Copious Notes

Kayoko Dan takes a bow with the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra Concert Orchestra Sunday night at the Lexington Opera House. Photos by Rich Copley.

Since I am a Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra parent, I stay away from writing about CKYO for the paper — sort of an obvious conflict of interest there.

Dan addresses the audience.

But it is certainly worth noting that the Kayoko Dan era officially got underway Sunday night with the Youth Orchestra’s season-opening concert at the Lexington Opera House. The group’s Symphony Orchestra and Concert Orchestra played a tidy program of just over 90 minutes that included music from Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” for the Concert players and the third movement Gustav Mahler’s “Symphony No. 1 in D Major ‘Titan’” for the Symphony. That was some challenging stuff, to say the least.

Also debuting was CKYO assistant conductor Daniel Chetel, who was actually a candidate for the top spot and ended up coming to Lexington to pursue a doctorate in musical arts and conducting at the University of Kentucky, where he also serves as assistant conductor of the UK Symphony. Chetel, who holds a bachelors from Harvard and a masters from the University of Maryland, was offered the Kentucky post by UK Symphony director John Nardolillo after he interviewed for the CKYO job. Sunday night, Chetel conducted the Concert Orchestra in an arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky’s “The Great Gate of Kiev” and the Symphony in the second movement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7 in A Major.”

Assistant conductor Dan Chetel greets Concert Orchestra concertmaster Laura Saikawa after conducting Mussorgsky

The Symphony’s program was a bit of an introduction to Dan as she said from the stage it was her favorite movements from symphonies. Bookending the Beethoven and the Mahler on that program called “Symphonic Progression” were the first movement of Franz Joseph Haydn’s “Symphony No. 104 in D Major ‘London’” and the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 4 in f minor.”

When Dan auditioned for the Lexington Philharmonic’s music director post, Tchaikovsky was also a centerpiece of her LPO concert with music from “Swan Lake.” So, judging by her programming — Tchaikovsky’s “Russian Choral and Overture” opened the concert — and comments from the stage Sunday, it looks like CKYO kids will be getting used to Peter I.

Chetel’s presence also drove home the fact the Philharmonic and Youth Orchestra’s recent music director searches yielded two new conductors each: new Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell and Dan, who first came here as an LPO candidate, and Dan and Chetel at the CKYO. So Lexington’s conductor pool is enhanced with a trio of new talent, which is certainly worth noting.

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.

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Click the play button to hear a podcast of our River of Time report for WEKU-FM 88.9:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre presents the world premier production of composer Joe Baber and librettist Jim Rodgers’ River of Time Oct. 8-10 at the Lexington Opera House. The opera, commissioned by UK Opera, looks at Abraham Lincoln’s early years including his search for purpose in his life and the roots of his desire to fight slavery. Photos by Rich Copley | staff.

Feature: Lincoln Opera portrays a ‘journey to greatness’

University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra director John Nardolillo, shown conducting a rehearsal in March. Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

More than a decade ago, Everett McCorvey started building the University of Kentucky’s opera program into a nationally recognized boutique for training young voices and presenting exciting programs. The middle of this decade, John Nardolillo took over the UK Symphony Orchestra and a similar ascension quickly began.

Friday night, those two success stories came together as the voice department’s newest teacher stepped in front of the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra for its season opener in the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall.

Soprano Cynthia Lawrence, shown at a rehearsal on Tuesday.

Soprano Cynthia Lawrence took the stage to open the second half of Friday’s concert in a billowy black gown which sparkled like this was Live from Lincoln Center or something. And when she opened her mouth for a performance of Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs, it sounded that way.

Though Lawrence, who now holds UK’s endowed chair in music (voice), was making her big debut as a faculty member, Four Last Songs is not a diva show-off piece in the sense of rafter-rattling high notes, ornamental trills and the like. It doesn’t even give the soprano a big finish, as the orchestra closes the piece as if the sun has set on the voice.

But if you are looking for interpretive skills, Strauss gives the singer a chance to put those on full display, and Lawrence did. She encourages listeners to read the work’s poetic text, but the poetry was in her voice Friday night. Through masterful phrasing and control, she gave the audience a very clear idea where this piece was going. And yes, she did have moments of spectacle and sublime beauty that left you marveling that this woman was not an imported guest soloist. She is UK faculty.

What’s more, she aggressively went after the job after spending a few weeks here working with singers at UK last fall. That an artist of Lawrence’s caliber — a celebrated soprano at the Metropolitan Opera and many, many other stages — vigorously pursued a post here says as much about the growth of the School of Music as the Met audition wins and concerts at Carnegie Hall.

What was really striking was how the orchestra responded to Lawrence. Her performance followed good though unremarkable performances of W.A. Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro overture and Symphony No. 39 in the first half.

When Lawrence started singing though, the orchestra followed her lead, including several passionate solos from violinist Jessica Tzou, flutist Aaron Sexton and others.

And the passion continued into the concert closer, Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration. With all hands on deck, the orchestra unleased a powerful performance that convinced you that its Dec. 3 performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 “Titan” should not be missed.

Then again, the way things have been going, you could say that about the whole season.

Prior to the concert, Narolillo and UK President Lee Todd announced a gift from the family of Jan Karon, a master violinist and violin maker who died last year, which will add $400,000 to the orchestra’s endowment established by Keeneland and Maker’s Mark. Karon was a native of Poland who survived Nazi concentration camps in World War II and played in orchestras in Warsaw, Krakow and Houston, where he was concertmaster. After retirement, he settled in Lexington. The gift from his daughter Dr. Magdalene Karon and her husband Dr. John Stewart, will underwrite the concertmaster’s position, which has been renamed the Jan Karon Concertmaster. Tzou is the first to hold that chair.

Cynthia Lawrence rehearses Richard Strauss Four Last Songs with conductor John Nardolillo and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Friday night is diva night in Downtown Lexington.

On one side of town, we have Angela Brown kicking off First Presbyterian Church’s new philanthropic concert series. On the other side, we have the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra opening its season with new voice faculty member Cynthia Lawrence singing Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs.

Whether you head to Singletary or not, Lawrence is someone Lexington music lovers will be getting to know as she settles in to teach aspiring divas and divos, and turns in the occasion performance herself.

Click the play button to hear our podcast with Cynthia Lawrence:

Copious Notes podcasts are available on iTunes.

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.

• Here’s our slide show from the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Mouse over the bottom to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions. If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left for a larger version of the whole show.

Raimondo (Mark Elliott Golson, center) referees a confrontation between Enrico (David Bellamy Baker, left) and Edgardo (Jeremy Cady, right) in UK Opera Theatre's production of "Lucia di Lammermoor." Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera about a man who forces his sister to marry for money.

His sister is in love with another man — in her mind, married to him. But the brother tricks the sister into a miserable arrangement. By the time the final curtain falls, Lucia and both of the men who called her wife are dead, the husband she didn’t want dying in Lucia’s ghastly murder of him.

It’s an odd mix: bel canto singing — beautiful singing — with treachery and carnage.

The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of the Lucia, which opened Friday night at the Lexington Opera House and has three more performances tonight and next Friday and Saturday, had the bel canto part down.

But the show never felt dangerous, even as Lucia staggered around the stage with a bloody knife in her hand.

Darla Diltz as Lucia.

We are, of course, talking about Lucia’s mad scene, after she has stabbed her new, unwanted husband to death and comes into the wedding party with a blood-splattered white dress. It is a tough scene for a soprano as she has to navigate a treacherous vocal line while holding the stunned party-goers in horror for nearly 15 minutes.

Darla Diltz has one of the most beautiful instruments to come out UK’s voice school in years, her tour de force playing Violetta opposite star UK opera alum Gregory Turay’s Alfredo. And that voice is on dispaly again in the mad scene, particularly echoing Aaron Sexton’s flute. But, except for a moment where she raises the knife to one of the guests, there’s never a sense that she’s going to strike again or that the party guests are afraid of her.

And the scene is hardly set, as David Bellamy Baker isn’t convincing as such a meanie that he would force his sister to submit to a life of misery. He only really has a sense of urgency when directly challenged by Diltz.

He too has had great successes, such as an empathetic Schaunard to Jeremy Cady’s Rodolfo in La Boheme last fall. Now Cady, once again employing romantic lead sweetness as Edgardo, does fix Baker’s Enrico with a death stare that means business in their big confrontation. He also pulls off one the biggest challenges in the tenor repertorie: successfully following the mad scene.

There are some other outstanding performances from the supporting cast, including Mark Elliott Golson II as a commanding Raimondo and Luther H. Lewis II as a deliciously slimy Normanno. Gavin Wigginson is a strong and gregarious presence in his one scene as Lucia’s doomed groom.

Director Richard Kagey has designed a strong traditional setting for the show, and the UK Symphony sounded as sharp as it ever has in the pit. The chorus was also in top form, bringing some of the best moments of the show, including the scene where they are supposed to be celerating Lucia and Arturo’s marriage and instead see an ugly confrontation between Edgardo and pretty much everyone else.

The show just wasn’t a compelling package, and the lack of drama, of any emotional spark was surprising, considering one of the primary strengths of UK Opera during its ascendancy has been acting. It has been a company sending singers into the world with the knowledge that opera today needs more dramatic flair to draw in new audiences. It has been the company that brought us shows like Don Giovanni with the Giovanni-Leporello combo of Mark Huseth and Corey Crider, a Carmen that, by all rights, should be a precursor to Brandy Lynn Hawkins doing the title role again and again and again, and last fall’s total package Boheme.

This is a company that has always remembered theater was part of its name. Let’s not forget that.

This show was double cast, with the cast reviewed performing again March 13. The other cast performs March 7 and 14.

• Did you see the other cast? Tell us how it went by commenting below, or chime in on the performance reviewed.

The University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra rehearsed the UK Opera Theatre's production of Lucia di Lammermoor March 4, 2009 at the Lexington Opera House. Photos by Rich Copley.

Considering the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra and Women’s Chorus’ recording of George Frederick Mckay’s Epoch: An American Dance Symphony came out five months ago, you’d think all the reviews would be in.

But orchestra director John Nardolillo, chorus director Lori Hetzel and the student musicians got a pleasant surprise late last week with yet another rave review, this one from Fanfare, one of the leading classical music publications.

John Nardolillo

“The performance by Nardolillo and his presumably student orchestra is first-rate,” wrote critic Ronald E. Grames. “If I had not known, I would have assumed both the orchestra and chorus to be professional.”

Grames also gave McKay’s piece a ringing endorsement.

“The fourth CD of McKay’s music, issued as part of Naxos’s American Classics label, is arguably the most important to date,” he writes. “Forgotten since its highly successful premiere, Epoch , An American Dance Symphony was conceived as an ambitious theater piece evoking, through music, vivid staging, and dance, the work of four American poets: Edgar Allen Poe, Sidney Lanier, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg.”

The album was recorded in the Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall in 2007 and released on Naxos Records in September 2008.

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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