Copious Notes

Philharmonic notebook: The 9th and the final 5

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.

Philharmonic music director search: The Next 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.”

Flagstaff leaves LexPhil candidates alone

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.

Philharmonic '08-09 music and soloists

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.

Contact the Philharmonic for season ticket information.

Concert notes: Alfred Savia

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.

Click here to tell the Phil what you thought of Savia.

Introducing Alfred Savia

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.

The Philharmonic's busy candidates

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.

Philharmonic candidate's 'icy' reception

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 Piano Concerto, with soloist Sara Buechner kicking off her shoes to play the piece.

The tension of the afternoon rehearsal didn't really show on Meyer, 36, when he took the Singletary stage for the pre-show chat.

The resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and music director of the orchestras in Erie, Penn., and Ashville, N.C., breezily talked about his background, growing up the son of a music educator in Cleveland. In fact, Meyer's mom and other family members from Ohio were in the hall Friday night for the concert.

Tackett joked that a famous musician had once written, "Beware the conductor who brings his own audience."

Meyer did also give Tackett the most decisive rebuff to his standard question of how many bass concertos the prospective conductor would program: "Bass concertos are a scourge, and should never be played," Meyer said with an evil grin.

Meyer did address the concert audience briefly after intermission, mainly talking about the high points of the New World Symphony, and even giving the audience a taste of his trained singing voice by singing a few bars of the spiritual Goin' Home, the central tune of Dvorak's American masterpiece.

While the weather outside was frightful, Meyer clearly had warmed to Lexington and its orchestra, closing the pre-show saying, "Lexington is rich not only in wealth, but also in great human beings."

Weigh in: Did you go to the show? Click here to tell the Phil what you thought of Meyer.

Introducing Daniel Meyer

Daniel Meyer conducts this Lexington Philharmonic in a rehearsal Feb. 18 at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Copyrighted LexGo photos by David Stephenson.

Daniel Meyer has had a transitory relationship with Kentucky. Namely, he's mostly seen the Commonwealth while passing through en route from Knoxville, where he was once the assistant conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, to his family home of Ohio. So, when hot browns came up over lunch at Dudley's Tuesday afternoon, he wasn't familiar with the Bluegrass State's No. 1 comfort food.

But when it came time to order, Meyer dove in, ordering the Downtown Debbie Brown, Dudley's variation on the Hot Brown, and in true Kentuckian fashion, he promised to eat light for dinner.

This week, Meyer has been getting a heaping helping of the state he used to just pass through as he is the fourth candidate to to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic. Friday night, he'll conduct the orchestra in Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, Antonin Dvorak's New World Symphony and Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto with soloist Sara Buechner.

Meyer's current gigs include resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony and music director of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra. During our lunchtime chat, in between bites of ham, turkey, cheese, etc., Meyer talked about his career, passion for music eduction and desire to settle down. Here's a lightly edited transcript of our interview:

Q: What attracted you to Lexington?

A: I’ve always had an interest in Lexington because I used to drive by it all the time. I used to be the assistant conductor of the Knoxville Symphony and my family lives in Ohio. I have family in Cincinnati and Columbus and Cleveland. And I’d always drive past Lexington in order to get to Knoxville.
I knew about the Philharmonic, and I knew about its reputation and I knew it was a beautiful community and I knew about the connection to UK School of Music, which is really highly regarded. These were all factors that made this an interesting spot. Not to mention that my wife (Mary Persin, photo, right, courtesy of the Biava Quartet) and I are newly married and looking for a place to put down some roots and start a family, somewhere with a decent airport, where we can get to the places that we need to go, because she’s a performing artist, too. She’s a violist in the Biava String Quartet. So, we’re looking for a base of operations. Right now, I have residency in Pittsburgh and she has an apartment in New York City, so we’re looking to consolidate our efforts.

Lexington had a lot of interesting potential.

Q: Driving through, have you had any chances to stop and look around?

A: Just superficially. Nothing substantial.

Q: How did you get interested in music?

A: My mother was a music teacher in public schools. She taught K through six outside of Cleveland. She started all of us singing when were old enough to sing. I’m the oldest of four kids and we all took piano when were in kindergarten or first grade, and we could take up another instrument when we were in third grade. I took up the violin. My sister took the flute, my other sister took the cello and my other brother took the violin.

Darryl One makes his case

Joe Tackett (yes, the Joe Tackett) moderated a pre-show chat with Lexington Philharmonic music director candidate Darryl One (right) before the Jan. 18 concert. Below: One accepts a standing ovation after the show. LexGo photos by Rich Copley.

Museum can be a dirty word in classical music circles.

In a genre struggling to assert its relevance to new audiences, museum usually represents an attitude that the masterworks are museum pieces, merely representative of another place and time.

But, at his pre-concert chat Friday night, Darryl One didn't hesitate to use the term when describing an orchestra's role in its community.

An orchestra, he said, is "a curator of a unique, very wonderful type of museum that doesn't exist in an exhibit, that doesn't exist in a building, but exists as the orchestra plays and makes the soundwaves move out. That's the product of the geniuses of our time, when we think of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and in the case of tonight's concert, Respighi, Poulenc and Tchaikovsky. These were exceptional men with skills and gifts beyond mere mortal men. And to have their minds exposed to us in these wonderful sonic landscapes, that's what an orchestra will get for you  . . . we're the caretakers of that history."

Lest any contemporary music fans fear One is a modern composer hater, he later expressed admiration for contemporary composers such as Michael Torke and film scorers such as John Williams.

One (pronounced OH-nay) was in town as one of the candidates to succeed George Zack as music director of the Philharmonic. He kept his stage patter to a minimum, greeting the audience at the beginning of the second half of the concert. He noted that, as he mainly circulates in Southern Texas and California, he hadn't experienced temperatures like this week's 30s and 20s in a while -- wait'll Sunday morning, Darryl -- but added he'd been warmed by our Kentucky hospitality.

In the first half of the concert, he had a good sense of occasion, making sure local talent and organ soloist Schulyer Robinson got his moment in the spotlight after his performance of Poulenc's Organ Concerto. And the audience gave One a spontaneous standing O at the end of the concert, after a hot rendition of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5. Read Loren Tice's review.

Folks in the hall may have noted something missing from the stage Friday: a conductor's score. Asked about that by pre-show chat by moderator and Philharmonic bassist Joe Tackett, One said he memorizes the scores so, "I can be with the musicians as much as possible."

Nothing between the curator and the art.

Introducing Darryl One

Darryl One, the third candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Philharmonic, leads the orchestra in a rehearsal Monday night. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Joseph Rey Au.

Darryl One had an appointment to meet the press Tuesday, but something else came up: a pickup basketball game.

Invited to play a midday  game at the High Street YMCA, the conductor asked to delay a lunch date for 90 minutes.

Some around here might say the third aspirant to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra has his priorities in the right order. And the maestro, who holds a master’s degree from Indiana University, talks enthusiastically about his excitement at being in yet another basketball hotbed.

But that’s only after a good two hours of chatter about conducting and music while sitting at Cheapside Bar and Grill.

One (pronounced Oh-nay) comes to Lexington from Modesto, Calif., where he was the music director of the Modesto Symphony Orchestra Association until 2005. He still lives there with his wife and two teenage daughters. He is still music director of the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Victoria, Texas. Prior to those jobs, One  was associate conductor of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, Denver Symphony and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. One of the big reasons he likes Lexington is its proximity to his family's home in Chicago and his wife's family in Atlanta.

Our chat was to preview the big concert Friday night, when One takes the podium at the Singletary Center for the Arts to conduct a program of Ottorino Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Suite III, Francis Poulenc's Concerto for Organ and Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5.

Here are a few excerpts from that conversation:

On how he got into music . . .

When I was in high school, math was my, ‘strong suit.’ So, I though that’s what I would want to major in. I was in the high school choir, but I didn’t know too much about music back then. I had played drums in a garage band. We played what was current at that time. This one guitarist liked the Edgar Winter Group, so we did Free Ride and things like that. We played Doobie Brothers. I liked Chicago, but of course, we needed horns like that. These guys wanted to make money, so we tried to be a wedding band and learned things like the Hokey Pokey. It was mostly an opportunity to sock your drums and turn your guitar up high.

In high school I played in the high school jazz band for a while. So, when I went to school, I thought I’d go as a math major and see what I could do with that.

But I wanted to learn more about music. I had drum lessons, but nothing about harmony or theory. So I went to the music department and asked if I could sign up for classes. They were giving placement exams, which were more aural than knowledge, and I scored higher than anybody. So I had to wait a year, because the major section of theory that was being offered that semester was level one, and the theory teacher thought I’d be bored with that. So I came in at level two, and I really liked it.

I thought, maybe I should think about being in music. But I didn’t know exactly what, since I wasn’t a virtuoso violinist or anything. I was a garage band drummer, so I couldn’t make a career at an instrument and performing on it. So I went into composition and liked that. My undergraduate degree was in theory and composition.

But by my senior year, I was assistant to the orchestra for two years and I had already conducted a staged version of Magic Flute. I had the understudy cast for the opera, so I coached them, and as a reward, the conductor gave me the orchestra to do a staged concert version of Magic Flute.
I was a little more enterprising and there was a chamber orchestra and I got wind that the conductor didn’t want to do it. So I went to the head of the music department, and he let me have the chamber orchestra. Now I had a class, and I didn’t have to beg people to play in a pick-up group.

One of the teachers there liked contemporary music, so he put together a contemporary chamber ensemble. But he didn’t want to conduct. He wanted someone else to do it. So, I was director of the contemporary chamber music ensemble, and I had the chamber orchestra, and I was assistant to the orchestra in my senior year, all while being a composition and theory major. Needless to say, I was thinking about conducting more than I was thinking about composing.

2007: Top arts stories

Shakespeare at Equus Run was one of several events launched in the Summer of 2007 to fill the void left by the closing of the Lexington Shakespeare Festival. Herald-Leader/Kentucky.com photo by Matt Goins.

"This is a developing story . . . " is a fairly common phrase in the news biz, and it certainly applies to the arts in Lexington in 2007. When you start thinking back on the big stories of the past year, several of them were stories that carried over from 2006. And heck, some of them won't be resolved by the time this piece is being penned in 2008.

There's quite a bit of evolution and change taking place here, and that usually doesn't easily fit into a calendar year. But evolution and change are also exciting, so let's see what was going on.

Summer reboot: One of the late-breaking stories of 2006 was the dissolution of the Lexington Shakespeare Festival. The arts community responded big time, filling the summer with events including Actors Guild of Lexington's Shakespeare at Equus Run and another festival that swooped into the Arboretum to replace the Shakespeare Festival. The summer also saw the debut of new chamber music festivals at the beginning and end of the season: The Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, featuring the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, at Shakertown and the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington, featuring Lexington native and Chicago Symphony violinist Nathan Cole, at the Fasig-Tipton Sales Pavilion.

This story will continue to develop in 2008. Actors Guild has already decided to pass on presenting a indoor musical, as it did with Kiss Me Kate, this year, and SummerFest will likely look different in its 2008 offerings than it did this year. We'll keep you posted.

The search begins: George Zack is an indisputable institution in the Lexington arts community. So it meant a major change was afoot late last year when he announced he was stepping down as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic after 35 years on the job. This year, the change started happening. Though Zack's final concert isn't until September 2008, and his successor won't be announced until 2009, we got a look at the first two candidates for his job -- Phoenix Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor Kayoko Dan and Alexander Platt, who has several orchestras under his baton -- and an idea what the Phil will look like without Zack. In 2008, we should see at least five more candidates for the job.

Laura Bell takes the lead: No, this did not happen in Lexington. But if you ever wanted a statement that you can be born and raised in Lexington, go to school here, sharpen your skills in local arts entities and go on to top the marquee in a major cultural capitol, Laura Bell Bundy's star turn in Legally Blonde -- the Musical was a strong one. The Lexington native and Lexington Catholic graduate culminated years of working through stage and film to grab the leading role in one of Broadway's hottest shows, and a Tony nomination for the performance. Bundy's a performer with a lot of irons in the fire, so we'll see where 2008 leads her.

Zirkel's passing spotlights his cause: Ross Zirkle's death from cancer robbed the University of Kentucky of one of its beloved art professors and Lexington of a strong and active member of its visual arts community. It also revived a cause that Zirkle had fought passionately for: Getting the University of Kentucky administration to pay attention to the deplorable conditions at the Reynolds Building where the art department is housed. Despite problems that prompted an accreditation  team to call the building, "a disaster waiting to happen," and previous problems including a collapsing staircase, the University of Kentucky administration has not made renovating the facility a top priority. We'll see if Zirkle's passing prompts any change of heart in '08.

The UK Symphony goes on the record and on the road: This year saw conductor John Nardolillo putting his orchestra on the national map with achievements including recording a CD for Naxos Records, the largest classical music label in the world, and playing Carnegie Hall with folk legend Arlo Guthrie. That CD of ballet music by George Frederick McKay should come out in 2008, and we'll see how else Nardolillo turns heads in the new year.

UK Opera joins forces with San Francisco Opera and composer: The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre increased its national profile joining with the San Francisco Opera's Merola Young Artist Program for the world premier of Thomas Pasatieri's comic opera Hotel Casablanca. It put the UK company in league with one of the nation's strongest opera companies, a prolific composer, and it stamped its name on a show that could wind up on stages around the world.

The Mayor issues a challenge: New Lexington Mayor Jim Newberry made the Lexington arts community nervous when he initially declined to declare a donation to the LexArts annual Campaign for the Arts as the effort got underway, breaking a tradition set by several of his predecessors. But he came back with an interesting proposal: He allocated $350,000 to the campaign and offered an additional $150,000, if LexArts could match the grant by coming up with new donors to pledge an additional $150,000, at no more than $1,000 each. LexArts rose to the challenge and acquired a new base of support, thanks to Newberry's visionary proposal that he hopes to apply to other concerns in the city. Now it's up to LexArts to build on the money and the new donor base.

Alexander Platt's true blue chat

Above: Alexander Platt conducts a rehearsal with the Lexington Philharmonic. Copyrighted Herald-Leader/Kentucky.com photo by Matt Goins. Below: Platt's preshow attire was reminiscent of the look Billy Gillispie sported when he was introduced as the new UK basketball coach. Copyrighted Herald-Leader/Kentucky.com photo by Charles Bertram.

Shortly after 7 last night, Alexander Platt arrived on the Singletary Center for the Arts concert hall stage sporting an oddly familiar look.

We saw the slightly-out-of-place-blue-pullover thing seven months ago when Billy Gillispie was introduced as the University of Kentucky's new basketball coach. Of course, Billy Clyde's true blue attire was just over a shirt and a tie, while Platt's was over formal wear, his white bow tie popping out from the collar. And Platt was still vying for a job: music director of the Lexington Philharmonic.

Platt was rockin' the Billy G look at the pre-show chat, a sort of meet-the-fans session, moderated by Philharmonic bass player and librarian Joe Tackett.

Tackett has a standard repertoire of questions that starts with candidates' early musical influences and ends with requests for more bass concertos.

Addressing the question of a defining moment in his musical development, Platt recalled a performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem at  the Episcopal Church his family attended. "When it was over, no one clapped," Platt recalled. "Everyone just stood up. It was then that I realized the true power of music that transcends words."

As far as programming goes, Platt said he likes thematic seasons that focus on composers or concepts, like a recent year of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky or his plans for a Rachmaninoff season with his primary orchestra in Waukesha, Wis., because, "people seem to love those big pieces."

An audience member got Platt to focus a bit more more on his own passions by asking what he would record if he had the chance to make a signature CD. The conductor, who currently resides in Chicago and has several orchestras under his baton, played to the Lexington crowd saying he had heard good things about the Lexington Singers and that he'd lean toward Franz Joseph Haydn's late masses, one of which the Singers happened to perform just a few days ago. Platt praised Haydn, whose Symphony No. 88 he conducted with the Philharmonic, as an ultimate self-made musician. But, when pressed to pick his favorite composer, the conductor, who has a long opera resume, named Giuseppe Verdi, saying, "he summed up everything Beethoven and Mozart ever said."

Folks who skipped the pre-show still heard quite a bit from Platt, who gave extended comments at the beginning of each half of the concert. He talked about the program, which included Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 3 and Ludwig van Beethoven's Emperor piano concerto, as a set of seemingly dissimilar composers who were united in making complex works out of simple themes.

Both in the chat and stage commentary, Platt said he dealt himself a tough hand by programming Sibelius' Third, because mastering the complexity of the score was a monumental task for a conductor and orchestra just getting to know each other. From the stage, he joked that if a conductor search is a beauty contest, "I picked the wrong swimsuit."

Before the show, he was bolder saying that if he could pull off the Third the Philharmonic should, "offer me a contract immediately. We'll negotiate it at the airport."

Well, with three guest artists left to come this season and a 2008-09 season of guest conductors in the works, that probably won't happen. But Platt should hold onto that pullover. That shade of blue goes over really well here.

~ Read Loren Tice's review of last night's concert.

~ If you went to the show, tell the Phil what you thought of Platt's performance.

Introducing Alexander Platt

Alexander Platt discussed his career and his interest in becoming the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra's new music director over a Tuesday morning breakfast at Stella's. Copyrighted Herald-Leader/Kentucky.com photo by David Stephenson.

Alexander Platt loves to create events. As a student at Yale, he raised the money to present a production of Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia with Yale and New York City Opera singers. At Cambridge University, it was Britten again, with the infrequently performed Owen Wingrave, which was reviewed in several London dailies.

Just last summer, at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, N.Y., Platt premiered his reduced version of David del Tredici's Final Alice, which received a sterling review from the New York Times' Steve Smith. That ended a summer that started with the demanding double bill of Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung and Bela Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle for the Chicago Opera Theatre, where Platt is the music director.

Directing Maverick and Chicago Opera Theatre are two of six posts Platt currently holds, including music director of the Marion (Ind.) Philharmonic, the Waukesha (Wis.) Symphony Orchestra and the Boca Raton Philharmonic Symphonia, for which he just conducted his first official concert as music director Sunday.

But Platt, 42, is in town this week as the second candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic. Over breakfast at Stella's yesterday, Platt said his dream is to be the music director of a, "mid-sized American city regional orchestra." Friday night Platt is conducting the Phil in Franz Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 88, Ludwig van Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Jean Sibelius' Symphony No. 3, which Platt says presents him and the orchestra a steep challenge with its complex rhythms.

Below is an edited transcript of that interview:

Copious Notes: What’s your take on the state of classical music in America, today?

Alexander Platt: My hope is that classical music in America is recovering from this kind of amnesia we’ve had for 20 years that we’ve spent apologizing for ourselves as part of a popular, wider American culture. I think we’re hopefully in the process of waking up from that and asserting ourselves as not just one of many musics in America but rather as a set of truths that need to be told from generation to generation, and each generation we add a new truth with the composers of their time adding their voices. Classical music is in one sense a kind of entertainment, of course. It always has been. But in another sense, it has a scriptural truth for all of us, and can tell us some things we can’t get anywhere except in the world of classical music.

CN: What are some of those truths?

AP: . . . I think classical music is a unique kind of music in that it fosters the art of listening in a way that no other music does. Popular music, any kind of pop music, is no more than a five minute form. Now I’m not saying that’s not as good an experience,or it’s an inferior experience. But it’s a totally different experience from when you sit down at a concert hall and engage with a 45-minute symphony or a three-and-a-half hour opera. It’s just different, I’m sorry.

Busy weekend coming up

Above: Actor Janet Scott (facing the mirror) and director Diana Denley of Shakespeare's Globe Center Australia are preparing Scott's The Love Letter for the Central Library Stage this weekend. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photo by Matt Goins. Below: Chris Kidder as Prospero and Courtney Collier as Miranda in UK's production of The Tempest. Photo by Rebecca Amsler/UK Theatre. Below, below: Mark Hall leads his band Casting Crowns into Rupp Arena Friday.

The weekend before Thanksgiving is often crowded with arts events from groups and presenters trying to get shows in before turkey day ushers in the Yuletide arts season. This year, the weekend seems particularly packed, possibly due to Thanksgiving being as early as it can possibly be on the calendar. Friday is particularly socked in, with the Philharmonic's MasterClassics concert and the Casting Crowns show at Rupp. Here's a list of the highlights:

~ Veteran actor Janet Scott presents her one-woman show, The Love Letter, at the Central Library Theatre, Thursday through Saturday. An important note: The free Thursday night performance is for students only. Due to some miscommunication, there was an error about that in our story Sunday.

~ Across the street, at the Downtown Arts Center, the burgeoning theater program at Bluegrass Community and Technical College presents The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, Thursday through Saturday.

~ Studio Players opens its production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Thursday, and it runs through  Dec. 2. We'll write more on this later, but FYI, Michael Peters is McMurphy, Allie Darden is Nurse Ratched and Eric Ryan Seale directs.

~ The Tempest plays its final weekend at UK, Thursday through Sunday. Here's blogger Andrew Battista's take.

~ Gallery Hop is Friday, from 5 to 8 p.m.

~ Everybody's favorite Depression-era, curly redhead, Annie, is back at the Opera House for a weekend stand as part of the Broadway Live series.

~ Annie will unite with the Casting Crowns concert at Rupp Arena to create a little traffic jam Friday night. Crowns will be joined by Leeland and John Waller.

~ Meanwhile, at the Singletary Center, the Lexington Philharmonic welcomes Alexander Platt as the second candidate to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic. He'll be conducting a concert of Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Joseph Haydn and Jean Sibelius with piano soloist Natasha Paremski.

~ Saturday afternoon, the Kentucky District round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions takes place at the University of Kentucky's Memorial Hall.

~ Saturday night, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is at Rupp.

And if all that doesn't help you work up an appetite for some turkey . . .

Kayoko Dan in real life

Kayoko Dan fields questions from conducting students at Transylvania University on Friday, Oct. 26.

Friday morning, Kayoko Dan told a class of conducting students at Transylvania University to make sure they know their music before going somewhere to conduct.

"I haven't looked at my score, except in rehearsal, since I arrived," Dan said. "I haven't had time."

Such is the life of a young conductor courting potential employers. Dan is the candidate behind door No. 1 in the Lexington Philharmonic's search for a successor to outgoing music director George Zack.

That put the assistant conductor of the Phoenix Symphony on the podium to conduct a Masterclassics concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts Friday night. Last night's concert brought to a close a whirlwind of a week for Dan, meeting with the orchestra, its management, donors, conductor search committee, and finally her potential public.

Philharmonic traffic advisory

Here's another really good reason to go hear the pre-concert talk from Kayoko Dan, the guest conductor for tonight's Lexington Philharmonic concert at the Singletary Center for the Arts: According to the Philharmonic, Rose Street and Euclid Avenue/Avenue of the Champions will closed from 7 to 9 p.m. Friday for the University of Kentucky's Homecoming Parade.

That'll make parking a bit of a challenge for several lots Philharmonic concert goers are used to using. One of the best options, the Philharmonic advises, will be the parking garage on South Limestone, at Euclid Avenue/Avenue of Champions.

Pre-concert activities will include the Eastern Kentucky University Guitar Ensemble at 6:30 p.m. and Dan's pre-show chat at 7. To attend those, of course, you'll be parking before 7. The concert, featuring guitarist Pablo Villegas and dancers from the Lexington Ballet, is at 8.

Introducing Kayoko Dan

Ten months after George Zack announced he is retiring from his post as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic, the orchestra's audience gets its first peek at the possible future this week.

First up among the candidates to succeed the Phil's conductor of 35 years is Phoenix Symphony assistant conductor Kayoko Dan. The 29-year-old musician is seeking her first post as a music director. Friday night, she'll conduct Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella Suite, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Suite from Sleeping Beauty, with guest dancers from the Lexington Ballet, and Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, with guitar soloist Pablo Villegas.

In today's paper, we check in with the conductor search, talking to several committee members about how it's going. And Friday, we'll preview the concert with a profile of Kayoko Dan. But, as a sneak preview, here's a transcript of our phone interview with Dan earlier this month:

Copious Notes: What got you interested in the Lexington Philharmonic?

Kayoko Dan: I was in Jacksonville in March doing the National conductors preview. Every year, the American Symphony Orchestra League hosts an event where they pick eight American conductors to be showcased in front of an audience that consists of people looking for music directors. The Lexington Philharmonic was there. And Peter (Kucirko, the executive director of the Philharmonic) called me and asked me if I was interested in Lexington, and in a heartbeat, I said, "Of Course."

CN: It's a two-year search, which would drive most people who are used to applying for a job, and hearing the results a few days or a few weeks later, nuts. What is it like knowing you'll be coming and auditioning and meeting everybody, but the decision won't be made until spring 2009?

KD: It's not actually so bad. I'm taking this as just an opportunity to conduct more than a job audition. I can't really control their decisions anyway. The only the thing I can control is how I conduct, and how I interact with people.

A lot of it has to do with chemistry, too. Some orchestras I go conduct, we get along great, musically. Some others, I go conduct, and the chemistry isn't right, and it's kind of awkward. You can't really determine that until you get up there on the podium and start working.