Copious Notes

rctalk: Jon Foreman's 'Spring' and 'Summer'

Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman has just completed a series of four seasonal EPs.

Jon Foreman | Spring and Summer EPs

The Fourth of July week seems to be an appropriate time to to praise a great American songwriter. With his Spring and Summer EPs, Jon Foreman has cemented himself as just that. We should add that the Swithfoot frontman is a brave songwriter, as some of the lyrics on these recordings will land him in Dutch with some of the Christian music community that has made him a star, and an exquisite craftsman.

Like on the first two EPs, Fall and Winter, Foreman is freed from any constraints or obligations the band format holds, and he uses that space to perfectly augment songs with what they need. I do not know if Foreman recorded these six-song sets sequentially, but the last two -- which have just been released on one CD,  same as the first pair -- show growth over the intitial efforts.

The closest thing to Switchfoot is Summer's Resurrect Me, which sounds like Switchfoot gone to seed, in a good way -- a great little cacophony of clangy steely guitars over a steady4-4 beat. Seriously, it could slip into a Switchfoot set with no problem.

But there are numerous songs that couldn't, their string and wind accompaniments perfectly accenting the songs, but also making them distinctively Foreman's.

Foreman is also a much more blunt songwriter on his own. The rap on Switchfoot's songs have often been that they are brilliant, but so couched in metaphor and cleverness that the listener could easily miss the point -- and this is a point of concern to some who question Switchfoot's commitment to Christianity.

There is no missing the point here. Some faith-community listeners may wish Foreman was murkier when they hear Instead of a Show, a tune as incendiary as anything Derek Webb has written. In the song, Foreman lambastes the church for putting on shows while ignoring the hurting world around it.

Away with your noisy worship
Away with your noisy hymns
I stop up my ears when you're singing 'em
I hate all your show
Instead, let there be a flood of justice

Some will be angry with  Foreman for saying it. Some will say it needed to be said. Either way, Foreman grows as a challenging songwriter. But lest anyone use Show to question Foreman's faith, these EPs have some of his most spiritual writing to date, such as Spring's Your Love is Strong and Summer's House of God, Forever, an interpretation of Psalm 23 that ranks with 24 as one of the loveliest things Foreman has written.

As far as we know, things are good in the Switchfoot camp. They released a track for the Prince Caspian soundtrack last month, and have a tour in the offing with Third Day and Jars of Clay. But this solo voice Foreman has started using is quite compelling. Let's hear more.

Concert alert: Hawk Nelson is in Winchester at 6 p.m. July 5. We'll have more on Hawk later this week, but click here to buy tickets.

EW's New classics: Up for debate (of course)

John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Is it really the No. 1 classic movie of the lat 25 years?

Last weekend, the editors of Entertainment Weekly dropped their annual summer double issue and gave  us a good two weeks of debating material.

Is Pulp Fiction really the best film of the last 25 years?

Does Amy Winehouse's year-old debut already deserve Top 10 classic status?

Public Enemy doesn't make the Top 50?

Yes, it's another set of lists. We say that with no derision, because hey, we're going to give you some lists on Sunday. Lists are fun, because they are always a matter of opinion, which means most everyone who reads one will have some modicum of disagreement with it.

EW's new lists are pretty ambitious: The New Classics is 1,000 of the best movies, TV shows, albums, books and other stuff over the past 25 years. My favorite list was actually the final one: Tech, where they named the, "top 25 innovations that changed entertainment."

Even there though, I'd argue against ranking the iPod at No. 4, below the DVD player, Napster and TiVo. Yes, the DVD is a cool advance in home video, but it still was just another method of delivering the videos in some tangible form. The iPod introduced the concept of owning a whole album without leaving your home, or even just picking and choosing the songs you want; singles, but you choose what's a single. It's the most radical change in the distribution of recorded music since the beginning of recorded music. How do you top that?

See, arguing it is almost inescapable.

Pulp Fiction, for me, was a good place to start. I've always considered it a bit overrated, over romanticized. Good movie, snappy dialog and engaging story structure, but not quite all that.

But if you want to argue towering influence, then its No. 1 seems a bit more legit. How many Pulp wannabes have we seen since 1994? Interestingly, Forrest Gump, the movie that beat Pulp Fiction for the Oscar for best picture, isn't even on EW's Top 100. (It's worth noting that EW has always been in love with Pulp.)

There are some nice picks on the movie list, such as Blue Velvet at No. 4, acknowledging the off-kilter brilliance of David Lynch, and giving Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View a nod at No. 24. The Helena Bonham Carter starmaker ushered in the chick-flick-as-literary-costume-drama era we're still in today.

 The music list had several nice visionary choices, such as Madonna's self-titled 1983 album at No. 5, OutKast's Stankonia at No. 12, and R.E.M.'s Life's Rich Pageant at No. 32. All were great albums, and all set the stage for the artists' subsequent chart toppers -- Like a Virgin, Speakerboxx/The Love Below and Document, respectively. But then, somehow, Nirvana's Nevermind is left off in favor of MTV Unplugged. ?!

See, debating is sooooo easy. And fun.

I will also give EW props for trying to limit the number of entries from any one artist to one or two. I seem to remember years ago when Rolling Stone dropped a list of the best rock albums ever, and half the Top 10 was by The Beatles. But then, that list also gave this young rock fan a lot of listening to go do.

And this list from Entertainment Weekly seems to come at a perfect time, right before the laziest days of summer. I'd write more, but I've got some watching and listening to do.

P.S.: A very cool thing about the Top 50 stage list is that four of the shows -- Angels in America (No. 1), Elaine Stritch at Liberty (17), Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk (24) and Topdog/Underdog (49) were all directed by Frankfort's own George C. Wolf. People, we don't revere this guy enough.

Christian music update: Ichthus edition

Tobymac cedes the stage to vocalist Nirva Dorsaint-Ready during his set at Ichthus 2007. Photo by Rich Copley.

Tobymac | Alive and Transported

I am taking a morning walk through my suburban neighborhood, but in my head, I am at the Ichthus Festival or anywhere Tobymac is presenting his backflipping, breathless show.

There's often a gulf between the thrill of a live show and the recording. But in the case of Tobymac's generous Alive and Transported, that is nary a trickle. Granted, there is nothing quite like seeing Toby, who headlines Ichthus Friday night. But this disc -- and the accompanying DVD in the tangible set -- really takes you there.

One chief way is by being a real concert document, taking you through the flow of the event, from hyper openers such as Boomin' and J-train to the Spanish-guitar-based Irene and the dc talk classic In the Light and the subsequent fever spike of Yours. He also gives us a rarity for the concert disc: the encore. On disc, he closes out the Houston concert with Diverse City and returns with a quartet of tunes, including Jesus Freak and Extreme Days, which no audience would let t-mac leave without doing.

In addition to Tobymac's music, with a dash of his old band, dc talk, one of the other strong suits of his concerts has been that it's a real band effort, with Toby many times giving the spotlight to his supporting players.

It's just like a Tobymac concert and, "bang to the bip, it makes me want to flip."

Big screen: This is a reminder that you can see Alive and Transported on the big screen at movie theaters across the country tonight, and in Kentucky at the Showcase Stonybrook in Louisville at 7:30 p.m.

Ichthus gets an early start: Since the Ichthus Festival moved from April to June, it has been pushing back  the music's start time on Thursday earlier and earlier. Now, festival-goers who arrive early can get a full three days of music, and even some more.

There's the Gotee showcase on the main stage Wednesday night, and Thursday morning cranks up with the Ascenxion Scout Competition's Battle of the Bands at 9:30 a.m. on the Deep End Stage.

The battle will pit the 10 winners of the online Scout competition against each other to determine who will get the grand prize of a main stage slot for a couple of tunes on Friday night. The third-place winner will play the Edge Stage late Friday afternoon and the second-place winner will play the same stage Saturday night.

The competitors come from as far away as California, though Thursday morning should have a distinctly Kentucky flavor with bands from Louisville (mile 7), Somerset (Live Fish), Whitesburg (Thusia), and Justin Harris, whose Myspace page simply lists him as being from Kentucky.

After that, at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Cincinnati's Divine Day will play the Deep End, their reward for winning a Battle of the Bands at Cincinnati's Underground club last fall.

Got tickets?: If you don't have tickets to Ichthus yet, and you want to go, fest officials advise that your best bet will be to wait until you get to the site. Online sales ceased this weekend, and since most of the Ichthus staff is out on the farm, your chances of getting tickets by phone, (859) 858-3001, are hit and miss.

Ichthus' independent spirit

The video for Meditation by Baltimore-based Ashes Remain will headline the Ichthus Festival's Independent Stage Friday, June 13. (Below) Canadians Manic Drive headline the Indie stage Thursday.

The Ichthus Festival is expanding its offerings to four stages this year, adding an Independent stage within the campground at what was once known as the worship stage. The stage will be, "dedicated to completely independent artists," according to the festival website.

It's a move that makes a lot of sense in the current music marketplace where even reasonably well-known artists are eschewing some of the comforts of record labels for grassroots business via the Internet and lots and lots of touring. And a quick run through the Net reveals a lineup of seemingly high quality acts booked for the intimate outdoor venue. The Friday night lineup looks particularly intriguing with After Edmund and Breaking the Silence playing a bill topped by Ashes Remain. Other artists you may recognize include Lake Cumberland's Nineball and Brooke Barrettsmith.

Click here for the complete Indie Stage lineup. An number of acts will also be playing the Edge Stage or the Deep End Stage.

One piece of free advice: If you are an early to bed type, you may want to avoid camping near the stage, up toward the festival-site side of the campground. If, on the other hand, you want to watch bands from your tent door . . .

Before Ichthus, Smith will get her hands dirty with fans

New artist Stephanie Smith will be working with an Ichthus local mission project before the festival. Photo courtesy of Gotee Records.

Stephanie Smith will be on the main stage at the Ichthus Festival twice, but before that, she’ll be in Lexington joining festival goers who get into town early to work on a mission project organized by the festival and several Central Kentucky ministries and churches.

“One of my goals in this music-band-rockstar thing is not just to stand on the stage and show people that I like to sing,” Smith says. “I really have a heart to better the community and serve and love people at their point of need. This is an opportunity to do that and to get to know the community.”

Smith’s desire to serve is, in large part, due to the failure of her first attempt at a recording career.

“I went to college to pursue music and pursue the rock-star thing,” Smith says.

It went well, and it went to her head. Her wake up call came in a comment from her mother who told her at 18, “I don’t care if this is all taken away from you, because I don’t like who you’ve become.”

Smith ended up going on a soul-searching journey that included a trip to Guatemala, where she found herself carrying cinder blocks up a muddy hill to help people build sinks in their kitchens, and to Africa where, for two weeks, she lived on $1 a day.

“It gave me real insight into the world outside of America,” Smith says.

Video: Grand Night for Singing

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.

Christian music update: Dave Barnes review

Dave Barnes | You + Me + The World

Though Dave Barnes is a somewhat atypical artist in the Christian market, he initially seems easy to categorize. You think of him in that Mat Kearney, Matt Wertz -- maybe he should be a Matt Barnes? -- group of singer-songwriters with a faith base and a mainstream audience, particularly in the college market.

Two successful independent releases have yielded a national label recording contract with Razor & Tie for Barnes. And with that national debut, You + Me + The World, he lays out a saucer of a dozen tunes that show him to be much more than a Christian John Mayer. 

 The initial single, Until You, is a perfect little piece of young adult summer breeze that introduces him as an amiable guy and probably a great catch if he weren't already taken.

But that personality takes us in a number of different directions and addresses global concerns is songs such as Good World Gone Bad as well as personal, committed love in  Since You Said I Do. Barnes is an artist who will frustrate some listeners who believe faith-based musicians should have more explicit, sustained Christian messages in their music. But others will find the mix of faith and temporal topics refreshing, particularly knowing they come from a faith perspective.

Regardless of the message, the music is consistently engaging, maybe drawing the best comparisons to Jonny Lang's 2006 hit Turn Around, as this also makes confident swings through gospel, soul, country and a variety of rhythms and textures, expertly guided by producer and sideman Ed Cash.

Really, the best category for this Dave Barnes album would be good music.

t-mac at the movies: If you're in Central Kentucky and you JUST CAN'T WAIT to see Tobymac play Ichthus on June 13, you can head over to Louisville Monday night and see Tobymac: Alive and Transported at the Showcase Stonybrook. The concert film, a la, a lot of concert films we're seeing lately is showing across the nation Monday night, and the reigning Dove Award winner for artist of the year is the first Christian market act I can recall doing this.

Speaking of Louisville: Southeast Christian Church, the mothership at Exit 17 off I-64, has a release on the new Great Worship Songs label from Brentwood-Benson Publishing, which has the largest Christian music publishing catalog in the world. Holy is the Lord, which drops July 1, will be the third disc on the label, and the first to focus on a specific church. The album features the Louisville church's band and choir presenting songs written in the Southeast Community. Chords and lead sheets of the songs will be available at the Great Worship Songs website.

Where was this?: Yes, we know we have regular visitors to the Christian music update on Tuesday and we were a tad late this week. For the duration of the summer, at least, this post is going to move back to Mondays, because this blog has a few other seasonal staples that make Tuesday a little crowded. And hey, if we preview an album you really like, that gives you time to go home and smash your piggy bank to go get it -- that's if you are still into buying tangible, physical, oh-so-20th Century CDs.

But Saturday, Copious Notes will flip a switch and go all-Ichthus -- with a couple of exceptions -- through the festival. We'll start by chatting with new Gotee artist Stephanie Smith, who will play several times during the fest and also get her hands dirty with some festival goers.

BlondeTV: So much better than expected

Haylie Duff, far right, and assistant choreographer Dennis Jones, to the left of Duff, brief the contestants in Legally Blonde The Musical -- The Search for Elle Woods. Copyrighted photo courtesy of MTV.

We will confess our misgivings up front: It is reality TV, which we have no faith in for substance, and MTV, which completely ceased being relevant to me after the third season of The Real World. Add to that, we saw this before in NBC's dreadful Grease: You're the One That I Want, which tapped the stars of the Grease revival currently running on Broadway.

So, I was not expecting much from Legally Blonde The Musical -- The Search for Elle Woods, which debuted on Monday night on MTV and will run for seven more weeks.

But if the show can stay on the level of its premier, you can shut me up like Professor Callahan.

The object here is to find a successor to Lexington native Laura Bell Bundy as Elle Woods in the Broadway production of Legally Blonde -- The Musical.

One of the best signs this show has a chance to be good comes in the first segment when Legally Blonde director Jerry Mitchell tells the hopefuls, "Casting the next Elle Woods will be my decision."

With those words, we know this will not turn into a popularity contest where the winner will be determined by whoever has the fan base that can text the quickest. It will be a professional Broadway director, plus veteran casting director Bernard Telsey, Legally Blonde book writer Heather Hach and actor Paul Canaan, who tells the hopefuls, "I wanted to be Elle Woods, but there was a height issue . . . "

By then, we also know that the show isn't going to waste our time with preliminaries. No lingering in the hinterlands to see what crazy, delusional people show up at the open calls. We start with the ladies who got to come to New York, and quicklywe are down to a final 15 who have to be whittled to a final 10 in 45 minutes. So we see a lot of dancing and trying to sing the Act I finale, So Much Better, in which the final note is held for 16 bars. We really do get a sense of how tough being in a Broadway show is.

When Emma, a hopeful who claims Broadway is in her blood because her parents met working on the original Grease, asks associate choreographer Dennis Jones if he could demonstrate a move slower, he says, "I am."

Emma provides the most drama of the night, walking in touting her Broadway bloodline  but apparently not bringing her A game to the audition. But she makes it, and the show also starts to develop some characters, like Bailey, a 20-year-old Southern Belle from Anderson, S.C., who seems destined to become the show's bumpkin, and Lauren, already becoming the meanie.

There is a classic moment in Lauren's singing audition, where she brags, "I'm not here for my 15 minutes of fame making friends with the other girls."

Hach responds, "But Elle Woods would take it to the top, but she'd also make friends with the other girls."

Lauren starts backing up immediately, "All the other girls here are really nice . . . "

Yes, judging by the preview, there will be some drama, some tears, some backstabbing, and you want a little of that on reality TV.

But like Project Runway at its best, The Search for Elle seems to be aiming to present the process of the craft. The main whining in the first episode is about exhaustion. Bundy, who looks a couple of decades more mature than any of these girls when she meets them at the end of the premier, says, "If you are tired right now, that is nothing."

That does bring us back to the overall misgiving about this process, this premise. Dismissing the final contestant cut, Telsey says, "We can't cast based on potential."

But at this juncture, isn't that basically what this show is doing? None of these actors appear to have much professional seasoning in the premier. So really, they are looking for someone who's right for the part and has the potential to be able to go from this pressure cooker to centerstage at the Palace Theatre in a few months.

That's asking a lot.

But fortunately, watching MTV's Blonde talent search doesn't appear to be asking for too much.

Christian music update: An 'Austin City Limits' wish list

Phil Keaggy, shown performing at last year's Ichthus Festival, would be a great addition to the Austin City Limits lineup. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Rich Copley.

It's Tuesday, and usually I run a CD review here. But I'm not quite ready to scribble on any new saucers this week, so let's do a little musing.

My absolute favorite televised venue from music is the long-running PBS series Austin City Limits. It's a a show that has seen most everyone who's anyone in contemporary music from country to world music to rock and a lot of genres that fall in between. Though I have a TiVo season pass for it, I often will stay up Saturday to catch the show, even if I am due at church early the next morning.

Every once and a while, I contemplate what Christian artists would be a good fit for this great music showcase. I don't have a detailed list of who all has been on the show, and there have been recent performances of acts that have ties to the faith-based market such as Robert Randolph and Sufjan Stevens. ACL was the first time I encountered Stevens and his band/orchestra in their butterfly wings. That's one of the great things about ACL: because you trust it to deliver great music, you tune in regardless of whose on and make discoveries. So, a few of the acts Austin City Limits could introduce to its audience include:

~ Phil Keaggy: One thing about the ACL audience is they love great musicianship, so they would love Keaggy, arguably the greatest musician in Christian pop. The intimate setting of the show would also suit him well.

~ How about a couple of Texans, like Derek Webb and the David Crowder Band? Webb is one of the most engaging songwriters in the faith market today, and while DCB is labeled a worship artist, that worship comes with a lot of exploration and adventure the ACL crowd would love.

~ ACL is also into showcasing  well-seasoned established artists such as R.E.M. last weekend or Elvis Costello last season. From the Christian market, who could be better for this showcase than Jars of Clay and Switchfoot? The men of Jars have the kind of musical diversity that would play well on the show, and Jon Foreman's thoughtful songwriting for 'foot would have a better showcase in this forum than on some of the massive concert stages we're used to seeing the band on. Foreman the solo artist, by the way, would also be great on ACL.

This is just a short list, but man, it would be great to tune is one Saturday night and see one of these acts performing before the Texas Capitol backdrop.

New 'chick: We don't have any marquee releases today, according to the Gospel Music Association. But peering through the binoculars, we can see a new Superchick release coming up this time next month. Rock What You Got will be the band's first new release in three years, and promises to have some of the same cross cultural appeal of 2005's Beauty from Pain that featured everything from the bittersweet title track to the first pumping, girl-power Anthem. The band is offering a RWYG sampler with three tracks available today at digital outlets such as iTunes and Napster. I'm downloading as I write.

Condolences: As most of you probably already have heard, Stephen Curtis Chapman lost his adopted daughter Maria to a tragic accident last week. A reminder, if you would like to make a gesture of condolence to the family, they are requesting donations be made to Shaohannah's Hope, the Chapman's charity to support and facilitate overseas adoptions.You can leave notes at the Chapman's blog.

In addition to Ichthus: So, we always write extensively about the Ichthus Festival here. That makes sense. It's just a few dozen miles down the road from Lexington in Wilmore, it is the original Christian pop music festival and what else in Central Kentucky, except the UK basketball team, brings 20,000 people together at one time.

But it is not the only big Christian music festival in the Bluegrass State. While fest season starts at Ichthus June 12-14, it winds down with the NewSong Festival in Leitchfield, Aug. 8-10. This year's event features several of the same acts that will hit Ichthus, including Jeremy Camp, Skillet and TobyMac, and some that won't be at Ichthus such as Sanctus Real and Derek Webb.

Country music

Concertgoers arrive at Meadow View Barn in the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill for Saturday afternoon's concert in the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass. Below: Sibling violinists Todd and Daniel Phillips of the Orion String Quartet perform Saturday afternoon. Copyrighted LexGo photos by Rich Copley.

SHAKERTOWN -- Classical music is something we normally associate with the city. There are those big orchestras in New York, Chicago and just about every other metropolis worth its salt. Even here, in the heart of the Bluegrass, our major concert hall is in the middle of a wide web of asphalt.

Meadow View Barn isn't.

The old tobacco barn at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill lives up to its name, nestled atop a hill that looks out upon vast expanses of green valley or trees from every direction.

For the second Memorial Day weekend in a row, the barn and Shakertown are hosting the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass, produced by Centre College's Norton Center for the Arts. Featuring the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, direct from the asphalt jungle of NYC, it is one of the most sublime concert experiences you will ever have.

The string musicians' instruments probably haven't been played this close to their natural elements -- i.e. trees and horse hair -- and sounded this at home in a long time. Somehow the cellos sound more woody, the strains of the violins twirl in the air like a lark dancing, and the violas sound like old souls taking it all in.

This year, the chamber music society brought along four musicians of its own: co directors Wu Han, piano,  and David Finckel, cello, and emerging artists Arnaud Sussman, violin, and Beth Guterman, viola, who were new to the festival. Han and Finckel also invited along the Orion String Quartet, which is performing in its own right and splintering off to perform with the Lincoln Center artists as well.

That was an added bonus with Saturday evening's concert in the Meadow View Barn: We got these world-class musicians mixing and matching for more variety than you usually get from a chamber concert.

UK Wind Ensemble update: depature delayed

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."

The UK Wind Ensemble, bound for China

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.

Interview: David Finckel and Wu Han on the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass

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.

Following the UK Winds to China

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.

SNL has My Morning Jacket this week, and hopefully more great political humor

Louisville's My Morning Jacket is the musical guest on Saturday Night Live this week, providing guest host Shia LaBeouf and Mr. SNL Digital Short Andy Samberg with a wonderfully cheesy joke in the video, above.

Of course, we've also come to expect great political humor from SNL lately, Amy Poehler's Hillary Clinton impression being the biggest reason why.  For some reason, I keep thinking this week, it would be funny to remake the Thing that Wouldn't Leave sketch -- a faux horror movie trailer in which John Belushi is an annoying dinner guest who won't take a hint that it's time to go, leading to anguished screams from his hosts -- and frame it in the context of the Democratic primaries. Maybe I just want to hear Fred Armisen scream as Obama. Whatever the professional sketch writers come up with, we'll probably be talking about it Monday morning.

(By the way, the Jimmy Carter clip that comes up in the video menu after Andy and Shia is another classic.)

Note: On Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me this morning, they played the newsmaker countdown, in which they play a song inspired by someone who was in the news during the week, and then the contestant has to guess who inspired it. The song inspired by Hillary Clinton: that Dreamgirls showstopper, And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going. The show repeats at noon Sunday on WUKY-91.3 FM or you can hear it at Wait Wait's website.

UK Wind Ensemble still needs money for its trip to China

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.

Tickets on sale for UK's new concert series

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:

• Oct. 4: Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.
• Oct. 23: Song and Dance Ensemble of West Africa.
• Nov. 8: Andrea ­Marcovicci’s Love Songs of World War II.
• Nov. 12: José Porcel and Ballet Flamenco.
• Dec. 20: Manhattan Transfer holiday concert.
• Jan. 30: Dublin Philharmonic Orchestra.
• Feb. 14: Violinist Gil Shaham with the UK ­Symphony Orchestra.
• March 13: Blue Note Jazz Tour.

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.

Q&A: Band composer David Holsinger

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.

Lexington's Amber Rhodes is an 'American Idol' contender

Amber Rhodes and Josh Rush work on writing a song together at the offices of Sharp Objects, a song plugging agency in Nashville, in January. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Rich Copley.

Lexington's Amber Rhodes is an American Idol finalist. No, Idol addicts, you have not been sleeping through a contestant every week. Rhodes, a SCAPA graduate and budding country artist, is in the running for the American Idol Songwriter competition.

The contest, which is happening online through April 23, is to choose a new tune that will be sung by the winner on the American Idol finale. Rhodes' song is We're Gonna Make It, which she co-wrote with writers Hugh Colocott and Noel Cohen. In a press release, Rhodes says she wrote the song for her boyfriend in New York.

"I spend a lot of time traveling to and from Music City, Nashville and the Big Apple . . .  which leaves a lot of time separated from the one that I love," she said. "This was my personal, musical message to him to tell him that no matter what, 'We're gonna make it.'

"What is a personal message for me may become a powerful message for all of America! How special is that?"

Well, first, she has to beat out 19 other contenders at the competition's website. If you are not already registered with Idol, you'll need to sign up, and then launch a player that will take you through the tunes and let you vote on them.  

Advice: Don't wash your mp3 player

"I don't know how to tell you this," is never a good way to start a conversation, particularly when it comes from my wife. She's not the type to grimly say, "I don't know how to tell you this," and then scream, "WE JUST WON A MILLION DOLLARS!"

That's my shtick, not hers.

So, when she called me at work Tuesday and said, "I don't know how to tell you this," I knew something had died, been broken, Milli Vanilli reunited, or something like that.

"Do you want me to tell you what I found in the pocket of your pants that were in the washing machine?" she asked.

What?! My mind raced. I hadn't done anything recently that would leave incriminating evidence. Did one of the kids give me something I was supposed to take care of, that now had the consistency of tissue paper? Did I leave a pen in my pocket, thereby creating a tie-dye effect on some clothes but, you know, not in a way that looked groovy?

I couldn't think of anything, so I asked, "What?"

"You know your mp3 player . . . " Kate asked.

"Oh nooooo," I thought.

It was Tuesday. Snow day. I was trying to do some work at home and get some laundry done,  including my thick black corduroy trousers that I had put my player in the night before. But, as I put them in the wash, I probably hadn't felt the mp3 in the pocket because, you know, they're big . . . thick . . . corduroy . . . "Oh nooooo!"

"I've tried everything," she said, "It's not doing anything."

I said, "Thanks for telling me," and hung up.

Last year, I finally joined the mp3 generation. When you're married with two late elementary school kids, your money takes other priorities. I don't go out and buy the latest gadget the way I did when I was the first of my friends to own a CD player and a VCR.

But, when I finally got an mp3, I was serious about it, and not just for fun. Recent playlists include "UKSO Harrell Concert" (Music that's being played on the University of Kentucky Symphony concert, Friday, with cellist Lynn Harrell). Pretty much any story on this blog or in the paper about music in the past several months I've reported using my mp3. I was seriously considering writing it off on my taxes.

So, how was I going to live without it.

Show goes on for UK musical group

Above: Luther Lewis and Patrick Joel Martin sing Lily's Eyes from The Secret Garden at the debut production by the UK Musical and Operetta Organization. Below: Rachel Farrar and Christopher Baker in Masochism Tango from TomFoolery. LexGo photos by Rich Copley.

Musical theater has been an undercurrent of the University of Kentucky voice program for years.

The annual Grand Night for Singing Broadway revue was developed to give students a taste of musicals, because UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey believed it was important for students to have more than just opera in their repertoire.

The opera program has collaborated with the UK Theatre Department on several musicals and produced its own musical, Carousel, in 2006. Some genuine musical theater talents have rolled through the program, including Michael Turay, Gregory’s brother. But no formal musical program or organization has been established, until now.

Monday night, as snow and sleet piled up on the street outside of Natasha’s Cafe, the University of Kentucky Musical and Operetta Organization made its debut.

No, it’s not a degree program. It’s a club, made up of UK students who want to present musicals and operetta. Think of the scene at Cambridge in Chariots of Fire where Harold Abrahams is shopping for campus organizations to join and hooks up with the Gonville and Caius Gilbert & Sullivan Society to a rousing chorus of, “If everybody’s somebody, than no one’s anybody.”

Just two-and-a-half months ago, the group was merely a concept in the minds of graduate student Susan Rahmsdorff and several other UK voice students. Three weeks before Monday, it became an official club and set a date at Natasha’s for its debut.

Our Lincoln: art of record and rememberance

Nicholas Provenzale portrayed young Abraham Lincoln in a few selections from Joseph Baber's forthcoming opera River of Time, at the Our Lincoln program Sunday night at the Singletary Center for the Arts. Below: Jim Sayre delivered The Gettysburg Address as Lincoln. Copyrighted LexGo photos by Joseph Rey Au.

U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler (D-Kentucky) opened Sunday night's Our Lincoln presentation at the Singletary Center for the Arts saying, "The arts are how we tell our story."

For the next two-and-a-half hours, a wide array of Kentucky artists proved that point.

Our Lincoln celebrated the Kentucky native who became one of the United States' most pivotal Presidents with primary source art, created in his day, and works that are being developed to this day in tribute to Abraham Lincoln. In two-and-a-half hours, the audience got to see how art can tell our story from the full gale of a symphony