Copious Notes

Click the play button for our Lexington Singers 50th season slideshow, including current and archival photos, the sounds of the Singers in rehearsal, and reflections from the three directors: Phyllis Jenness (1959-75), James Ross Beane (1975-97) and Jefferson Johnson (1997-present). Click here to see a slightly larger version of the show.

Sometimes there’s good karma in the calendar. With George Zack retiring from the podium of the Lexington Philharmonic in ­September and the search for his ­successor still in progress, there was a perfect ­opening for Lexington Singers music ­director ­Jefferson Johnson to take the baton for this year’s ­performance of George Frideric ­Handel’s Messiah.

And the timing is great for the Singers to have its man on the podium: This is the 170-member group’s 50th season.

“It is totally coincidental,” Johnson says, “but it’s pretty neat.”

This will be Johnson’s first time ­conducting a performance of Handel’s ­perennial. Usually, he prepares the chorus for the concert and then, as most choral conductors do, hands the group off to the orchestra conductor for the show.

Until this year, Johnson, 52, has spent the concert in the same place: the back row of the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall, where he is showered with the crystal-clear voices of his chorus.

The feeling is not much different from when he moved to Lexington as ­director of choirs at the University of Kentucky, and he would go hear the Singers under James Ross Beane.

“I was just in awe of how close to perfection they were singing,” Johnson says. “Like any choral conductor, I would listen for mistakes — we’re all diagnostic by nature. I distinctly remember being struck by how close to perfection they were.”

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