Copious Notes

He could have spent Valentine’s night with anyone.

Good looking. Talented. Sought after. Gil Shaham could have taken himself and his 1699 Countess Polignac Stradivarius to any town in the world and gotten a gig playing for happy-loving couples on the 14th of February. But he didn’t go for any of the obvious hotties.

Instead, he picked an unlikely Valentine’s date: a university orchestra in a small Southern or Midwestern (depending on how you like to define Lexington) city. Granted, the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is not the Chicago Symphony or the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. But it is on a pretty good run having played Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, recorded several CDs and performed with cello legend Lynn Harrell and folk legend Arlo Guthrie in the past couple of years.

Whether it was that track record, good fortune, or a combination of the two, the UK Symphony won a date with violin superstar Gil Shaham Valentine’s night, and from the moment he stepped on stage, it was obvious he was happy to be here.

Shaham wore a big grin as he tore into the first few phrases of Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D. Not only did UK get the hot date, he was a lot more fun than you might have ever expected. He would finish passages and then look at conductor John Nardolillo — who he stood much closer to than many violin soloists get to the conductor — and bob his head to the beat.

The violinist’s Strad sang, his fingers and bow shaping phrases with that 17th Century wood easier than most of us articulate statements with our mouths. Shaham’s eyebrows slanted forward and his lips slightly puckered right before he did cool things like slashing staccato fiddling in the concerto’s fourth movement.

For its part, the UK Symphony was more than well prepared for this night out, expertly supporting Shaham’s joyful performance and chiming in with numerous sterling solos. The highlight of the evening had to be late in the concerto, when Shaham leaned down and traded phrases with concertmaster Ella Chang, like a couple discovering they have things in common over coffee: “Really! Me too!” “Really. Me too!”

Then, after a coordinated encore of Fritz Kreisler’s Schön Rosmarin, Shaham effectively said, “enough about me, let’s talk about you,” taking a seat in the back of the violin section to participate in a performance of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Op. 36.

In that performance, the UK Symphony demonstrated to anyone who has not been tuned in to its explosive growth over the last few years that it does not have to have an international superstar center stage to sound drop-dead gorgeous. Enigma was imbued with the same emotion and sensitivity the Stravinsky received with radiant solo shots from all over the stage.

Yes, the UK Symphony was an unlikely Valentine’s date for Gil Shaham. But when they met, they did what most couples hope to accomplish: they made beautiful music together.

Click the play button to hear part of our chat with Gil Shaham.

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

University orchestras are not a regular feature of Gil Shaham’s itinerary.

The acclaimed violinist usually steps in front of household-name orchestras: the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Chicago Symphony or Jerusalem Symphony, with which he made his solo debut at age 10.

But the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is indeed the classical music superstar’s date on Valentine’s night.

Gil Shaham. Photo by Boyd Hagen | Opus 3 Artists.

“I was thrilled to be invited,” Shaham, 37, said from his home in New York on Tuesday night, shortly after getting his two kids to bed. “I was born in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., so there’s this thing about the Midwest and a university atmosphere that I always love.”

Shaham’s UK gig works in with some of his grander plans at the moment, namely attacking violin concertos written in the 1930s.

“When you look at the genre of violin concertos, there’s kind of a spike around the 1930s,” Shaham says. “If I were to look back at my favorite concertos, or even if I was to take my personal preferences out of the picture and just opened a music textbook and looked under famous composers or influential music, there’s Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev and Béla Bartók and Alban Berg and Arnold Schönberg and Paul Hindemith and Samuel Barber and William Walton and Benjamin Britten and many more. And all wrote violin concertos between 1931 and 1939.”

Shaham’s plan is to focus on those works during the next few years, playing them in concert and recording them, something he can easily decide to do as the owner of his own record label, Canary Classics.

Shaham says this is his first season tackling these works as a whole, and Saturday night, he plays the Stravinsky Violin Concerto in D with UK.

“It’s a very happy Stravinsky,” Shaham says. “It dances, like all his music dances. There’s something very optimistic about it. It’s a piece that always makes me smile.”

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For the day-after-New Year’s Weekender, Scott the editor asked me and the other Herald-Leader critics to weigh in on what we are looking forward to in 2009. Here’s my list of local arts events.

Gil Shaham performs Valentines Day at the Singletary Center.

Violin virtuosos: Early in the year, we will receive visits from two of the hottest ­violinists on the planet: Joshua Bell in recital with pianist Jeremy Denk on Jan. 26 at the Norton Center for the Arts in Danville; and Gil Shaham performing with the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, on Feb. 14 at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Either one of the guys coming to town would be a big deal. To get both violin ­virtuosos less than a month from each other is huge.

Silas House’s new play: In 2005, the Kentucky author made his debut as a playwright with The Hurting Part, a play with the familiarity of characters close to our homes, sketched with great drama and wonderful language. In April, Actors Guild of Lexington is scheduled to present House’s second stage effort, and it will be interesting to see whether a new Kentucky playwright is indeed emerging.

TBA’s first season: In April, we will learn who is going to take the baton for the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra and lead the orchestra into the future. After 37 years of George Zack on the podium and two years of a search for a music director, it will be fascinating to see how this person settles in, what he or she will program, and what sort of public face he or she will bring to the Philharmonic.

River of Time: In 1999, University of Kentucky music composition professor Joseph Baber wrote An American Requiem, a powerful choral and orchestral work that seemed a bit like putting Ken Burns’ The Civil War into a classical composition. River of Time, Baber’s opera set to be premiered by UK Opera Theatre in the fall, will mine the same period, telling the tale of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood in Kentucky and the impact of his presidency.

The economy: Do I look ahead to this with anticipation or dread? It all depends on whether the country’s financial status continues to deteriorate or starts to turn around. Either way, it will dictate what arts groups do in 2009-10, and a severe financial downturn could irrevocably alter the arts landscape in Central Kentucky and across the nation.

Here are a few other things I’m looking forward to on the national stage:

New movies from Kentucky’s A-listers: Johnny Depp and George Clooney are notably absent from the awards race this year, but 2009 sees both with fresh, intriguing projects. Depp’s highest profile film has him playing gangster John Dilinger in Michael Mann’s Public Enemies, due in July. Clooney is starring in Men Who Stare at Goats, the feature film directoral debut for his Good Night, and Good Luck co-writer Grant Heslov, a film about a U.S. military unit that uses the paranormal against its enemies. Depp and Clooney have other projects coming as well.

Other movies: We’re back with that old saw that Hollywood can’t make anything but sequels these days, and there are plenty this year, including a new Transformers and Harry Potter. A few reach farther into the past, and I am intrigued to see how Star Trek (sans Shatner) and Terminator (sans the Governator) fare with new visions.

Alan Gilbert taking over the New York Philharmonic: Like here in Lexington, New York’s leading band will get a new conductor starting in the fall. Unlike the recent line of venerable old conductors that have conducted the NY Phil, Gilbert promises to bring a new profile to what should be, but often is not, one of America’s leading orchestras. BTW, the NY Phil comes to Danville with outgoing conductor Lorin Maazel March 5.

Sean Watkins and Jon Foreman are Fiction Family.

Jon Foreman’s new project: The Switchfoot frontman’s solo EP’s were some of last year’s best music. He starts 2009 in collaboration with Nickle Creek’s Sean Watkins for Fiction Family. Speaking of Christian rock, I am also looking forward to new music — finally! — from Rebecca St. James.

The Obama administration: We haven’t heard a Presidential candidate or President-elect talk about the arts nearly as much as Barack Obama. His campaign included an arts platform, and both his campaign and transition team featured arts policy advisors, so it will be very interesting to see what kind of action this translates into. We’re talking about this more this weekend at le blog and in Sunday’s Herald-Leader Arts+Life section.