Jon Foreman, aka Fiction Family.

Review: Fiction Family, Fiction Family

When you’re listening to new music and names like Lennon and McCartney, Difford and Tilbrook, and Neil Finn start rushing to mind, you know you have something good in your earbuds. When you mix that songwriting prowess with the instrumental dexterity of leaders of two of the most accomplished bands currently open for business, you have the first unqualified triumph of our young year.

Fiction Family is the collaboration of Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman, who le blog credited with the best Christian music of 2008 as a solo artist, and Nickel Creek guitarist and singer Sean Watkins. The duo reportedly met at a gig played by their respective bands plus R.E.M. and Wilco, which is to say Fiction Family was born of some great music.

The story is that this album has been in the works since 2006, with Foreman and Watkins exchanging ideas they worked on during their bands’ tour breaks. That means the disc is populated with two lead voices and a wide variety of instrumental ideas, from the sublime acoustic skips of songs such as War in my Blood to a jarring cacophony at the end of Please Don’t Call it Love by a spooky, airy organ. In some ways, this self-titled debut is somewhat reminiscent of The Beatles Revolver album, which combined the sublimeness of Here, There and Everywhere and the arty excursion of She Said She Said.

Christian market fans may be surprised to find little in statements of faith from Foreman. There’s more provocation of thought here, which has always been a hallmark of Switchfoot and Foreman’s solo stuff, in songs such as Look for Me Baby, a little banjo and bass flight that closes the album.

But Fiction Family also seems to be exposing Foreman to new audiences, as the duo is getting played on stations like Lexington adult rock outlet WUKY-FM 91.3 and has shots on NPR music shows such as Mountain Stage and World Cafe.

As much as any effort, Fiction Family seems likely to open a new chapter in Foreman’s career.

New Fray will be released in the Christian market: Beliefnet’s Joanne Brokaw reports The Fray will be releasing its next album to both the mainstream and Christian markets, on Feb. 3. It is a bit of an unorthodox move in the current marketplace, where Christian bands are usually driving toward the mainstream. Though The Fray’s debut, How to Save a Life, was a purely mainstream release, the band did catch many Christian music fan’s ears. In a video with the band’s single, lead singer Isaac Slade reportedly says this is how the group wants to release its music for the remainder of its career.

Watching U2’s performance of Pride (In the Name of Love) at the inaugural celebration Sunday afternoon, I was reminded that while the powerful anthem was the band’s huge hit, they also penned the gorgeous MLK. It’s a simple tribute:

Sleep, sleep tonight

And may your dreams be realized

It may be stretching it a bit to say “The Dream” is being realized by the events of the next few days. But certainly the vision of the man we celebrate today will take a huge step toward reality with the inauguration we will witness tomorrow.

Highly recommended: Performance Today has its annual broadcast of the King Memorial Concert in Atlanta, featuring the Atlanta Symphony. It’s always a stirring performance. Locally, it airs at noon and 8 p.m. on WEKU FM-88.9.

Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods and director Jerry Mitchell during the curtain call on the opening night of Legally Blonde -- The Musical on Broadway, April 27, 2007. Photo by Aaron Lee Fineman.

Legally Blonde — The Musical may be done on Broadway, but that doesn’t mean its Tony-nominated star is done with the show.

Becky Gulsvig, who has been playing the leading role of Elle Woods on tour, has a broken toe, which makes it a little hard to do things like bending and snapping. So, Laura Bell Bundy, the Lexington native who originated the role in 2007 and received a Tony Award nomination for it, has joined the Blonde tour in Washington D.C. and will follow it to East Lansing, Mich. First national tours are often cast with Broadway talent, but it is not nearly as common for the originator of a role to hit the road with a show, so the next few Blonde audiences will get a bit of a treat.

Bundy will be sharing the role with understudy Lauren Zakrin, the fourth-place finalist in the MTV reality-competition series The Search for Elle Woods. Accoring to Playbill, she’ll be with the show through Feb. 22. Bundy is also slated to be one of the judges for the Miss America Pageant Jan. 24. Bundy now lives in Nashville, where she is concentrating on her country music career.

There are two big reasons to watch WKYT-TV 27 (Insight Channel 9 in Lexington) tonight:

UPDATE: Scott Shive won Dec. 30, taking in $33,601 and besting Stevens by more than $10,000. He’ll be the defending champion Dec. 31.

Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek and LexGo editor Scott Shive. Photo from Jeopardy Productions Inc.

~ Scott Shive, the editor of LexGo and arts and entertainment editor of the Herald-Leader, is on Jeopardy! at 7:30 tonight facing down Fairview Park, Ohio’s Jim Stevens who’s already won something like $140,000. Doesn’t that seem like enough? Anyway, Scott is sworn to secrecy, so even those of us who work mere feet from him don’t know how he did — the show was taped in Novemeber. I will say all three contestants, including Stevens, dropped several questions last night that Scott could have easily answered.

Click here to read Scott’s account of his Jeopardy! experience and here to see his Jeopardy! video greeting (they need to make those embedable).

~ At 9 p.m., catch the Kennedy Center Honors, usually one of  the best awards shows of the year. You’re not sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for results — like we are with Scott — but it is often an evening of great performances. The honorees tonight include Barbra Streisand, Morgan Freeman, Twyla Tharp, George Jones, and The Who’s Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend. Among those paying tribute to the honorees will be Beyoncé, Jack Black, Garth Brooks, Clint Eastwood, Alan Jackson, B.B. King, Idina Menzel, Ne-Yo, Brad Paisley, Queen Latifah, Joss Stone, Koko Taylor, Lily Tomlin, Randy Travis and Denzel Washington.

Gerald Finley as J. Robert Oppenheimer in the Metropolitan Opera's production of John Adams' "Dr. Atomic." Copyrighted photo by Ken Howard for the Metropolitan Opera.

Speaking of great performances: Some opera fans may have noticed KET did not air Great Performances‘ presentation of the Metropolitan Opera’s production of John Adams’ Dr. Atomic last night. It was scheduled to run at 9 p.m. nationally, but did not air until 1 a.m. here. If you’re like me and have a season pass to Great Performances on your TiVo, fine. Otherwise, you have to wait until Jan. 17 . . . at 2 a.m. This seemed a bit odd, since Dr. Atomic was sort of a big deal on the Met’s schedule this year, so we caught up with KET program director Craig Cornwell to ask what happened.

With Dr. Atomic, specifically, Cornwell said the program was not added to the PBS lineup until after KET had already printed its program guide, and the station is loathe to deviate from the guide because viewers get upset about that. With operas in general, Cornwell says they are difficult to program because they are usually so long, and, “We don’t have many three-hour blocks of time avaialble in our schedule.” He also noted that opera doesn’t attract a large audience but added, “There are passionate opera fans out there we hear from,” and “We feel it’s a viable art form and are committed to showing it.” He said there are quite a few operas scheduled in the new year and many will get prime-time airings.

Cellist Ben Solle (center), guitarist Justin Craig and drummer Jon Moore perform at The Dame Dec. 11. LexGo photos by Rich Copley.

More photos below.

If I want to see a hot young cellist in Lexington, it’s pretty obvious where you’ll probably find him or her: on the stage of an area concert hall, like the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts. In fact, a week ago last night, a hot young cellist was on the Singletary stage: Andrea Kleesattel, playing Antonin Dvorak’s legendary Cello Concerto with the UK Symphony.

The Dame is not such an obvious venue for hot young cello talent. The Main Street bar and music hall is a place where a lot of the musicians crank their six strings up to 11. But Thursday night, cellist and Lexington native Ben Sollee was centerstage, rocking and mesmerizing a packed house. That was a lot of people without gray hair listening to a cello — and I say this as a guy quickly acquiring my gray.

Ben Sollee at The Dame.

Sollee undoubtedly has talent. But maybe the biggest thing this twentysomething has going for him is imagination.

He took a fairly traditional route to learning the instrument, picking it up in elementary school, excelling enough to join the Central Kentucky Youth Orchesrtra, and studying the instrument at the University of Louisville, which he graduated from in 2006. But somewhere in there, Sollee heard more to his instrument than just concert and recital halls and people who patronize those venues. He heard folk, he heard the blues, he heard rock ‘n’ roll, he heard the Appalachian music his father played around the house.

And now, in his performances and recordings, we hear it.

Sollee is not unusual. Music schools these days are teeming with kids who appreciate and have mastered the complexities of traditional classical music but grew up in a pop, rock world and want to find ways to marry the two. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross called it a shuffle generation: kids who load their iPods with a wide variety of music and then let it play together in shuffle mode. We just maybe think of them trying to forge those unions in little clubs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

But here, in Central Kentucky, it can be manifest in things like the numerous fiddlers I’ve met who are studying classical violin, and vice versa.

Sollee is doing it quite effectively, and a key to what he is doing is that he does not diminish his craft. He hasn’t reduced cello down to three chords and a six pack of beer — not that there’s anything wrong with that.

His Dame performance was full of virtuosity and a keen ear for the structure of his songs. Highlights included a rendition of Change is Going to Come, which he grew from a solo piece back into a jam with his band, building on a central theme. Maybe the most fun was I Can’t Be You, which Sollee said he was supposed to play on guitar, but he left it backstage. So, he plucked and strummed it on cello like that’s the way he always played it.

Maybe there is a Dvorak concerto in Sollee’s fingers he will someday play, if he hasn’t already. Maybe his could be a career that straddles the concert hall and club more legitimately than many artists who’ve attempted to “cross over.”

But at this moment, he seems to be taking his cello exactly where it needs to go.

Read Walter Tunis’ review of Thursday’s Ben Sollee concert.

Here are a few more pics from last night:

Neva Geoffrey and bassist Matt Duncan opened the show.

Neva Geoffrey

Guitarist Matt Duncan put a little slide into his performances with Neva Geoffrey and Ben Sollee.

Daniel Martin Moore played his own set and sat in with Ben Sollee for a number.

Ben Sollee during one of numerous cello solos in his set.

A singing cellist is not something I can recall seeing before.

Laura Bell Bundy in a photo shot for her CD, Longing for a Place Already Gone. Photo by Larissa Underwood.

Actress Laura Bell Bundy was sitting with five women and all of them wanted her job, playing Elle Woods in the Broadway production of Legally Blonde: The Musical.

For most of the chat, which was shown on MTV’s reality series Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search for Elle Woods, Bundy was the sage Broadway veteran. But then she got reflective about what the experience of playing the perky SoCal sorority girl almost every day for 11/2 years has meant to her.

“I became more true to myself,” the Lexington native said. “I get emotional thinking about it. … It’s been the best experience of my life because I grew as a human being, because of my character, because of my connection to her and my openness.

“And the fact that I got to express emotion and not hold things in was good therapy for me, and I grew as I was finding her.”

At the time of that conversation, which took place in March but wasn’t televised until earlier this month, Bundy was still several months away from leaving the show. But it was already clear that walking away from her breakout role — one that earned her a Tony Award nomination and made her a marquee name on Broadway — was not going to be easy.

But she needed to do it.

“I’m leaving at the right time,” Bundy said in an interview the week before her final performance, last Sunday. “I’m leaving when the show is still fun for me. I’m still learning, I’m still growing, I’m still making new choices.

“But I’ve been in this show a long time — longer than your health would have you be in a show like this. My body is tired, my voice is tired. I need to go on some serious R&R.”

On July 20, Bundy took her final bow, had a really good cry and then went to a post-show party with current and former cast members to share memories and farewells. Then it was off to an all-night diner with family for a bacon cheeseburger that gave her indigestion, she said. But no worries. She didn’t have to be concerned with going on the next day, or even later in the week.

Bundy is getting to work on other aspects of her career she wants to explore.

But first, only eight days after her last bow as Elle, she is coming back home to Lexington and bringing Legally Blonde co-star Paul Canaan, who was one of the judges on the MTV show. Together they’ll present their Take It From the Top musical theater workshop on Monday and Tuesday at Bundy’s alma mater, Lexington Catholic High School.

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Paul Canaan was a cast member in the ensemble of Legally Blonde — The Musical and served as a judge on Legally Blonde The Musical — The Search for Elle Woods. He and Blonde star Laura Bell Bundy bring their Take It From the Top worshop to Lexington July 28 and 29. Photo by Jason Gillman.

Participants in the Take It From the Top workshops July 28 and 29 might be longing to have instructor Paul Canaan watch them and declare, “That’s a hiiit!”

In the eight weeks Canaan was a judge on the MTV reality series Legally Blonde the Musical: The Search for Elle Woods, he developed the affirmation into a personal trademark.
Like Legally Blonde’s star, Lexington native Laura Bell Bundy, Canaan has wrapped up his gig in the ensemble of the hit Broadway musical. Working on the show, Bundy and Canaan formed a strong friendship that has turned into a professional partnership with Take It From the Top, classes they have already presented in New York and will present around the country.

“My passion is teaching,” Canaan says, enjoying a day off at Legally Blonde director Jerry Mitchell’s beach house on New York’s Fire Island. “With arts education being cut in the schools, it was important to us to look at new ways to reach kids.”

Bundy says Canaan “is such a fantastic teacher, and he’s great with kids. He can see potential in a kid and pull that out. He helps people feel comfortable.”

That was also one of his roles on the reality series, which tapped South Carolinian Bailey Hanks to succeed Bundy as Elle Woods.

“Ultimately Jerry Mitchell had the say,” Canaan says of the show’s finale, which was taped in March though it aired on MTV on Monday, two nights before Hanks debuted in the role. “We said, ‘We’re not going to find another Laura Bell Bundy, so let’s find an Elle,’ and Bailey is Elle, completely. With her spirit and spunk, she’s innately an Elle Woods.”

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