Copious Notes

Cellist Joshua Roman rehearses with the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra and Maestro Scott Terrell on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2009. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Click the play button to hear a podcast of our interview with Joshua Roman:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

The Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra may have bigger named soloists its schedule this season, but that may only be temporary.

At 25, cellist Joshua Roman already has some big credits on his resume, including being the only soloist during the YouTube Symphony Orchestra presentation, becoming the Seattle Symphony’s principal cellist at age 22, and being named artist of the month by Musical America magazine in August.

We caught up with Roman back stage after a rehearsal to talk about things like being called a “classical rock star” for our story in today’s Weekender and the podcast, above.

Click the play button to hear a podcast of our River of Time report for WEKU-FM 88.9:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre presents the world premier production of composer Joe Baber and librettist Jim Rodgers’ River of Time Oct. 8-10 at the Lexington Opera House. The opera, commissioned by UK Opera, looks at Abraham Lincoln’s early years including his search for purpose in his life and the roots of his desire to fight slavery. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Feature: Lincoln Opera portrays a ‘journey to greatness’

Cynthia Lawrence rehearses Richard Strauss Four Last Songs with conductor John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Friday night is diva night in Downtown Lexington.

On one side of town, we have Angela Brown kicking off First Presbyterian Church’s new philanthropic concert series. On the other side, we have the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra opening its season with new voice faculty member Cynthia Lawrence singing Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

Whether you head to Singletary or not, Lawrence is someone Lexington music lovers will be getting to know as she settles in to teach aspiring divas and divos, and turns in the occasion performance herself.

Click the play button to hear our podcast with Cynthia Lawrence:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Press the play button to hear our podcast with Balagula Theatre co-director Ryan Case.

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Balagula Theatre opens its first official season Sunday, Sept. 13 with ‘B’ for Beckett (A Night of Samuel Beckett’s Plays). It kicks off a lineup of absurdist, exesstentialist theater at Natasha’s Bistro and Bar, including works by Eugene Ionesco and Jean Paul Sartre.

Read more about Balagula and Studio Players’ season opener, Agatha Christie’s The Unexpected Guest here.

And see an Unexpected Guest slide show here.

Billy H.W. Mason and Heather Parrish perform with June July on June 27 at Lower 48. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

While she was in rehearsals for Studio Players production of Always . . . Patsy Cline, we caught up with Heather Parrish to talk to her about playing the country music legend and how it impacts her own band, June July. Here’s a podcast of a portion of our chat with Heather:

Further reading:

• Story: Patsy is a bridge between Parrish’s theater and rock ‘n’ roll careers.
• Story: Louise is a dream role for Wilkeson.
• Review: You’d be crazy to miss it.

Israel Houghton and New Breed make an Ichthus debut Saturday.

Click the play button to hear our interview with Israel Houghton:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Israel Houghton has heard the criticism over the years.

“When I moved to Nashville, I basically had people saying, ‘You’re too black for this, you’re too white for that, pick a style,” Houghton says. “And I remember saying, ‘What happens when we get to heaven? What section are we planning on being in?’”

It was a purposefully rhetorical, idiotic question, Houghton says.

Over six albums and more than a decade, Israel & New Breed have energized and sometimes puzzled Christian music fans with a mix of styles from traditional gospel to world music to rock ‘n’ roll, with lots of other elements thrown in. It’s a mashup that has won Houghton critical acclaim as well as Grammys and Dove Awards.

But it sometimes left the core audience, the church, a bit puzzled.

“So much of it is at our core,” Houghton says, “so much of it is rooted in ignorance, and a lot of it just has to do with stereotypes and skin tones, and we’ve always done church this way so we should keep doing it this way.

“Worship, in its nature, ought to be encompassing, it ought to be multicultural, and it ought to have the ability to tear walls down. Finally, thanks be to God, we’re finally seeing where that is becoming less and less and less of an issue.”

And Houghton is venturing into new territory, including the Ichthus Festival, where he and New Breed will play Saturday night.

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The last chance to see Delirious live in Kentucky will be Saturday night at the Ichthus Festival.

Click the play button to hear our interview with Martin Smith of Delirious:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

When Delirious first played the Ichthus Festival in 2001, then- festival director Rick LaDue put the booking in historical terms.

“We’re the oldest Christian music festival in the country,” LaDue said. “Delirious is a band that is part of Christian music history. We needed to meet.”

The history that Delirious made was integrating praise-and-worship music with rock ‘n’ roll.

Until the late 1990s, there was Christian pop and rock that you heard on the radio, and contemporary praise-and-worship music that some churches used in their services. But it was not often — maybe the occasional chorus, like Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith’s Thy Word — that you heard a Christian top 40 song used in worship services.

Then, Delirious started playing youth events in England, pumping up the praise with songs like Did You Feel the Mountains Tremble.

Now, just eight years later, Delirious returns to Ichthus for its last festival appearance in Kentucky, at 10:20 p.m. Saturday.

Later this year, on Nov. 29, the band will play a farewell concert in London, then the members will go their separate ways.

“We’re happy at what God’s done over the years but sad because it’s going to end,” frontman Martin Smith said in a phone interview. “It’s a good time to do that. It’s not a breakup in that we’ve fallen out or anything. We’re still fantastic mates, and in the future we may play again. But for now, it’s time to pursue other things.”

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If you are a fan of Central Kentucky’s classical music outlet, WEKU-FM 88.9, plan to stop by Joseph-Beth Booksellers Saturday afternoon for a Joseph-Beth Gives Back event celebrating the station.

Roger Duvall

I’m being kind of inviting because I am part of the program. At 2:30 p.m. I will be chatting with WEKU Station Manager Roger Duvall about the future of classical music and some of our favorite music. I think this is a really cool topic because so much is changing locally and globally with classical music, so I am really looking forward to the chat with Roger, and I know he’s selected some great music to bring along.

Preceding us at 1:15 will be WEKU morning classics host Michael Carter and Lexington’s favorite bassman Joe Tackett of the Lexington Philharmonic. I’m note sure what these guys will be talking about, but you know the old line about reading the phone book . . .

Surrounding all of that will be the marimba stylings of Julie Schindall and the Schindall/Meiman Duo.

It should be a tres cool afternoon and I hope to see some of y’all there.

Part of the reason I am participating is because starting in June, I will be contributing to WEKU’s arts coverage. Think of it as Copious Notes podcasts on the air — though probably a lot shorter.

Roger Leasor plays Marcus Hubbard in On the Verge's production of Lillian Hellman's "Another Part of the Forest" at the Hunt-Morgan House. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Click the play button to hear our interview with Roger Leasor:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Also, see our slide show from Another Part of the Forest.

Roger Leasor feels as if he’s come full circle with On the Verge’s ­production of ­Another Part of the ­Forest, and not just because he’s playing the father of a ­character he played last fall.

“When I started performing, it really was as a storyteller in high school, reading to the kids at the public library,” says Leasor, 58.

In subsequent years, he became an actor and a singer at the University of Kentucky, focusing on those crafts.

“But now it comes back full circle,” Leasor says. “What I really want to do is tell the story, and I have all these tools to do it with. I just don’t have the youthful energy to do it or the free time.”

Leasor is chatting in one of the offices of his day job, at the Harrodsburg Road Liquor Barn. As president of the expanding party and spirits business, Leasor has found he spends much of his time overseeing operations in Lexington and Louisville.

He jokes that after ­Another Part of the Forest, he will enter his 19th and last retirement from the stage. But despite his schedule, some roles are too good to pass up.

“These are opportunities that just don’t come along, Leasor says. “I’ve just been so lucky all my life to be given these amazing roles. It takes that anymore to justify the time, and it takes someone like Ave that wants you to work with them.”

Director Ave Lawyer is the most recent person to lure Leasor out of his umpteenth retirement with the opportunity to play the patriarch of the Hubbard family, playwright Lillian Hellman’s treacherous Southern clan, a group that demonstrates how much emotional terrorism can be inflicted while decked out in formal wear.

In the fall, Leasor played Ben Hubbard in Hellman’s The Little Foxes. Now, in Hellman’s prequel to Foxes, Another Part of the Forest, Leasor is playing Marcus Hubbard, Ben’s father.

In "The Little Foxes," last fall, Leasor played Ben Hubbard, Marcus' son. Bob Singleton, right, plays Ben in this show.

“With Ben Hubbard, I was consumed by the fact that he was always conniving, always planning,” Leasor says. “I got the feeling that before he took each breath he was trying to decide which side of the mouth it should come out on. … Well, this is his daddy. Who do you think he got it from?”

Indeed, Marcus is as treacherous as Ben, minus the subtlety.

Leasor says they are both roles that probably startle some who have followed his stage career, particularly recently.

His last few turns have been noble, warm characters - Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, the stage manager in Our Town - roles that seem like typecasting when you talk to Leasor.

Maybe his harshest role of recent vintage is Matthew Harrison Brady in Inherit the Wind, a character whom you had to admit had good intentions, even if you disagreed with his point of view.

There is nothing good or selfless about Marcus ­Hubbard or his son.

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Silas House looks on as "Long Time Travelling" director Richard St. Peter looks through the script to his first play, "The Hurting Part." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Click the play button to hear our interview with Silas House:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

There’s just one weekend left in the world-premier production of Silas House’s new play, Long Time Travelling at Actors Guild of Lexington. It’s been an indisputable hit, with AGL having to add performances to accommodate the sell-out crowds.

We couldn’t let this production go without giving you a chance to hear some of our conversation with House — and simply a chance to hear that distinctive voice. In our podcast, House talks about Long Time Travelling’s theme of change, and how it applies to the play, his life and some of the causes he’s taken up, such as his opposition to mountaintop removal coal mining.

In addition to his fiction, House recently published Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fight Mountaintop Removal, a non-fiction book about mountaintop removal with co-author Jason Howard.

Long Time Travelling has four more performances this weekend, and House will give a pre-show chat at 7 p.m. Saturday, prior to the 8 p.m. performance.