Copious Notes

Audiences packed the Meadow View Barn at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill for last years Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

• Check out our audio slide show from As It Is In Heaven.

Shaker Village of ­Pleasant Hill doesn’t necessarily need music.

The lush, green grounds of the community are a sustained pianissimo passage, frequently augmented by the songs of birds, whistling of the wind and rhythm of rippling water.

Leave your iPod behind.

But that does not mean that music cannot enhance the Pleasant Hill experience.

As Rachel in "As It Is in Heaven," Erica Solitaire Chappell sings in Pleasant Hill’s Meadow View Barn.

The Shakers, after all, are known for their songs - Simple Gifts, anyone? The University of Kentucky Theatre has been bringing some of those tunes to the stage of the Meadow View Barn the past two weekends with its ­production of Arlene Hutton’s As It Is In Heaven.

That production, which has its final performances today through Sunday afternoon, begins and ends with the women of the play ­strolling through the field adjacent to the barn raising songs to the tops of the trees.

The music does not stop there, though.

Next weekend brings the third annual Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, and if you are trying to come up with a more perfect ­marriage of music and venue in ­Kentucky, you have some work to do.

We tend to think of ­classical music as something to seal in a perfectly quiet concert hall, supposing that one obscured note would obliterate an entire work. Of course, perfect silence is rarely achievable in a hall full of people, with walls that aren’t impervious to honking horns and sirens.

Yes, Meadow View Barn is susceptible to the sounds of its environment, but a violin mixes so much better with a bird or a breeze than a candy wrapper or screeching tires.

At last year's Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, the lineup included the Orion String Quartet, featuring sibling violinists Todd and Daniel Phillips.

In the natural setting, at last year’s festival, the music seemed to open, with the instruments so close to their source materials.

And these are musicians to make the most of the environs.

All three years of the ­festival, the Norton Center for the Arts at Danville’s ­Centre College has engaged the Chamber Music ­Society of Lincoln Center to ­oversee its artistic direction. ­Pianist Wu Han has been the constant, and this year she brings ­violinist Erin Keefe, cellist Fred Sherry and ­clarinetist David Shifrin. If you pay attention to classical music, each is an ­internationally known practitioner of his or her instrument.

For the second year, the festival has engaged a second group, this time the Escher String Quartet, to play in its own right and mix with the Lincoln Center musicians in the festival’s four concerts.

Those combinations, like Robert Schumann’s Quintet in E Flat Major for Piano, Two Violins, Viola and Cello, scheduled for next Sunday night, are the real treats of the event.

The morning sessions, in the village’s ­Meetinghouse, focus on Ludwig van Beethoven on Saturday and J.S. Bach on Sunday. The evenings include music of Beethoven, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

Debussy and nature? — makes sense.
As does trying to take the arts out to environments such as Pleasant Hill.

So often we try to hype the natural beauty of the ­Bluegrass, but then when it comes to presenting the beauty of the arts, we retreat to the city like everywhere else.

The Heaven performances, chamber music festival and other outdoor events show an arts community trying to get more in tune with our ­surroundings.

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral” is one of those works everyone has heard, at least in part, whether they know it or not.

If you’ve ever hummed the tune Ode to Joy — in your church hymnal, it may be Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee — you have the basic theme.

And portions are scattered everywhere. Most recently, MSNBC personality Keith Olbermann co-opted a bit of the second movement as the theme for his show Countdown.

People who really know the piece tend to characterize it in lofty terms.

“This is one of the great works of man, one of the great achievements of civilization,” says University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra director John Nardolillo, who will conduct the orchestra in the Ninth on Friday night. “For us to get to play it, for many of these students, it’s the first time, and that’s an incredible discovery. It’s really extraordinary.”

Like any great work, the appeal is multifaceted for students, from the intricacies of Beethoven’s score to the sheer mood of the piece.

“It’s the Ode to Joy,” says John-Morgan Bush, 22, a senior from Madisonville who plays French horn. “It really is a message of joy and fulfillment or inner fulfillment. When we play it, and we come to the main theme in the fourth movement, it really is a culmination and inner resolution. You can’t play that melody and be sad.”

Now, playing it can be a whole other matter.

“I grossly underestimated my part,” says trumpeter Julian Kaplan, 21, a senior from Charlotte, N.C. “We play an incredible amount of time, and when you listen to it, it doesn’t seem like that much, but when you sit down to play it, it’s very taxing physically.”

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When it rains, it pours in Lexington’s classical music world.

Friday, we heard Scott Terrell was taking the baton for the Lexington Philharmonic. Monday, we learned Kayoko Dan will ascend the podium for the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras. Today, we can report on a new guy will be conducting the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and he already has a job at UK.

Rich Brooks signs his commemorative bottles for fans at Keeneland on April 10. Photo by Charles Bertram | LexGo.

Head football coach Rich Brooks will borrow the baton from orchestra director John Narolillo to conduct the UK Symphony for a performance of John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever at the beginning of Friday night’s otherwise all-Beethoven concert.

The guest conductor gig is part of the University of Kentucky Symphony’s status as the beneficiary of  this year’s Maker’s Mark commemorative bottle for UK athletics. The bottle features Brooks likeness, in recognition of his UK Symphony-like success the last three seasons, and proceeds are going to the orchestra’s educational efforts.

The idea came up, Nadolillo said, when he and Brooks were dipping the bottles in blue and white wax.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you come conduct the orchestra,’” Nardolillo recalled. “He said, ‘OK, what do you want me to conduct?’ I said, ‘How about Beethoven’s Ninth?’ He said, ‘Fine. And you can coach the LSU game.’”

For those unfamiliar with both professions, those would be comparable tasks.

Nardolillo, by the way, will conduct the rest of Friday’s concert, which will include Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 “Choral,” featuring the UK choirs directed by Jefferson Johnson and Lori Hetzel, and Symphony No. 1.

Nardolillo says the orchestra stands to receive $1.2 million from the project, sponsored by Maker’s Mark and the Keeneland Foundation, which will go into an endowment fund for educational outreach programs.

Alastair Willis talks to the Lexington Philharmonic audience about Beethoven and the weather before Friday night's concert. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Alastair Willis looked at the group assembled in the Presidents Room of the Singletary Center for the Arts, and for a moment, he looked like he might have no idea what to say to the people.

Then, pre-concert chat moderator Joe Tackett asked him to tell the audience about himself.

“I always got the report cards that said, ‘He could be good, if he practiced,’” Willis, the ninth candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic, said to knowing laughter.

And he was off, delivering one of the most relaxed, entertaining, and simultaneously insightful pre-show gab session of the conductor search. He told the crowd about his days in the Bristol University Music Society (you do the acronym), his big sister Sarah who plays French Horn in the Berlin Philharmonic, and even parried with Tacket over the infamous bass concerto question longer than any other candidate — he could program all six bass concertos Tackett deems worthwhile in one season . . . could.

But the Seattle man — via Cincinnati, via Houston, via England, via Russia, etc. — wasn’t all droll humor, as he thoughtfully considered questions like the roll of the orchestra in a community: “There’s not one set answer for what the role of an orchestra in a community is, because the community determines that.”

Onstage in the Singletary Center concert hall, Willis opened the concert telling the audience Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, which was on the program, contained, “all the weather conditions you have recently had here.” Introducing Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, he noted that Golijov has been called the “Beethoven of this generation,” and reminded the crowd that Beethoven was once a contemporary composer.

Discussing his current career as a full-time guest conductor, he told the pre-show audience that the No. 1 goal of a guest conductor is, “to get invited back, because you’ve got to put food in your refrigerator, right?”

Come to think of it, being invited back was sort of his goal here, too.

Your thoughts?: Click here to tell the Philharmonic what you thought of Willis.

Review news: Due to deadline constraints, Loren Tice’s review of last night’s show could not be ready for Saturday’s paper. But it is already up on LexGo.

More music: If you liked last night’s concert, or feel like you missed something and want to make up for it, there are two real good opportunities this weekend:

• Gil Shaham and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra perform at 7:30 tonight.
• To get more of the Latin flavor of the first half of last night’s show, you may want to catch the La Catrina String Quartet at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Singletary Center recital hall.

Alastair Willis conducts the Lexington Philharmonic in a rehearsal Tuesday night at the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Click the play button to hear our chat with Alastair Willis:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

Alastair Willis’ résumé reads like a world tour. He started playing piano when he was a boy in Russia, took up trumpet and then conducting while he was living in England, continued his conducting studies in Houston, toured Japan and other foreign lands with Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, and held posts with orchestras in Cincinnati and Seattle, where he lives now.

This week, Willis, 37, who speaks with a British accent, has set his sights on Lexington, where he is the ninth candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra.

“Every conductor needs an orchestra, and every orchestra needs a conductor,” Willis says when asked what attracted him to Lexington. “My research of this area and this orchestra has showed wonderful support for the arts and wonderful potential for future growth here, and I don’t know any conductor who’s currently not got a music director position who wouldn’t be interested in that.”

After one rehearsal, on Monday night, Willis had a good impression of the Phil, saying, “The orchestra seems open to what I have to offer.”

On Tuesday, he threw the players a bit of a curve ball, rehearsing Osvaldo Golijov’s Last Round, the opening number of Friday’s concert. It requires the violins and violas to stand as opposing orchestras, with the basses and cellos seated in the middle. After some initial confusion, he pulled a fairly flowing rehearsal out of the players.

Willis had no hesitation about coming in and shaking things up a bit.

“Why have we always played in the form we always play in?” Willis asks, referring to the Phil’s traditional seating arrangement. “Because it works. Because it’s how orchestras historically sound best, for most of the repertoire. No one’s ever going to change that, but I love to find the variety.”

Willis has experienced a lot of variety in the past few years. He was in Cincinnati in the late 1990s for a year as assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras and director of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra.

He says he loved the experience working under symphony conductor Jesús López- Cobos and pops conductor Erich Kunzel, but Cincy didn’t offer what he thought he really needed: “podium time.”

So Willis moved to Seattle, where as assistant and then resident conductor he was able to direct more than 100 performances in three years.

In 2003, he went the free-lance route, guest-conducting around the world and hanging out, when he could, with leading orchestras. He has a particular in with the Berlin Philharmonic, where his sister, Sarah Willis, plays fourth horn.

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Jeremy Denk talks to the fellows at the 2007 NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera before performing Charles Ives' Concord Sonata on Bargemusic in New York. Behind him is institute co-director and NPR Music senior producer Anya Grundmann. Photo by Rich Copley.

When I heard Joshua Bell was coming to the Norton Center for the Arts for a recital Monday night, I was excited. When I heard Jeremy Denk was set to be his accompanist, that feeling doubled.

In October 2007, I got to spend a little time in Denk’s sphere as part of the NEA’s Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera at Columbia University. Among the slate of artists and arts journalists that participated, including conductor James Conlon and New Yorker critic Alex Ross, was Denk. His two appearances with us were on a blogging panel with critic Terry Teachout and performing Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata at Bargemusic, literally a recital hall on a Barge next to the Brooklyn Bridge — had to limit my time actually watching Denk perform, because he was in front of a window through which we could see the Brooklyn skyline bobbing up and down.

The performance was exhilarating and informed by Denk’s witty and reverential discussion between movements. But the thing that fascinated me was that Denk was on a blogging panel. Before heading to NYC, I decided to check out Denk’s blog, with a little skepticism. After all, we were journalists. Wouldn’t we rather hear from another fellow journalist with a journalistic blog, like Teachout, rather than some artist prattling on about himself?

That skepticism vanished when I started reading Think Denk: The Glamous Life and Thoughts of a Concert Pianist for the first time. The blog is as self-depricating as its title indicates, which I quickly discovered in the first post I read, about accidentally receiving a package addressed to Yo-Yo Ma.

Often, Think Denk is about the rigors of touring, even playing second banana to bigger-name artists like his most recent post, a live blog about an all-star concert in London which he played with Bell. He talks about how he knows he’ll have to play on a piano bench adjusted for bigger name players Radu Lupu (sports car low) or Andras Schiff (firm and high).

But even in the midst of his second banananess, he finds unexpected affirmation when Schiff tells Denk he loved his Sarah Palin blog. Denk made a little splash in October with a faux interview with the Republican vice-presidential candidate about Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata.

JD: I just simply can’t believe in the midst of this intense campaign season, you could find the time to talk with me about the “Hammerklavier” Sonata.

SP: Well, ya know, Beethoven was the dude who said thanks but no thanks to Napoleon. Plus from all the mavericky songs he wrote, maybe this one could be known as the most maverickyest.

As funny as Think Denk can be, it’s also extremely insightful, particularly as Denk routinely includes musical notation to explain ideas he’s mulling over. That thoughtfulness is evident in his recordings, and in performance. In blogging, Denk is obviously exploring form, much like a pianist explores his instrument.

My skepticism disappeared in discovering a artist with a lot to say, in many ways, and well worth reading and hearing — like, say, Monday night.

Further reading:

~ Joshua Bell: A bow wonder

~ Joshua Bell: Violin hero?