Vampire Weekend
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
Thank you "All Songs Considered."
Evil Urges
My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges
More great stuff outta Louisville.
A Grand Night for Singing opens this weekend at the Singletary Center for the Arts. In our story for today's paper, we talked about the talented "brain trust" that puts Grand Night together from scratch, every year. To compliment that, photographer and producer Emily Spence and I went out to talk to some of the singers about the tunes they get to share and the town and gown camaraderie of Grand Night.
The University of Wind Ensemble's flight from Cincinnati to Chicago, United Flight 191, was canceled this morning, and the ensemble will spend an extra day in Cincinnati before departing Tuesday morning for Chicago and then Shanghai.
Cindy Stewart-Birdwell, wife of ensemble director John Cody Birdwell, addressed the delay and cancellation of their first concert due to China's three-day mourning period for victims of last Monday's earthquake in a post on her blog:
" . . . not to worry. We must simply stay another day in our rather comfy hotel here in Cincinnati...not a bad deal really, extra rest is now possible, and we have beautiful surroundings in which to idle the day away . . . all we're really missing is an extra day of sightseeing in and around Shanghai, and that's unfortunate, but it could have been worse. We will arrive at 2 p.m. with a free day and evening in front of us. Tired, needing to stretch and anxious to get into our hotel, we'll just take it easy and go with the flow."
In this video, UK Wind Ensemble director John Cody Birdwell and a couple of students discuss the group's upcoming trip to China. Video by Amy Jones, courtesy of UK Public Relations.
This morning, 67 students faculty and friends of the University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble are winging their way west -- Or, should we say far east? -- to China. The journey will take the UK band on a six city tour of the country that is eagerly anticipating the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics while simultaneously mourning the devastating earthquake that struck Central China a week ago today.
We've got a story about the trip, how it came about and what's going to happen, in today's paper and at LexGo.com.
We've added a photo album of pictures taken by the Herald-Leader's Whitney Waters at events leading up to the trip.
If you'd like to follow along, Cindy Stewart-Birdwell, wife of Wind Ensemble director John Cody Birdwell, is blogging about the experience.
Click the play button below to hear John Mackey's Turbine from the UK Wind Ensemble's Distilled in Kentucky, the CD that was a key to earning the offer to play in China.
Click here to hear UK President Lee Todd's interview of Birdwell for WUKY's UK Perspectives program.
Wu Han (center) and David Finckel (right) at Shaker Village last year with their daughter Lilian. Photo courtesy of Finckel and Han.
Last year, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center participated in a pioneering effort: The first Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass.
Presented by the Norton Center for the Arts and its director, George Foreman, the fest was held at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, off the beaten path for most concert goers, in a renovated tobacco barn, an atypical venue for musicians more accustomed to cozy concert halls.
And it was a smashing success.
The concerts were sold out, and the chamber music society’s press representative says the musicians haven’t stopped talking about Kentucky.
So, with the second edition upon us, we got on the phone with cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, co-directors of the Chamber Music Society, to talk about the second edition of the festival and their return to the Bluegrass.
Herald-Leader: Tell us about your trip here last year and what made it so great.
David Fickel: The most wonderful thing, besides being in Kentucky, and in such a beautiful place and having such beautiful weather and meeting all the new people and playing for a new audience was being present at the birth of a really exciting new project. These days, when classical music takes root in a new location and blossoms, it’s wonderful news for everybody involved. We also look at our involvement at the Shaker Village there as being something that the Chamber Society is good at, something that we should do, being the kind of organization we are, we should go around and help people start new things because we can present great art in great programs and get people excited.
In the end, we all had a marvelous time. We made a lot of new friends, and we’ve really been thinking about it ever since.
Wu Han: In a regular concert, we usually hit a city and play for an audience of 500 to 2,000 and then we probably split the next morning and hit the next town. That’s a performer’s life.
So, to have the opportunity to base in such a gorgeous environment – it’s inspiring to be in such a pure and spiritual place like the Shaker Village – and to have the opportunity to be involved in a festival is incredibly satisfying. Festival is a place you come to meet people to have exploration, to have a community that has the opportunity to mingle, to eat meals together, to talk and to share a space and exchange ideas. At the end of the festival, we know the presenters very, very well, we get to know the audience, we get to know where to eat locally, we get to hike a little bit and the audience bonded with us. We have so much to share and it’s a very different sensation from just traveling from city to city and doing one night stands. The setting of the Shaker Village is fantastic. I don’t have the TV to distract me with CNN and 30 minutes of updating in my hotel room. And everyday I would wake up in the same place and it is very close to nature and I get to meet my audience in the daytime.
That’s unusual for musicians and I think it’s unusal for the audience to be that close to the musicians.
And playing the tobacco barn is so unusual. It’s very close to the earthiness of what we do using the chamber music form and its intimacy. It’s a project I really treasure.
Q: Last year, before you came, you said you were curious as to what the venue was going to look like. How did the tobacco barn turn out as a place to play?
WH: I loved it. To have a little bit of cowbell and the birds flying around the Dvorak Piano Quintet is not a bad thing at all.
University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble director John Cody Birdwell is taking his wife and kids along on the group's forthcoming trip to China, and said wife, 
Cindy Stewart-Birdwell (photo, right), is contributing to the effort by maintaining a blog about the experience.
Thus far, Stewart-Birdwell's HigherView blog has been about the stresses of prepping for the trip around the world that starts Sunday night.
But in view of recent events in China, her Monday post had the chilling note that according to an original schedule for the trip, when Monday's earthquake occurred, the Wind Ensemble would have been in Chengdu, about 60 miles from the epicenter. She writes:
"Life is fragile, this we know, so in the words of Leonard Bernstein, 'This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.'"
Click here to read Stewart-Birdwell's blog. I'll also set a link to it in the left-hand column here for the duration of the trip, May 19-29.
Over the weekend, we'll have a full report on the trip in the Herald-Leader and at LexGo.
University of Kentucky trumpet professor Mark Clodfelter (left) performs with the UK Wind Ensemble, conducted by Cody Birdwell (right), at a April 20 concert previewing the Ensemble's upcoming trip to China. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Whitney Waters.
As the University of Kentucky Wind Ensemble is gearing up for its tour of China, from May 19 to 29, it is still in the process of raising funds for the journey.
“This is obviously not the best year to be trying to raise additional funds for a trip like this,” UK bands director John Cody Birdwell said, referring to the faltering economy and budget-tightening at the university.
But it’s also the one chance for the band to go be part of a cultural event leading up to the Beijing Olympics.
The trip will take place regardless of the state of fund-raising at take-off, but the band is still seeking donations. Tax deductible contributions can be made to the University of Kentucky Bands Alumni and Friends, 33 Fine Arts Building, Lexington, KY 40506-0022. For more information, call the band office at (859) 257-2263.
Daniel Thomas Davis sat down for a chat at Third Street Stuff to discuss a new piece he is writing for the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington. Copyrighted photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.
After a successful debut in 2007 with works by masters such as Mozart and Beethoven, the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington will have a composition of its own this year.
Musician Daniel Thomas Davis will be the composer-in-residence at the festival, Aug. 27 to 31, and his new piano quintet will premiere Aug. 30.
"The idea was for me to come down here and somehow be prompted by the people and the place," Davis said over coffee at Third Street Stuff.
To that end, he came to Lexington in February and spent a week with festival creator Charlie Stone, who ferried him around the region to soak up local color and sound.
"We had gone to Shakertown," Davis recalled, "and the Shakers have a long musical history.
"It was a frighteningly cold morning, and no one was there. And I remember this incident: I was standing in the meetinghouse all by myself, and I whistled. I got this amazing echo — not a big stadium echo, but far more colorful. It came back with a very different color from where it started."
Davis initially met Stone in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where the composer was an artist-in-residence at the legendary Yaddo Colony artists' retreat.
It was the latest in a career of numerous honors for the composer, who has bachelor's degrees from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Johns Hopkins University and a master's from the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has studied composition with well-known writers such as William Bolcom, Peter Maxwell Davies and Jennifer Higdon. His most successful composition to date is To Canaan's fair and happy land, which has been performed more than 75 times and has been excerpted on radio in the United States and Europe.
Manhattan Transfer -- (L-R) Tim Hauser, Janis Siegel, Cheryl Bentyne and Alan Paul -- will perform a Christmas show with conductor John Nardolillo and a small local Orchestra as part of the Singletary Center's Signature Series.
A jazz legend and another marquee soloist for the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra are highlights of the Signature Series lineup at UK’s Singletary Center for the Arts. If the name sounds new, center director Michael Grice says that’s because he aimed to combine some of the best elements of the center’s several series — Corner on Classics, Turning the Corner and even Spotlight Jazz — into one series that would offer a broad spectrum of artists.
Leading off the season will be trumpet celebrity Wynton Marsalis (photo, left) and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, on Oct. 4. For Valentine’s Day, the UK Symphony Orchestra will perform with hot young violinist Gil Shaham (photo, right), who will play Igor Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto in D, which he will perform five days later with the Cleveland Orchestra.
“If we can get artists here, not just to perform, but also match them with students and faculty, that’s nurturing the arts in our community,” 
said Grice, who paired the UK Symphony with cello legend Lynn Harrell last season.
Grice said that UK Symphony director John Nardolillo and a small orchestra of local musicians will accompany The Manhattan Transfer in its Christmas concert here, on Dec. 20.
Here’s the full schedule of concerts, most of which are on weekend nights:
Tickets for the series go on sale at 10 a.m. Monday, May 5, at the Singletary Center ticket office. Call (859) 257-4929 or go to www.singletarytickets.com. The center has changed its fee structure for the series, pricing tickets according to seat location instead of by status such as student, UK faculty and staff, etc.
“All the same prices are still available,” Grice said. “It’s just according to where you sit now.” He said that brings the Singletary Center’s pricing policies in line with most other performing arts centers and even groups that use the Singletary Center, such as the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra.
The center will offer five ticket packages, from all eight concerts to three shows, and ranging in price from $88 to $272. For complete pricing information and an order form, go to the Singletary Center website.
Lexington Philharmonic music director George Zack soaks in a roaring ovation during his third curtain call after conducting his final performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Below: Zack and pre-show interrogator Joe Tackett. Copyrighted photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.
Don't miss our audio slide show of Zack and the Singers.
Read Loren Tice's review of Friday's Philharmonic concert.
Notes from an emotional and exciting night in the Singletary Center:
~ Conducting his next to last concert as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic and his last with longtime collaborators the Lexington Singers, George Zack worked hard to main his composure during the evening. Speaking both at a reception before the concert to announce the final slate of candidates to succeed him and in remarks to the pre-show and concert audience, Zack choked up, particularly when talking about his wife Kerry.
At the reception, he credited her as being the key to his success and said, "every day has been a honeymoon."
Asked by pre-show audience member Dennis Potts what his favorite piece to conduct was, he replied, "It would be the program that thrills my wife. Anytime I conduct a slow movement, I'm singing to her."
When he took the stage for the concert, Zack was greeted by a thunderous standing ovation. When it had quieted down, he demurely asked, "Have we played the concert, yet?" Zack than deferred to the orchestra saying, "We all have to work together, or we make no music," and attributed the orchestra's success to the community.
This is not to say there weren't moments of joy and levity. Zack said he chose the evening's program, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, "Choral" because they were happy joyful pieces, and he wanted to go out on an up note.
Continue reading "Philharmonic notebook: The 9th and the final 5" »
The Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra has unveiled a list of five well-traveled conductors who will be vying to succeed George Zack as its music director.
The four men and one woman, whose names were announced Friday night, will join the quintet of candidates who auditioned this past season, bring the total field to 10.
“Both this and next season have very strong groups of candidates,” said Larry C. Deener, president of the Philharmonic's Board of Directors.
Most musicians in the 2008-09 slate have experience as assistant conductors or similar posts with major metropolitan orchestras, worked with marquee conductors and participated in the American Symphony Orchestra League’s National Conductor Preview.
“They’re all early in their careers and on their way up,” said search committee co-chairman John Carpenter Jr.
Zack, who worked with all of the candidates to schedule the repertoire for next season, said, “The committee has done an extremely good job for this season and for next. Each of the candidates is extremely courteous, easy to work with, positive and intelligent.”
The orchestra announced the five hopefuls at an event prior to Friday night’s season finale concert, which featured Zack conducting the philharmonic and Lexington Singers in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, “Choral.”
They are:
■ Scott Terrell, who will conduct on Oct. 24: Terrell is the resident conductor of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina, and has conducted numerous times at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, one of the nation’s leading multi-disciplinary arts festivals; and its companion, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He is also director of education programs for the orchestra and has extensive experience conducting opera.
■ Jeffrey Pollock, who will conduct Nov. 21: Pollock is the associate conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas and is a graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. He also served as assistant conductor of the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra in Raleigh and was the founder and music director of San Francisco’s Amphion Ensemble.
■ Morihiko Nakahara, who will conduct Jan. 23: Nakahara currently serves as associate conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony in Florida and the Spokane Symphony in Washington. He previously was music director of the Holland Symphony Orchestra in Michigan. Nakahara is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and has received a Bruno Walter Associate Conductor Chair and Career Development grant for Spokane.
■ Alastair Willis, who will conduct Feb. 13: Jobs in Cincinnati appear frequently on Willis’ resume: He is a past associate conductor of Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras and music director of the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra. He also served as assistant and resident conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 2000 to 2003, has conducted orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and New York Philharmonic and conducted for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project at Ma’s invitation.
■ Mei-Ann Chen, who will conduct March 27: Chen assumed the post of assistant conductor of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra last fall and also had guest conducting gigs with the Baltimore and Colorado symphonies. She served four seasons as music director of Oregon’s Portland Youth Philharmonic and two seasons as assistant conductor of the Oregon Symphony. Chen made history at the New England Conservatory of Music by becoming the first student to receive dual master’s degrees, in conducting and violin.
The conductors who auditioned this past season were:
■ Kayoko Dan, assistant conductor of Arizona’s Phoenix Symphony.
■ Alexander Platt, whose primary post is music director of Wisconsin’s Waukesha Symphony Orchestra.
■ Darryl One, music director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Texas.
■ Daniel Meyer, whose primary post resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
■ Alfred Savia, music director of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra in Indiana.
The 2008-09 season will be bookended by Zack’s final concert as conductor of the philharmonic, on Sept. 12; and an April 17 concert with the Lexington Singers that currently does not have a conductor scheduled.
Carpenter said the April concert is the target date for announcing the winning conductor.
“We would like to be able to announce and have on stage that night the winning candidate,” Carpenter said.
“Right now, we’re asking for flexibility from our board, our musicians and our audience on that concert,” Deener said. “We want to make the search exciting to the end.”
Two of the the Lexington Philharmonic's music director candidates were also in the running for the podium at the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra. But the Arizona orchestra left Alexander Platt and Darryl One alone, 
opting instead to go with Elizabeth Schulze (photo, left), conductor of the Maryland Symphony. Interesting crossing of paths here: If you Google Schulze, you find that last year she was also a candidate for music director of the Erie Philharmonic in Pennsylvania, a post that was eventually won by Daniel Meyer, Mr. February in the Lexington Philharmonic's search.
This all goes to the point that even if One or Platt had been tapped by Flagstaff, it does not take them out of the running here. But, it also means neither is adding something to their plate at the moment making them less available, should Lexington come calling next Spring.
By the way, the Philharmonic's next slate of candidates will be revealed Friday night prior to the season finale concert.
The fourth movement of Leonard Bernstein's historic performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Berlin in 1989. This video is in four parts. The other portions should appear as options after the first part finishes playing.
Click here for an outstanding audio tour of Beethoven's Ninth by Rob Kapilow for WNYC. It's nearly an hour, but it is well worth the time.
The question is one of the Rorschach tests of popular culture: If you were dropped on a desert island for the rest of your life and could only have one album to listen to, what would it be?
That was a tough question back in my school days.
Which Talking Heads album to take? Or R.E.M., U2 or someone else?
That was then.
Now, it’s easy to answer, though it’s none of the answers I had before.
Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, “Choral” — aka the Ode to Joy.
No other answer makes sense when you can pack the greatest piece of music in the world.
We all get another chance to hear the masterpiece on Friday night, when the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra and Lexington Singers perform the Ninth under the baton of music director George Zack.
It will be Zack’s last time conducting the philharmonic with the Lexington Singers. The retiring maestro’s final concert as music director of the Phil won’t be until Sept. 12, but he couldn’t leave without taking another crack at this masterpiece.
Composer David Holsinger, whose latest work will be premiered by the Tiger Symphonic Band at Georgetown College April 24. Photo courtesy of David Holsinger.
David Holsinger’s name might not rank up there with Gershwin or Copland in the household name department, but mention it to almost anyone in the world of concert bands, and their eyes light up.
That’s why Georgetown College’s Tiger Symphonic Band is giddy that it is playing the world premiere of Holsinger’s latest composition, Legacy Music, at its spring concert Thursday. Because of a prior commitment, the composer, based at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn., can’t be in Georgetown for the concert. But we asked him a few questions via e-mail.
Q: How did you become interested in composing band music?
A:
A few years ago I had the privilege of writing a chapter in the first
volume of a book set entitled: Composers on Composing for Band from
GIA in Chicago. Your first question can probably be best answered if I
simply extract a portion of that chapter:
I've attended Central Methodist College in Fayette, Missouri, Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, and the University of Kansas at Lawrence. At the last two the study of composition was my primary goal. However, it was an incident at that first small college that set me on the course I travel today.
In the 1950's and 60's, Central Methodist College was a hotbed for music education graduates. Although very small, with fewer than 1000 students, the college seemed to produce an inordinate number of very good instrumental and vocal educators for the state's public schools. Almost every music teacher I had in public school had been a graduate of CMC. Somewhere along the way, I just knew it was the place for me. I went to Central Methodist to become “the music teacher.”
However, I discovered one thing about my career choice very early in my education. In comparison to all my classmates, their desire to be a music teacher was CONSIDERABLY GREATER than my desire to be a music teacher. But, music was all I knew and, of course, everyone back home DID have my future all figured out. Who was I to argue? I was having a great time being a college guy, so why buck the system? In the spring of my junior year, everything changed.
The Lexington Philharmonic's 2008-09 season will include music by Osvaldo Golijov, Feb. 13, the first time the popular contemporary composer's work has appeared on a Philharmonic program. Photo by Sebastien Chambert from osvaldogolijov.com.
It feels somewhat appropriate the Lexington Philharmonic went up against Gypsy this weekend, because the orchestra has been slowly revealing its 2008-09 season. First, we got concert dates, then we found out about the program for George Zack's final concert on the podium as music director. Now, we get the music and soloists for all but one concert.
A lot of this year's candidates have talked about balancing seasons of new music and standard repertoire, and several of next season's concerts do that, including the programming of music by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, who is known for his scores of Godzilla movies, and Osvaldo Golijov, whose work is often performed by Kronos Quartet and who recently scored Francis ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth. Fans of the traditional classical canon won't want to miss the March 27 lineup of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms.
The season's final layer will be removed April 25, when the remaining candidates to succeed George Zack will be unveiled. The hopefuls will be conducting all but two of next season's concerts, with the announcement of the winner, and our next music director, expected to come next spring. Here's what they will be playing, and who they will be performing with:
Sept. 12: George Zack, conductor; Aaron Rosand, violin -- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto; Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 1.
Oct. 24: Hai-Ye Ni (photo, right), cello -- Ottorino Respighi, The Birds; Franz Joseph Haydn, Cello Concerto; Sir Edward Elgar, Serenade in e minor; Zoltan Kodaly, Dances of Galanta.
Nov. 21: Conrad Tao, piano -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, selections from Idomeneo: ballet music; Dmitri Shostakovich, Piano Concerto No. 1; Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (Eroica).
Dec. 19: Jefferson Johnson, conductor; Lexington Singers and soloists -- George Frideric Handel, Messiah.
Jan. 23: Daniel Mason, violin, and viola soloist TBA -- Akira Ifukube, Ballata Sinfonica; Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola; Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No. 6.
Feb. 13: Yolanda Kondonassis (photo, right), harp -- Osvaldo Golijov, Last Round; Alberto Ginastera, Harp Concerto; Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 (Pastorale).
March 27: Andre Laplante, piano -- Beethoven, Leonore Overture No. 3; Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 21; Brahms, Symphony No. 4.
April 17: Lexington Singers -- Gabriel Faure Pavane and Requiem; Beethoven Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus and Choral Fantasy.
Alfred Savia takes questions from the audience in a pre-concert chat prior to his conducting gig with the Lexington Philharmonic. (Below) Moderator Joe Tackett finally got an answer he liked on the bass concerto question. Copyrighted photo by Rich Copley | Lexington Herald-Leader.
Think Alfred Savia was scared last night, conducting a concert with the Lexington Philharmonic that was essentially an audition to become the orchestra's new music director?
Well, consider this from early in Savia's career: At 22, when he was in graduate school, he conducted at a festival of Leonard Bernstein's music, with Bernstein in attendance.
"One of the first public performances I ever had was conducting one of Bernstein's pieces with him in the audience, looking over my left shoulder," Savia recalled at last night's pre-concert chat. "No pressure."
Are you talking about this Lexington gig? Because, you know, conducting Lenny for Lenny would seem to raise the bar for pressure pretty darned high. Like all his predecessors in the search for George Zack's successor, Savia sat for a chat with LPO bassist and librarian Joe Tackett to answer questions before the concert. Out of this season's five contenders, he came across as the least scripted, pulling memories from a career that only appears to be confined to the South and Midwest.
"Tell us about your studies in Siena," a member of the audience asked.
"Ah, now you've tapped another one of my passions, which is Italy," Savia responded. "It's one of those great Tuscan hill towns."
He went on to talk about the Siena, its history and his work there in terms as clear and concise as the concert he conducted an hour later, even drawing a comparison to the town he's vying to become a part of: "The one thing Siena has in common with Lexington is horses. You have the Kentucky Derby, and you raise all these horses here. And at the Piazza del Campo, which has all these cobblestones, they pack dirt around the whole perimeter of the piazza, which is a huge piazza, and they put barriers around the inside of the piazza, and on the outside are all the buildings. And on that pathway, they have this horse race. But it's more than a horse race. It's medieval pageantry, and they dress as they would have in medieval times, and its opulent costumes . . . The race only takes a minute or two, but there's all the pageantry."
In our compressed American sense of time, it sounds somewhat akin to donning a seersucker suit or a wild hat sipping a julep.
On the podium, Savia cut the figure of the football player he once was before a coach told him to choose between the gridiron or clarinet. He usually worked the edges of the stand toward the orchestra, rarely spending more than a second in the middle as he conducted. Make sure to read Loren Tice's review at LexGo.
Savia proved to have the best solution to the question of when to talk to the audience, utilizing the stage changeover time between the first and second pieces on the first half of the concert. He relayed some interesting information about the configuration of the orchestra for Ralph Vaughn Williams' Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and gave the Niles Quartet the recognition it richly deserved. Using the changeover, when we're usually left to watch stagehands work, was an effective approach to talking to the crowd. But if Savia is hired or comes back, he and the orchestra might want to choreograph it better. Giving the hands room to work made Savia prowl the dark edge of the stage. Some people I was sitting near seemed oblivious to the fact someone was in front of the crowd with a microphone and kept on chattering with each other. A spotlight may have highlighted that Savia was back out front.
There was one great moment for pre-show emcee Tackett. After a season of being stymied on his question about how many bass concertos each candidate will program, Savia said, "Ask who my first soloist was in Evansville, this season."
The answer was bassist extraordinaire Edgar Meyer, who played two concertos. Regardless of how anyone else felt, Savia undoubtedly earned some bass cred last night.
The University of Kentucky Women’s Choir will present a benefit concert at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Hillary Boone Center to support its trip to the 
Music Educators National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
The invitation to perform at the conference is one of two prestigious honors that director Lori Hetzel and the Women’s Choir have received this year. The group also has been invited to perform for the Southern Region Division of the American Choral Directors Association.
The fund-raiser will feature UK Opera Theatre star Brandy Lynn Hawkins, performing selections from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, and Megan McCauley, one of the winners of the 2007 Alltech competition. The concert also will feature a new spiritual by Roger Holland II, renowned composer for the Harlem Boys and Girls choirs, and UK professor Noemi Lugo singing two unpublished Venezuelan works.
In the copyrighted 2003 file photo, above, Hetzel readied the Women's Choir for a trip to sing at Carnegie Hall. Want any more evidence these ladies are good?
Alfred Savia conducts the Lexington Philharmonic in a Tuesday night rehearsal. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photos by David Stephenson.
Tonight, Lexington gets to meet candidate No. 5 to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic, and he's the closest neighbor of the first audition season.
Alfred Savia hails from Evansville, Ind., where he has been the music director of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra for 19 years. In fact, some mutual players between the Evansville and Lexington Phils were among those who tipped Savia to the Lexington gig, and suggested he might be good for the group.
This evening, he'll take the Lexington Philharmonic out for a test drive at the Singletary Center for the Arts, conducting Gioacchino Rossini's Semiramide Overture, Ralph Vaughan Williams Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8.
Earlier this week, we sat down with Savia at Buddy's for a chat about his music and his interest in Lexington. Here's a transcript of a portion of that interview.
Copious Notes: You easily have the longest tenure at one post of any of the candidates that have come through this season.
Alfred Savia: It's worked out that way. It's fortunate for me to have had a lot of other activities to balance with that. For six of those years, I was the associate conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony.
For three years, I was involved in bringing the orchestra in Orlando back to life. I was associate conductor many years ago when they had a full-time orchestra there, and I was the artistic director as they were emerging. In Indianapolis, even though there were six years formally as associate conductor, I continue to conduct quite frequently there. I was just on the phone with them about some of their summer programs. I do at least half of their summer season, still.
And I have sort of reconnected with the orchestra in New Orleans, where I was resident conductor before Evansville and Indianapolis. I just came back from my third time there since Katrina. Evansville has been a really wonderful base. It's a position that gives me time to do a lot of other things, as well.
CN: How has the New Orleans orchestra fared since Katrina?
AS: It actually had a rough time before Katrina, and one could have thought Katrina would have been the ultimate blow, but it's actually been the opposite. They've really rallied. When I was resident conductor in New Orleans, it was called the New Orleans Symphony. I went there really with the knowledge that things were precarious financially. The executive director was very open. He was a friend of mine and really wanted me to come and the orchestra wanted me there. But he also warned me, and his warnings turned out to be quite true. Fortunately, for myself, I found another position. But that orchestra was teetering many years and eventually did fold. The last concert they gave as the New Orleans Symphony -- before they had a hiatus of 14 months and then began playing again and eventually went under -- I conducted a family series and we added the the Farewell Symphony and had the musicians leave one by one. CNN covered it, and there was all kinds of national attention for that.
But eventually the orchestra reformed and is run as a cooperative orchestra. The board is 50 percent musicians, 50 percent business leaders and community leaders. With most orchestras, the board is non musicians. In this case, it's a cooperative. It took them a while to get a season going. They would just say, 'We're going to get as much work as we can put together and subdivide the pie.' Then Katrina hit, and of course they canceled a major part of the season, the whole first part of 2005 and '06, and they started it up again, I think, around March, and that's when I went in . . . They subsequently invited me back last season and just again this season.
CN: What has made Evansville a great base for you?
AS: Well, first, it's a great orchestra.
George Zack, shown conducting his last performance of Handel's Messiah, just announced the lineup for his last concert. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photo by Charles Bertram.
Last week, we got word on who will play and what will be played on George Zack's final concert conducting the Lexington Philharmonic as its music director, on Sept. 12: violinist Aaron Rosand playing Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68.
So, why those pieces and this soloist? We asked Maestro Zack if he could talk about his choices in an e-mail. Here is his reply:
Why Aaron Rosand?: He was a very young artist when I was in school at Wichita State University in the late sixties. His performance was with the Wichita Symphony under James P. Robertson and he played the Sibelius Violin Concerto. He so impressed me with his musicianship and violin skills that I vowed one day to have an orchestra worthy of his appearance. I arrived in Lexington in September 1972 but all the soloists for the coming season had already been selected by the artistic committee. That was necessary in order to secure dates for artists that usually worked a year or two in advance of the coming season. That meant 1973-74 was the first time I was able to hire artists of my choice. The spring of 1973, I attended the Symphony League's national conference and studied the rosters of artist managements looking for Mr. Rosand. I found him and approached his management with the following introduction: "I would like to hire the finest violinist in the world for next season!" Jacques Leisser, his manager, quickly replied, "that would be Aaron Rosand." I answered back, "you're right, now let's talk dates and fee." Since I was new to my position, Jacques made Aaron available to us at a very low fee that would not cripple the LPO budget. We settled on a date and fee and Jacques asked what piece I would select. "Sibelius." He agreed and away we went on a history that included all the major concerti covering three centuries. We have since become fast friends and share many mutual friends here in Lexington and Florida.
Why the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto?: When I realized that my last concert was going to be this September, I called Aaron personally and asked him if he would consider playing with us again for my final appearance on the podium. He immediately agreed. I gave him his choice of works to perform and his immediate answer was "Tchaikovsky." That, in short, was the way that came about.
Why the Brahms First Symphony?: As to the selection of the major symphony on the program, Brahms First Symphony in C Minor for me was the obvious choice! When I arrived in February/March of 1972 to guest conduct as a candidate for the position with the LPO, my program consisted of The Freischutz Overture of Weber, the Bruch Violin Concerto, and Brahms First. I wanted to add a bit of Greek symmetry to my career here by ending my last concert with what I started with, hence, Brahms. I have always felt the work gave the orchestra a magnificent vehicle with which to demonstrate musicianship as well as technical prowess. It also would give me an opportunity to hear just what I was getting into as far as the ensemble's willingness to work, ability to perform a major work, and to assess the various sections of the orchestra. With this as my last work, the audience can now hear this marvelous ensemble they have in their midst and know that is more than worthy of support into the future.
This week, we’ll see Alfred Savia of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra in Indiana, the fifth and final candidate this season for music director of the Lexington Philharmonic. The two-year search will end next spring after another season with up to six auditions.
But it’s not as if the four candidates we’ve already seen went home and are sitting by their phones, waiting for Lexington to call. They’ve been busy conducting, announcing seasons, even trying out for other jobs. Here’s a rundown of what’s been up with them:
Kayoko Dan: In terms of media coverage of her activities, Dan, who auditioned in October, has been the quietest candidate. According to a short profile published in January in The Arizona Republic, Dan’s primary duties as assistant conductor of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra have been leading school and “People’s Pops” concerts.
Alexander Platt: The November guest conductor just signed a five-year contract extension with the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin that will take him through the 2012-13 season. We should note that in the orchestra conducting world, music directors often hold more than one post, and his new contract in Wisconsin in no way puts him out of the running for the Lexington job.
He is also in the running for the music directorship of the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra in Arizona, where on March 7 he conducted a program including Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3, which he also conducted here. Platt also has continued his first season as principal conductor of the Boca Raton Symphonia.
Darryl One: Three other orchestras are considering One, who auditioned this season in Flagstaff; Midland, Mich.; and Beaumont, Texas. All of those orchestras are making decisions this spring. At his current post, One wraps up another season with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Texas in late April.
Daniel Meyer: The candidate who auditioned in February has been announced as a finalist for two music director posts in Virginia — Fairfax and Richmond — as well as in Fort Wayne, Ind.
He also is continuing his regular duties as music director of the Asheville Symphony in North Carolina and Erie Philharmonic in Pennsylvania and as resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.
Alfred Savia: This week, in Lexington, he’ll conduct an all-orchestra concert of Giacchino Rossini’s Semiramide Overture, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.
Earlier this month, Savia was back in an old stomping ground, conducting the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. He once was resident conductor of the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra.
We’ll have more on Savia, as we have with the other conductor candidates, later this week at LexGo.com and in Friday’s Weekender.
Meanwhile, what else is up with our conductor search?
The names of the remaining candidates will be revealed at an event before the April 25 season finale, featuring outgoing director George Zack conducting the Philharmonic and Lexington Singers inWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.
Zack’s final concert will be Sept. 12, with violin soloist Aaron Rosand, and the program will feature Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68. The rest of the season is expected to feature guest conductors, save for the annual performance of Handel’s Messiah in December, to be conducted by Lexington Singers music director Jefferson Johnson. By this time next year, we should be close to knowing who will succeed Zack.
Cellist Yo-Yo Ma is one of classic music’s few marquee names among those who aren’t ardent fans of the genre. He’s become an unqualified star through frequent appearances on television and in movie scores,
and a number of cross-genre recordings, including a pair of Appalachian projects (Appalachian Journey and Appalachia Waltz) with fiddler Mark O’Connor and bassist Edgar Meyer.
Ma comes to Danville on Sunday, but not to sit in the spotlight alone. He’ll be the cellist in a quartet made up of longtime colleagues Jonathan Gandelsman, Colin Jacobsen and Nicholas Cords. They will perform a concert of works from Central Europe and the Mediterranean, including Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 and works by contemporary composers such as Giovanni Sollima and Tigran Mansurian.
We took the opportunity of having Ma (photo, above, by Steven Danelian) on the phone last week to talk about a number of things regarding his work and music. Here are excerpts from that chat.
The photos, below, in descending order are Jonathan Gandelsman by Amber Darragh, Colin Jacobsen by Todd Rosenberg and Nicholas Cords by Ingrid Hertfelder.
Q: Being here in Central Kentucky, I
think a lot of people know and love the Appalachian projects you recorded with
Edgar Meyer and Mark O’Connor.
A: I love those people and I learned so much from them. The
music is so fabulous, I feel really lucky to have had a chance to work with
them in depth 
and over a good period of time. I obviously still keep in touch
with them.
Q: Did that bring you to this part of the country very much?
A: Yes, to 
beautiful musician, and very loyal to the state.
Q: What has been the enduring effect of the Appalachian projects in your music and your playing?
A: It opened so many new worlds to me. The idea of two things: One is trans-national music, the whole idea which Edgar and Mark explained to me is that you have the Scottish-Irish music going down to Canada, to Cape Breton, to Appalachia, to Texas fiddling style. It’s an unbroken line where the music is performed differently and in different times, but really, it’s that kind of flow of music for hundreds of years. The second thing is the oral-tradition part, learned and passed on from generation to generation with such devotion and fun and passion.
Q: Was that a jumping-off point? Because certainly you have done numerous other cultural explorations. When did you get interested in exploring distinctive cultural music?
A: I was always interested in exploring all music. I never thought in terms of categories, I just thought within classical music there are so many different styles in terms of both time and geography. How do you go back 300 years and advocate for someone who was writing in that particular voice? What kind of context is it?
This CNN clip, an interview with Christiane Amanpour, is a good wrapup of the event, the music and the politics surrounding it.
Classical music fans had to love hearing a steady stream of CNN promos over the weekend for coverage of the New York Philharmonic. The original 24-hour news station put ace foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour on the story of the orchestra's historic visit to Pyongyang this week, telling you just what a big deal this event was.
News outlets around the world were all over the story, bringing the sounds of Georgie Gershwin and Antonin Dvorak to news broadcasts. And it was covered in a variety of ways. Trying to soak up coverage, her were some of my favorite takes:
~ The New York Times' classical music reporter Dan Wakin has been filing thorough blog posts on the visit.
~ Writer and critic Steve Smith has been filing for his own Night After Night blog as well as links to his coverage for Symphony magazine and Time Out New York. I particularly like the wide-eyed nature of these posts from a reporter who never thought he'd be on an assignment like this.
~ NPR Music has been covering the event, including an excellent report from Anthony Kuhn for Tuesday's edition of All Things Considered.
At the pre-show chat before Friday night's Lexington Philharmonic concert, a member of the audience asked guest conductor Daniel Meyer what his impression of Lexington was.
"Slick," he said with a grin.
"When I left my home in Pittsburgh, I thought, 'You don't need your hat and gloves, you're going to Lexington,'" said Meyer (photo, left, by Rich Copley). "And I've been freezing."
Chat moderator Joe Tackett demurred, "We do have summer."
Indeed, this week's icy weather played havoc with the rehearsal schedule for Meyer's concert with the LPO, essentially an audition to succeed George Zack as music director or the orchestra. The winter weather Thursday night, which had WLEX boasting it had more than 400 closings and cancellations up on its website, also torpedoed the dress rehearsal for Friday's concert, as well as several other events.
So, Friday at 5 p.m., just three hours before the downbeat, Meyer was on stage at the Singletary Center conducting that final dress.
"That's a lot of playing for one day," Tackett, a Philharmonic bass player and frequent Copious Notes commenter said before the concert. "We'll see how it goes."
Check Loren Tice's review for his take on how it went.
It was a concert of familiar works with the Barber Adagio and Dvorak New World Symphony on the program, as well as a dramatic take on the Schumann