Copious Notes

Charles Compton and I had our second on air chat during Morning Edition today on WEKU-FM 88.9. It was paired with Stu Johnson’s sonically rich report on new Lexington Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell and his debut concert tonight.

Here’s the link to both segments.

OK, it doesn’t have quite the ring of “I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati,” but we started a little audio arts reporting partnership between the Herald-Leader’s online A&E outpost, LexGo.com, and WEKU-88.9 FM in Richmond. Weekly, I’ll be chatting on Friday mornings during Morning Edition — the beat broadcast news show, period — with one of WEKU’s hosts about what’s coming up for the weekend. In addition, I will be contributing some reporting to the station’s already excellent arts coverage by Julie Schindall — who plays a mean marimba, by the way — and the rest of the staff.

Click here to hear this morning’s segment with Charles Compton, and stay tuned.

Also, check out Julie’s story on the Lexington Ballet’s new pro company.

Black Eyed Peas are Will.i.am, Taboo, Apl.de.ap and Fergie.

Years from now, I can guarantee there are two songs that will zap me back to the summer of 2009 whenever I hear them.

First is a ubiquitous hit: the Black Eyed Peas’ comeback single Boom Boom Pow.

It has everything a summer song needs. It’s not terribly serious, basically a cooler-than-thou anthem with a memorable line to make the point: “I’m so 3008, you so two-thousand-and-late.”

It has that time-honored beat, and you can dance to it, plus it’s a little bit naughty. There are also some great passages, such as Fergie with one of the greatest band-­member exhortations since Bruce used to call out Clarence: “Will.i.am drop the beat now!”

Silly, dancy, sweaty, it could exude summer sun in an ice storm.

Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche is a graduate of the prestigious percussion program at the University of Kentucky.

The other has similar qualities but probably plays to a different crowd: Wilco’s You Never Know.

Granted, this George Harrison-esque track could pop you back to the 1970s if you’re not careful. But the Wilco track is so 2009, with the wistful chorus “I don’t care anymore” and a general message to let life happen without worry and pretension.

What could be more ­summer?

Also, in the fingertips of keyboardist Mikael ­Jorgensen, the song has a propulsive rhythm that could drive your car down the highway all by itself - preferably a rural highway where you don’t have to take an exit to grab a pop at a country store.

Being a good driving song always adds to a summer song’s cachet.

Not every summer ­produces a great summer song. And in many ways, it is a personal thing.

For instance, Def ­Leppard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me will always snap me back to ­summer 1988. It has a lot of those basic ­ingredients: catchy, fun, naughty.

Def Leppard: They're hot, sticky sweet, from their heads to their feet.

It also was a great ­summer early in my ­college years, spent mostly at the beach with some of the best friends of my life. One friend, Dave, absolutely loved Sugar and would crank it up and sing along any time it came on the radio.

I popped out quick ­Twitter and Facebook ­questions asking people what they thought was the song of this summer, and there ­definitely were some ­personal picks. One friend who has a trio of pre- and early ­elementary ­schoolchildren said the ­VeggieTales’ version of The Lion Sleeps Tonight has been in heavy rotation in her home. Another mentioned Brother, Can You Spare a Dime - not current, but a comment on our current situations.

Then, there’s personal taste: shouts to Idlewild’s To Be Forgotten and the Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody.

But I did feel like I had a proverbial finger on the pulse of the culture with numerous Boom Boom Pow responses along with the Peas’ ­current No. 1 single, I’ve Gotta ­Feeling. I also had a bunch of Wilco responses, though more about other fine tracks on the June release Wilco (the ­Album). That makes sense, as BEP is more of a singles band and Wilco is more album-oriented.

Consensus is another thing that helps cement a tune as a summer song.

A few years after the summer of ‘88, I was back on the beach with a different assortment of friends reading a Washington Post Magazine article about Def Leppard as a guilty pleasure, and we got to talking about what a great summer song Pour Some Sugar on Me was.

Unanimity.

And years from now, I suspect Boom Boom Pow and Wilco will be as summer of ‘09 as Michael ­Jackson’s ­passing and “cash for ­clunkers.”

Sterling talks to the crowd at the main stage before Disciple's set Thursday. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

When Sterling became an on-air personality at Air1 last year, she got a pass to some of the biggest Christian music festivals in the United States.

“I did Rock the Desert, The Rage in Phoenix, Creation and Spirit West Coast,” she said, naming a few of a half dozen she hit last year. “And they’re all wonderful festivals.

Sterling gets her picture taken with Delirious' Martin Smith after an on-air interview.

“But there’s something about the heart of this festival and the people that put it together with the communion and the worship that is so incredible,” she said, sitting on the porch swing at the cabin in the middle of the camp ground at the Ichthus Festival. “It’s so much more than just the bands. It’s so much more than all the stages and the youth tent and the cool stuff that they give away. It’s all about Jesus and bringing people back to that relationship and growing that. That’s what’s so incredible.”

Her first trip to Ichthus was last year, and she liked it so much, she told her Air1 bosses it was the only festival she absolutely wanted to return to this year.

At the fest, she split her time between introducing bands on the main stage and wandering around the other stages trying to catch new bands — Esterlyn was a favorite this year.

Pretty good gig for a woman whose career started at age 17, when she choked attempting to do a news report at a rural Iowa station.

“I just froze,” she said. “I thought, ‘That’s the beginning of my radio career. I’m never going to make it.”

Now, as a national radio personality, she loves the opportunity to come to events where she can actually meet fans. Left without a golf-cart ride from the cabin in the camp ground back to back stage, she had no qualms about hoofing it back and talking to listeners along the way.

“Yesterday, I got to sign a girl’s leg, and she had 147 signatures covering her legs,” Sterling said. “It was incredible.”

And even national radio personalities can get star struck. She gets a bit giggly greeting Delirious frontman Martin Smith, and marvels at Skillet’s performances.

“It’s an honor to introduce these bands, because they are so amazing,” Sterling said. “I’ll be here every year, God willing.”

Julie Schindall (right) shows 8-year-old Isadora Koch the proper way to hold marimba mallets Saturday at the WEKU event at Joseph-Beth Booksellers. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

After Lexington Philharmonic bassist Joe Tackett finished his chat with WEKU Morning Classics host Michael Carter at Joseph-Beth Booksellers Saturday, he pointed something out.

During the chat, part of a WEKU/Joseph-Beth Gives Back event at the book store, Carter had played several musical selections like one of Maurice Ravel’s Slavonic Dances.

“Every time Michael played a piece, kids would come over and stand,” Tackett said. “Some of them even started to dance. Kids innately recognize great art.” Then, noting some adults he saw rush their kids along, he added, “It the parents that try to tear them away from it.”

Particpating in the WEKU event were (clockwise from top, left) Joe Tackett, Julie Schindall, Michael Carter and Roger Duvall.

Did we mention Joe is the Phil’s education director, too?

Certainly there were some serious blocks of time in the afternoon event devoted to adults talking about music. I discovered both Joe and I share the same roots in our love for classical music. John Williams’ music caught Joe’s ear when his father took him to see The Empire Strikes Back (1980). So, when I sat down to chat with WEKU station manager Roger Duvall, I had to share my similar experience when my parents gave me the soundtrack to Star Wars (1977).

Classical music probably owes a lot to George Lucas commissioning those iconic scores.

Roger called our conversation Dancing about Architecture, a reference to the oft quoted but hard to attribute aphorism that writing and talking about music is sort of like dancing about architecture. And indeed, while we did have a good conversation about this highly transitory time in Lexington music, from my seat, the most fun was trading short passages of favorite works with Roger. He kicked it off with a segment of Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, and I got to answer with Dawn Upshaw singing the opening passage of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 – if there’s a more perfect representation of a Southern summer evening, I am not aware of it.

Michael and Joe also had a great chat, zeroing in on the idea that enjoying classical music is not so much something you learn as it is something that comes naturally.

And the best demonstration of that came in those children who wandered over from the kids book section to hear, and later in ones who were brave enough to step up and try their hand at marimba with musical guests Julie Schindall and Ian Meiman.

We came in to talk about the future of classical music. But in their faces, we got to see it.

Ian Meiman gives 5-year-old Annika Koch a high-five after she plays the marimba.

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.

Michael Johnathon is pretty hard on his hero in the opening act of Walden: The Ballad of Thoreau.

We find Henry David Thoreau, as played by Adam Luckey, in his cabin at Walden Pond sounding like the years alone have really, really gotten to him. For a man with nothing on his calendar, he’s almost breathless trying to figure out what to do with himself. When he thinks, “music and art are born at sunrise,” he is torn between whether he needs to write that down or play his flute, thereby creating some musical art. He putters, chatting with his wood pile and snap beans until a blessed moment of self awareness: “Dear God, you’re having conversations with peas and finding it intellectual.”

Johnathan doesn’t shy away from the fact that even today, as Thoreau is now considered a literary giant and the forefather of the environmental movement, his personality and journey can seem a little bit odd and sad. But that acknowledgment and a steady refinement of Thoreau’s ideas through Ralph Waldo Emerson and two other visitors to Thoreau’s cabin raise this script well above two acts of hero worship.

Yes, the play can be a little preachy and preoccupied with Thoreau’s need for a woman. But it and the documentary segments that bookend the new video production are informative about Thoreau and particularly the ways in which he foresaw the impact of modern technological progress on the environment. The video was made last fall, with segments filmed at Walden Pond in Concord, Mass., some Lexington woods, and at performances of the Walden play at the Lexington Opera House last fall.

With supporting performances by Eric Johnson, Anthony Haigh and Jessie Rose Pennington, and solid stage direction from Beth Kirchner and video direction by Doug Smart, the film fulfills a popular environmentally-based slogan: Kentucky Proud. The production will be broadcast on KET and WEKU-FM 88.9 locally and be seen around the country this Earth Day week. The script is available for free download at the Walden play site to anyone who wants to perform it, so long as they register their performance. According to Johnathon, more that 7,000 people or groups have already done that. The program is also available on DVD.

The American Spiritual Ensemble, based in Lexington and directed by University of Kentucky voice professor Everett McCorvey, will be on The Bob Edwards Show Friday morning on XM and Sirius satellite radio.

Bob Edwards.

Edwards, a Louisville native, invited the ensemble to appear on his show after hearing it perform on the UK Opera Theatre and Kentucky Humanities Council’s Our Lincoln performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. on Feb. 2. The Spiritual Ensemble is dedicated to the preservation of the Spiritual, and it is made up of 25 singers from around the country, most professional singers, many with college posts. The group has several annual tours, including a summer trek to Spain.

Edwards’ show  airs 8-9 a.m. EST on XM Channel 133 and Sirius Channel 196. The show is also available for Download on Audible.