Copious Notes

Mark O'Connor rehearses with University of Kentucky graduate student Jessica Miskelly and the UK Symphpny Orchestra on Oct. 28, 2009. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

It’s a typical rehearsal two days before a concert.

The University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is on the stage in the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall with conductor John Nardolillo stopping occasionally to tweak parts, but mostly letting the music flow.

Centerstage two violinists trade increasingly virtuosic, knee bending phrases, somewhat reminiscent of a  little Peach State fiddle duel Charlie Daniels once sang about.

This is where things become less typical.

O'Connor and cellist Geoffrey Hershberger rehearse O'Connor's "Double Concerto for Violin and Cello."

One of the violinists is UK graduate student Jessica Miskelly. The other is Mark O’Connor, a classical music star who has distinguished himself by successfully bridging traditional classical music and American folk. He’s currently in the midst of a short residency at UK which will culminate in a Friday night concert featuring O’Connor, several of his compositions, the UK Choirs and several students sharing his spotlight.

“I’ve been doing more residencies the last couple of years at institutions,” O’Connor said in his dressing room, a few minutes before Wednesday’s rehearsal began. “Every time I show up at performances around the country, there’s all kinds of questions about, ‘Where’s this music going?’ and what your background is. There’s always some kind of educational component to it, so I just decided to expand that.”

In addition to UK, O’Connor works with students at the School for Creative and Performing Arts and the UK String Project, a primary school program, this week.

O’Connor has done his mini-residencies at prestigious schools such as the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the University of California, Los Angeles.

But he wanted to come to Kentucky.

In part, it was because of a growing relationship between O’Connor and the orchestra, which included another visit several years ago and a performance in February with the UK Symphony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Our Lincoln production.

“John Nardolillo has put a great emphasis on performance and getting the material ready,” O’Connor said, referring the UK Symphony’s director. “It’s just fantastic to see and hear . . . It’s going to be a darned good show for the audience.”

This visit also brings O’Connor close to Appalachia, a region he is strongly identified with thanks to his own music and several celebrated albums of Appalachian music with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and bassist Edgar Meyer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Lexington Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell conducts a combined rehearsal of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras' symphony orchestra and the Philharmonic Oct. 19. CKYO director Kayoko Dan stands at the back of the orchestra, in a black blouse. Photos by Matt Goins.

When I moved to Lexington in 1998, one thing that immediately struck me about the ­local arts scene was the prominence of children and organizations geared toward children.

The Lexington Children’s Theatre’s shows rated the same sort of attention as productions at Actors Guild of Lexington and other area stages.

The Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras’ events and personnel moves were prominent news. There were two institutions - the Explorium (then, the Lexington Children’s Museum) and the Living Arts and Science Center - geared toward children’s arts, particularly visual arts.

The School for Creative and Performing Arts had a prominent place in town, but there were stage, art and music programs at other schools also producing talented graduates who went on to arts careers.

Children’s Health magazine recently ranked Lexington No. 6 on its list of the 100 best places to raise a family. The criteria included crime and safety, education, economics, housing, cultural attractions and health.

I’d be willing to bet that if someone wanted to rank best places to be an artsy kid, Lexington would rate high on that list, too. By virtue of what is offered, we tell our children that the arts are something to do and be respected for doing.

Students Madelyn Nelson, left, Sara Arthur-Paratley, and Mary Rollins-Mathews rehearsed with the Lexington Ballet on Monday in preparation for Youth Arts Day.

The Lexington Philharmonic, the Horse Capitol of the World’s flagship arts organization, will celebrate young artists with its Youth Arts Day family concert at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Singletary Center for the Arts. It will include young singers from SCAPA, Fayette County Public Schools and the School of the Lexington Ballet.

The prominence of youth-oriented groups here is quite a bit more than other communities that I have lived in or observed. Over the nearly 12 years since I arrived, it has become clear that a big reason for that is quality.

Take the Children’s Theatre: In a town that has struggled with the concept of professional theater for adults, the Lexington Children’s Theatre has established itself with its own building on Short Street and a professional staff, including actors. What’s more, Larry and Vivian Snipes have developed a national reputation for the theater by being a venue that presents and creates new work. And the primary beneficiaries are kids.

And it really wasn’t terribly surprising that when the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras went looking for a new music director at the same time that the Lexington Philharmonic was trying to fill a similar job, it ended up attracting and hiring Kayoko Dan, also a candidate for the Philharmonic post.

CKYO has graduated numerous professional musicians, including Chicago Symphony Orchestra violinist Nathan Cole and hard-to-categorize cello soloist Ben Sollee.

Outside of groups directly geared toward kids, Lexington arts groups have been generous to kids.
Look at Paragon Music Theatre, which routinely loads the stage with kids, including Hello Dolly! this weekend, and even makes a place for them in its cabaret shows.

During years without a professional company, the Lexington Ballet featured its students in productions, and it and Kentucky Ballet Theatre, which has always had a pro troupe, always find ways to present students. Former Ballet Theatre dancer Adalhi Aranda Corn saw such value in Central Kentucky’s young artists she left and formed Bluegrass Youth Ballet and eventually built CulturArte, an arts facility that acommodates a variety of disciplines.

Possibly one of the biggest statements about valuing student artists was when the Lexington Singers’ ­Children’s Chorus was invited to perform in the Our Lincoln performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington in February.

And now LexArts has formed a Youth Arts Council to help focus young artists in the area.

Clarinetists Andrew Burton, 14, left, of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras and Mike Acord of the Philharmonic rehearsed together Monday.

Full disclosure: My children have participated in some of these groups, and one is in the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, although not the ensemble performing Sunday with the Lexington Philharmonic.

In addition, I’ve gotten to know many other kids who participate in groups. Maybe the most important thing these groups engender is enthusiasm for the arts they are participating in. I hear spirited discussions about play rehearsal and genuine interest in Bach sonatas.

Like anything, Lexington’s youth arts scene isn’t perfect. I remain baffled, for instance, why SCAPA does not have a theater of its own. Then again, SCAPA regularly solves that problem by putting its kids on stages usually graced by adults and pros.

It occurred to me as I left a CKYO rehearsal last week with my daughter that by virtue of her participation in the orchestra, she’s on the University of Kentucky campus every week. Most of us didn’t get used to being on a college campus until we had enrolled.

That’s just one of many ways that through our youth arts, regardless of whether the students pursue arts careers, by supporting such substantial programs, we’re preparing our kids for the rest of their lives.

Musicians in the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Lexington Singers and UK Chorale settle onto the stage of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the Our Lincoln performance Feb. 2, 2009. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

The presentation of Our Lincoln at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., in February was undeniably a big deal for Kentucky arts and humanities.

Artists who live and work here were presented on one of the nation’s most ­prestigious stages along with hometown kids who have made good and a few international stars, such as violinist Mark O’Connor. A production conceived and produced in Central Kentucky went to an international arts showplace and acquitted itself admirably.

I sat with a Washington cameraman who went on at length about how great the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra is. It was one of numerous anecdotes about seasoned Washington arts observers who were impressed with Our Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln played by Jim Sayre of Lawrenceburg, left, and Henry Clay played by George MGee of Georgetown put the finishing touches on their costumes outside the entrance to the Kennedy Center.

But it is understandable that this might be lost on people who weren’t among the 1,463 people who saw the ­performance, given while the state was in the throes of an ice storm. ­Overseeing recovery ­efforts forced Gov. Steve Beshear to cancel his plans to attend.

But now Beshear and anyone else who would like to see the show can catch it in Michael Breeding’s PBS-quality DVD, which has just been released.

After raising the money to get the program to ­Washington, the Kentucky Humanities Council had to go back to the well for an ­additional $6,500 to produce the DVD, with the total costs to be recouped through sales.

What we can now see is that Breeding and his crew captured the proceedings in stunning detail, with shots that take the viewer onto the stage with the performers and also relay the grandeur of the occasion.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ann Rutledge (Amanda Balltrip) and Abraham Lincoln (Nick Provenzale) at a town dance in New Salem, Ill., in the world premier production of Joe Baber's "River of Time." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Note: Space is finite in newspapers, really more finite than ever. This being a new opera, I wrote a bit longer than a usual review, and a little bit longer than the printed page in Saturday’s paper will hold. This posting of our River of Time review contains portions that will not be in the print edition.

No one in Abraham Lincoln’s home state has celebrated the bicentennial of the 16th president’s birth as well as the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

At the start of the celebration in 2008, the Opera Theatre teamed with the Kentucky Humanities Council to present Our Lincoln, a multi-faceted tribute to the Hodgenville native that eventually traveled to Washington, D.C.

Before that show was even conceived, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey had commissioned an opera about Lincoln from composer Joe Baber and librettist Jim Rodgers.

That opera, River of Time, had its world premiere Thursday night at the Lexington Opera House. It’s not the unqualified success of Our Lincoln, but there is much to like and even potential for Baber’s opera to endure as a portrait of the president before he was presidential.

River of Time’s story takes Lincoln from birth through the death of his first true love, Ann Rutledge. Along the way, he fights with his dad, becomes a bookworm, grieves the deaths of the three most important women in his life and even wrestles.

That story makes for some great moments, including a slave auction in New Orleans where Lincoln declares that if he gets a chance to fight slavery, “I’m gonna hit it hard.” The scene, with a heavy dose of spirituals, is the grand opera spectacle of the show.

But for the most part, this opera strives for a soothing — sometimes too soothing — Midwestern feel, in the spirit of Aaron Copland or Samuel Barber. That’s exemplified in a small-town dance scene in which Lincoln and Ann realize that regardless of whether she is engaged to another guy, they are in love. Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Nickl, board chair of the Lexington Singers, at a rehearsal of the group Dec. 8, 2008. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.

It’s been a good season for Studio Players.

Martha Campbell as Mary Todd Lincoln in the Studio Players hit, "The Last of Mrs. Lincoln." Photo by Pablo Alcala | LexGo.

The first three shows at the Carriage House ­Theatre on Bell Court - Don’t Dress for Dinner, A Tuna ­Christmas and The Last of Mrs. Lincoln - were hits for the community ­theater troupe, selling out most performances. Bob Singleton, president of the company’s board of directors, says that if about 80 percent of the seats for a production are sold, the costs have been covered. And so far, Studio Players has not seen a decline in donations.

If only every arts group could tell that tale.

As the nation plunges deeper into a recession, good news in the arts has been hard to find. Just last week, word came of layoffs at the Philadelphia Orchestra and Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the latest in a steady stream of bad news for arts groups that also must deal with the economic downturn’s effect on ticket sales and fund-raising.

But community arts ­organizations generally don’t have the overhead costs of a staff or space to maintain, and sometimes are able to thrive in challenging times.

“This is a season ­everyone wants to write down in red letters in their diaries,” Lexington Singers board president, Nick Nickl, says.

Last fall’s the Singers’ 50th ­anniversary concert far ­exceeded box-office ­expectations, and the chorus had the ego boost of traveling to ­Washington to sing at the ­Kennedy Center for the ­Performing Arts in the production of Our Lincoln.

The only ­disappointment of the season, Nickl says, has been ­raising money for its annual Festival of Choirs.
“Usually people are eager to contribute to that,” Nickl says of the event, which brings the Singers together with choirs from ­traditionally black churches. “But we had to give it a little extra push this year.”

That said, “if you look at the list of organizations close to the edge, we’re not one of them,” Nickl says.
Neither is the Lexington ­Community ­Orchestra.

“We have been able to continue with a minimum of difficulty or ­challenge,” says violinist Pam ­Hammonds, ­president of the community orchestra board. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Bill Buchanan (James Morrison) and his security team work to secure President Taylor (Cherry Jones) to safety when the White House falls under attack on'24.' Photo by Mark Lipson | Fox.

After Barack Obama was elected president, we were treated to plenty of stories about presidential security.

The accounts included that the public couldn’t get within blocks of Obama’s Chicago home, that a date for Barack and Michelle Obama involved several dozen Secret Service agents, and that security measures caused hours of delays at the inauguration.

When I was in Washington for the performances of Our Lincoln, a week after the inauguration, we were advised that if the president had announced in advance that he was coming to the show, the Kennedy Center would have been locked down for three days.

Now, with all that real-world information, we watch 24 and have to suspend disbelief as much as if we were watching a show about space aliens.

Some of the first “wait a minute” moments involved First Dude Henry Taylor (Colm Feore), the husband of the new president on the seventh season of 24, Allison Taylor, played by Cherry Jones. Trying to uncover the truth about his son’s death, he was running around Washington, having meetings in wide-open parks while guarded by a total of one Secret Service agent. That agent turned out to be a rogue operative who tried to kill Taylor as part of a conspiracy.

Throughout these scenes, you had to be thinking, there’s a reason the first family has more than one bodyguard.

It was implausible.

But implausibility reached new heights with last Monday’s two-hour episode. Read the rest of this entry »

Everett McCorvey directs the American Spiritual Ensemble in a performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., Feb. 2. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

By any measure, the Lexington-based American Spiritual Ensemble has had a pretty good winter tour. During the 22-city journey, the ensemble has played the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Our Lincoln performance, sung in Gettysburg on the 200th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth, performed at one of the stops of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania, and recorded an interview and performance for Bob Edwards show on Sirius XM satellite radio. An air date for the show has not been announced.

As it does most years, ASE brings the show home. The 25-voice ensemble performs at First Presbyterian Church at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (Feb. 25). If you have not heard the Spiritual Ensemble before, you really shouldn’t miss their program, which resulted in involuntary mass sock removal at Our Lincoln.

One person whose socks were knocked off was Edwards, who had producers invite the ensemble of mostly professional opera singers to be on his show after hearing them at the Lincoln program, which he hosted.

A video production of Our Lincoln is still up in the air, but Lexington filmmaker Michael Breeding has posted a short preview on his website that gives you an idea what the show looked like. Breeding oversaw a video crew in Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts when Our Lincoln, a co-production of the Kentucky Humanities Council and University of Kentucky Opera Theatre, was presented there Feb. 2. But additional money will be needed before the footage can be produced into a DVD and/or broadcast.

Lori Hetzel conducted the Lexington Singers Children's Choir and Jefferson Johnson conducted the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, Chorale and Lexington Singers in the performance of "Our Lincoln" at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. Feb. 2, 2009. Photo by Jonathan Palmer.

The performance of Our Lincoln on Monday night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., was filmed, but the Kentucky Humanities Council needs a little more money to get it ready for DVD or TV.

Lexington filmmaker Michael Breeding was on hand to capture the concert featuring the Lexington Singers and Children’s Choir, the University of Kentucky Chorale and Symphony Orchestra, and individual performers including Nick Clooney, actor Robert Brock, tenor Gregory Turay and soprano Angela Brown.

Humanities Council Executive Director Virginia Carter said $30,000 is needed to green-light production of that footage into a DVD. She said she had paid the necessary fee to the Kennedy Center to produce as many as 5,000 DVD copies. As for television broadcast, Carter says, an additional $20,000 would have to be paid to the Kennedy Center for rights to broadcast Our Lincoln.

The original performance of Our Lincoln at the Singletary Center for the Arts in February 2008 was not filmed because money was not available to pay a film crew. Carter says she hopes that now that there is a film, the money can be secured to at least produce a DVD. She says that last year’s performance sold out with many still wanting tickets, and some people who wanted to go to Washington for the performance Monday weren’t able to because of the winter storms the previous week.

“The performers deserve a record of their appearance at the Kennedy Center,” Smith said. “And there are many others who really deserve the opportunity to enjoy the show.”