Copious Notes

UK Opera's new CD

David Baker sang the role of Tom Carter in the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre's production of Thomas Pasatieri's Hotel Casablanca on the Lexington Opera House Stage in October and the world premier CD, which was just released. Photo by Timothy Collins, courtesy of the UK Opera Theatre.

The San Francisco Opera got the world premier performance of Thomas Pasatieri's new opera, Hotel Casablanca, but the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre got the world premier recording.

Asked which they would have rather had, Darla Diltz, Tedrin Blair Lindsay and Christopher Probus' answer amounted to, "Duh!"

"I can send this out to people I'm auditioning for," says Diltz, who sings the role of Tallulah Carter on the new CD.

Probus is looking forward to giving one to his grandmother, who didn't get to see the show.

The UK Opera Theatre and Symphony Orchestra recoded the show for Albany Records between performance weekends in October.

The opera is a farce based on the Georges Feydeau play A Flea in Her Ear. Set in 1940s Texas, it tells the tale of how a misunderstanding leads a rancher’s wife to suspect her husband is cheatin'.
The recording was conducted by UK Symphony director John Nardolillo and features soprano Diltz and baritone David Baker as the couple in turmoil. The CD is available online at Amazon.com and at retail outlets such as Barnes & Noble.

"It was a little more stressful," Baker said of the recording, after a news conference at UK to unveil the CD. "But then you had more than one take to get it right."

All of the singers said they were really impressed with the UK Symphony while recording the CD.

"I could go in and out, depending on when I was on," Diltz said. "But they had to be there the whole time. They were real pros."

Part of the stamina could stem from the fact the UK Symphony has three recordings in the can over the past couple of years, including a forthcoming recording of the George McKay ballet score Epoch for Naxos Records. Though they're old pros, Symphony conductor John Nardolillo said he thought Hotel Casablanca came out exceptionally well.

"We had everything going for us," Nardolillo said. "We were in the Singletary Center, which was a warm acoustic environment for the singers, and I was really pleased with the sound of the orchestra."

Nardolillo said he was impressed that the story came through as well as it did.

The UK Opera's last recording was Aaron Copland's The Tender Land in 2002. At the Casablanca launch party, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey said he is exploring the possibility of recording River of Time, Jospeh Baber's new opera about young Abraham Lincoln, which the student ensemble will premier next year.

The CD cover art (above) is by Richard Kagey, the opera’s director at UK in October and at San Francisco Opera in August. Hotel Casablanca was a co-production of UK Opera and San Francisco Opera.

Electoral lattes

Here in Kentucky, we are deprived of the opportunity to weigh in on the Presidential primaries until our votes will be a moot point. But you could always cast your vote in coffee at Third Street Stuff, or maybe just pick your favorite concoction.

Could my hardcore Republican sister actually like the Chillary Clinton? Would a left winger savor the Mint Romney? Quick, get Tim Russert on the horn.

Also on the menu are the:

~ John McCandycain

~ Mac Huckabee

~ Obama-nable Snowman

There was a Giuliani latte on the menu yesterday afternoon, but the consensus seemed to be it would be coming off. Third Street Stuff owner Pat Gerhard said the Presidential drinks seemed like a fun idea, but she and the staff had not been keeping track of which latte was leading.

Hmmmmm, a coffee caucus. Maybe this is a way for us to get in on Super Tuesday.

Album review: Number One Gun's 'The North Pole Project'

On The North Pole Project, Number One Gun lives up to its name in one significant respect: It is the product of one person, frontman Jeff Schneeweis. After several years of gutting it out at indie and smaller labels, the band seemed to hit it big in 2005 with a successful, Aaron Sprinkle-produced, debut for Tooth & Nail Records, Promises of the Imperfect.

But then the group split. Guitarist Chris Keene and drummer Jordan Mallory formed Surrogate, which released its debut in August. Schneeweis was going to record a solo project under the name The North Pole Project, but ended up using that as the name of a new Number One Gun album, written, played and sung entirely by Schneeweis.

Sometimes this works really well, Underoath drummer Aaron Roderick Gillespie's effort as The Almost being a prime example.
And The North Pole Project has some moments such as the drama of the multi-layered The Massacre, in which Schneeweis develops tension between competing vocals. It is a device he uses again several times on North Pole, to somewhat less effect. He really does his best on the album's handful of ballads, including The Best of You and Me and The Different Ones, which gives you the impression that, left bandless, maybe Schneeweis' best option would have been to pick up an acoustic guitar and show himself as a minimal soloist. As a multitasker, he comes up with something that sounds like a retread of a lot of recent modern pop, but there's no bang.

That song in my head . . .

Sorry to have been a little delinquent in the blogging this week. I took a little trip to Nashville Monday that you'll be reading about soon, and that and a hotel without wireless left me offline for a few days.

One of the pleasures of having a long morning drive home is getting to hear Morning Edition in its entirety. It was a good way, today, to get caught up on the State of the Union address and stuff. But the most intriguing piece on today's episode was Robert Krulwich's (Copyrighted photo, right, by Alan Klein) story about people who are deaf or deprived of sound who start to hear music in their heads.

They literally can't get that song out of their heads, and it is not necessarily one they want to hear. A guy stuck at sea on a sail boat started hearing heavy metal guitar solos, and he hates metal. The story was inspired by the account of Cheryl C., a deaf woman who started hearing music, in Oliver Sacks' bestseller, Musicophilia. After I gave Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise a rave review, one of our researchers, Lu-Ann Farrar, recommended the book to me, and after Krulwich's piece, it's definitely at the top of my list.

Click here to read or hear Krulwich's story.

Oscars: A depressing bunch

Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men, one of five mostly downbeat Academy Award nominees for best picture, this year. Photo by Richard Foreman, courtesy of Miramax Pictures.

Oscar is in a funk this year, and we’re not talking about the writers’ strike.

Of the films nominated for best picture at this year’s Academy Awards, four are patently dark, depressing tales — Atonement, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood. The remaining film, Juno, gets its comedy from the dark subject of teen pregnancy.

But then, Oscar has never been little Mr. Sunshine. You have to go back 10 years, to Shakespeare in Love, to find a best picture that was pure sweetness and light, and it was a surprise winner over Saving Private Ryan.

No, having a roster of downer films gunning — and in the case of No Country, we do mean gunning — for best picture doesn’t set 2008 apart. The surprise is that judging from the hype last fall, these aren’t the grim tales we thought we’d be celebrating.

Last year was supposed to be the year filmmakers finally started dealing with the real-life events of this decade.

Movies such as Rendition, Lions for Lambs and In the Valley of Elah, loaded with Oscar-winning writers, actors and directors, were going to bring the realities of our current struggles with the Iraq War and global terrorism to the big screen and awards season.

Instead, they and other films like them have been soundly shut out at the box office and on award ballots.

CCM Magazine going out of print

So, cleaning my desk today, I ran across the renewal notice for CCM Magazine that I had opened and promptly forgotten a month or so ago. Magazines could clear-cut forests with the number of renewal notices they send out, and I have a tendency to wait until the notice that says something like, "This is your final issue, unless you renew . . . and we won't be your friend anymore." Anyway, I decided to take care of the subscription online. But when I went to the appropriate page, I got this note:

"Effective April 2008, CCM Magazine will no longer be published as a printed magazine. Keep checking back for more information and look for CCMmagazine.com to cover even more of your favorite Christian music and entertainment!"

Wow! It's not that I haven't seen numerous magazines go exclusively online. A guitar publication I used to subscribe to went web-only last year, and I read about several other guitar and bass magazines going exclusively to the Internet. But Guitar Player, one of the flagships, still comes out on paper.

And in contemporary Christian music, CCM, which published its first issue in July 1978, is a flagship -- the Rolling Stone of Christian pop. So it bailing out of a tangible, printed product was a sign that the times indeed are a-changin'. Given that this is such a momentous event, I asked CCM editor Jay Swartzendruber  if he'd answer a few questions about the change, and he kindly obliged:

Copious Notes: Tell us about the decision to close the print edition of CCM Magazine.

Jay Swartzendruber: When I joined the magazine in 2003, it was  already clear CCM was fighting an uphill battle with online trends—trends with readers and advertisers.  Those trends intensified over the past year and a half. It seemed increasingly  imminent that the CCM brand would make the move to go exclusively online,  especially since late ’07.

CN: How has the circulation of the print edition compared to the web traffic in recent years?

JS: For the past seven or eight years, obtaining new subscribers has been increasingly challenging for CCM’s circulation efforts. Meanwhile our web traffic has continued to grow.

SummerFest 2008

The Crucible was the middle show at last year's edition of SummerFest. Photo by Darell Kincer for SummerFest.

Kentucky Classical Theatre Conservatory’s SummerFest will bring back some old friends for its 2008 edition.

SummerFest was the successor to the Lexington Shakespeare Festival in the Arboretum, after the festival closed in 2006. It launched last summer with a format much like the Shakespeare Festival – a Shakespeare comedy and tragedy sandwiched around a contemporary play – and an eye towards getting a lot of student actors on stage. This year, SummerFest will tinker with the format a bit and, in the process, bring back some directors from the Shakes Fest’s past.

Sullivan Canaday White, who graduated from Estill County High School and the University of Kentucky, will be back to direct Nigel Williams’ adaptation of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, July 16-20. White spent several years directing the apprentice program at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She is now on the faculty at Wofford College in Spartanburg, S.C.

That production will be followed by the musical Hair, directed by Mike Thomas, July 23-27. In 2004, Thomas directed the Shakespeare Festival’s most successful production, Jesus Christ Superstar.

SummerFest will open with Joe Ferrell directing Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, July 9 to 13.

Auditions for this year’s festival are March 21 to 23 on the University of Kentucky campus. For more information, visit www.kctcsummerfest.com (the 2008 site is supposed to launch in the next day or so) or e-mail [email protected].

Oscars: Kentucky's leading men are in the dance

Actress Kathy Bates and Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Sid Ganis announce the nominees for best actor Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. Copyrighted Associated Press photo by  Chris Pizzello.

Two-fifths of the field for this year's Oscar for best actor hail from Kentucky. Of course, George Clooney and Johnny Depp will probably have to clap for Daniel Day-Lewis when he takes the prize for There Will Be Blood, but you know, honor to be nominated and all that.

This is the second Oscar acting nomination for Clooney, who won best supporting actor his first time at the party in 2006 for Syriana. The same year, he was also nominated for writing and directing Goodnight and Good Luck. For Depp, it's the third nomination, and he has yet to win.

The fortunes of Depp and Clooney's movies diverged.

Michael Clayton, a hard-boiled drama in which Clooney played a "bag man" for a high-powered New York law firm, also scored nominations for best picture, and best director and best original screenplay for Tony Gilroy. That's nice redemption for Gilroy, a first time director who had to campaign get Clooney to agree to be in his film. Clayton also scored nominations for Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton in the supporting acting categories and James Newton Howard for the film's score. At seven nominations, Clayton got the second most nominations along with Atonement.

There Will Be Blood  and No Country for Old Men received the most nominations with eight each.

Sweeney Todd, for which Depp won the Golden Globe for best actor in a motion picture-musical or comedy, fared much worse than people were guessing when it came out in December. Thought to be a contender for best picture, it failed to score in that category or best director for Tim Burton. That's a bit of a surprise considering Todd won the Golden Globe Award for best picture-musical or comedy, and Burton was a nominee for best director. You have to wonder what's happening to musicals in Oscar's eyes after both Todd and Hairspray, well-reviewed musicals this year, were shut out of best picture, and Dreamgirls failed to make the field last year. After Chicago virtually revived the genre and won best picture, conventional wisdom seemed to be that if you put up a good musical, trophies would come your way. But now, getting nominated seems to be tough.

Joining Depp, Clooney and Day-Lewis in the best actor race are Tommy Lee Jones for In the Valley of Elah and Viggo Mortensen for Eastern Promises. Day-Lewis has to be considered a formidable front runner for his performance as a ruthless silver miner turned oil man in Blood. It helped that he  won the Golden Globe Award for best actor in a motion picture-drama. It would be his second best actor Oscar, as he won in 1994 for In the Name of the Father.

Best picture seems wide open though, with Atonement the Golden Globe winner for drama, facing off against critics' darling No Country for Old Men, everyones' darling Juno, and Blood, which seems to have momentum as it's moving across the country. Clayton seems like the only sure thing to not win.

Of course, the big question, with the writers' strike, is whether there will be a ceremony Feb. 24.

Album review: Jon Foreman's 'Fall' & 'Winter'

Jon Foreman performs with Switchfoot at the 2007 Ichthus Festival in Wilmore, Ky. LexGo photo by Rich Copley.

Switchfoot's songs have long addressed issues about faith in this modern world, usually dressed up in rockin' grooves that touch on pop, punk and funk. Oh! Gravity, the band's last disc, even found the group, and specifically frontman Jon Foreman, going more and more behind closed doors for songs that sounded like they came from deeply personal places -- see Faust, Midas and Myself or Let Your Love be Strong.

The latter song segues perfectly into Foreman's new project, a series of four solo EPs named after the seasons. Fall and Winter are now out as downloads or together on one CD.

Solo, Foreman's voice is at once familiar and  brand new. Unlike many bandleader-gone-solo efforts, where it's hard to discern a difference, Fall and Winter are unmistakably singular efforts in the soundscapes and songwriting. These are albums Switchfoot probably wouldn't have made. The sound is mostly acoustic and spare, with a  single guitar or piano often augmented by by strings or winds, probably to best effect on The Moon is a Magnet. Foreman likes echo, his instruments often seeming to bounce among quiet hillsides.

Lyrically, he's much more first person than in Switchfoot, and touches on subjects such as sex, addiction and death that have never been favorites in the Christian pop market. There is the Switchfoot social justice voice, particularly Equally Skilled from Fall -- "both of our hands are equally skilled, at doing evil; equally skilled, at bribing the judges; equally skilled, at perverting justice." But there's also My Love Goes Free, with its phone calls from the West Coast to Nashville and story of a tortured relationship.

They're songs that, here in Central Kentucky, would probably sound more at home on adult rock WUKY that on Air1, and Foreman has been playing some very mainstream venues to support this project. That said, the discs also contain some of his most explicitly Christian lyrics in years, from Fall's opening statement of faith, The Cure for Pain, to the communion song, In Love, that closes Winter.

And, like at the end of most any winter, when Foreman's latest EP ends, you think, "I can't wait for Spring."

"Oh, I guess they'll say I've grown," Foreman sings on Fall's Southbound Train. Yes we will, and may you grow much more, and continue to share your soul.

Met auditions notebook

Metropolitan Opera Tri-State Regional Audition winners Jonathan Lasch (left) and Afton Battle (right) pose for pictures with judge and legendary soprano Mignon Dunn (center). Lexgo photo by Rich Copley.

A few notes from Saturday's Tri-State Regional Round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, which were won by University of Kentucky soprano Afton Battle and University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music baritone Jonathan Lasch. Read the Herald-Leader story at LexGo, Sunday.

Stiff competition: Once the competition got started, you knew whoever won was going to have to have a really good day. Indiana University's Jing Zhang was second up with a heart melting Un bel di, and she looked the part of Cio-Cio-San. Then came Lasch with his muscular rendition of Ford's Monologue from Falstaff. Baritones have fared well in this region -- see Corey Crider -- and it seemed obvious Lasch  could have a good day. Indiana University mezzo Kathryn Leemhuis, who ended up finishing second, came in showing range with comical Cosi and an endearing Romeo's Tomb Scene from from Bellini's I Capuleti ed I Montecchi, plus a rather hip look in a black jacket and slacks with an antiquey top (I'm no fashion writer. Leave that to Opera Chic). Then the competition ended with IU's Jung Nan Yoon, making it look like this could be a three-soprano race between Zhang, Battle and Yoon for win, place and show.

That's what's great about the regionals, which we get once every three years: These are the best of the districts, and with Indiana, CCM and Kentucky in our region, all of the singers are bound to be good.

Sports: Watching the talented field reminded me how former UK voice professor Stephen King used to relate singing to golf, and it's a particularly apt analogy in the Met Auditions. Basically, all you can do is play your game, and hope you have a better day than everyone else. You're not going to impact anyone else's performance, so you just have to do your best, and hope it's good enough.

The Met Auditions always make me think of sports, because covering them, I feel a bit like a sportswriter: "How'd it feel out there today?" "What do you take from this going to the next round?" "How does this impact the program?"

Opera Scene investigators: The Met auditions usually go like this: The competitors come out, sing the aria they choose. Then, the three judge panel requests another piece, the singer does it and is gone. Occasionally, the judges will request a third piece, leaving the audience to wonder, "What does that mean? Does it mean they liked the singer? They didn't Know? They just wanted to hear something else."

Today, the judges threw the auditioners a lot of curve balls, stopping them in the middle of arias, asking for three, but only hearing parts of some works and generally seeming to be on a hunt for very specific things.

"They made us work out there," Lasch said, after the competition.

Speaking of the judges: Weather travails prevented Opera Theatre of St. Louis director Charles McKay from getting to Lexington to judge. So, competition co-director Henno Lohmeyer called Carroll Freeman, essentially the Everett McCorvey of the University of Tennessee Opera, and he agreed to make the three-hour drive up I-75 to fill in. He was joined by Met pianist and assistant conductor George Darden and acclaimed soprano Mignon Dunn.

Bet who Everett bets: Between the judging and the awards, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey said it was tough to figure out who won. But a few minutes before the awards were announced, he looked at the Met auditions mission statement in the program. He pointed to No. 1, "To discover exceptional young talent," and said if that's what the judges went by, it would be Battle or Lasch. A few minutes later, with the surprise announcement two singers would advance, Everett was proven right. I think I'm going to call him on Derby day . . .

Word from Memphis: Mezzo-soprano Brandy Lynn Hawkins was also in a regional yesterday, in Memphis. She did not advance though. "A baritone from Arkansas advanced," McCorvey wrote in an e-mail. "She felt good about her singing and the comments evidently were very positive.  They only advanced one from that region to NY.  She was very excited for Afton."

On to New York: The National Semi-Final will be at the Metropolitan Opera Feb. 17, with the finals Feb. 24. If it works the way it did in 2002, when UK's Corey Crider and Mark Whatley advanced, the semis were a smaller, essentially semi-private event. But the nationals are a big, ticketed concert. Here's the link for tickets.

Read it in the (college) paper: Memorial Hall was swarming with a bunch of reporters from UK's student paper, The Kernel, Saturday. I can't wait to see what they write, and will let you know if there are any online links. As a former college paper editor, I love seeing college papers actively covering the arts.

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.

Writers' strike: Kids, enough is enough

The week before last Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards, the sniping between the striking Writers’ Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers got downright juvenile.

NBC Entertainment President Ben Silverman, understandably upset that his network was losing the closest thing it has to the Oscars, criticized the writers: “The nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom.”

The strike Web site United Hollywood fired back, referring to the producers as “big, jock bullies who won’t return to the bargaining table.”

Didn’t you always suspect that Hollywood was like perpetual high school? (Copyrighted Associated Press photo by Damian Dovarganes.)

That said, it is time someone told the kids to grow up and settle this thing. Last Sunday’s Golden Globes broadcast was just the latest in what has become a steady  stream of embarrassments caused by the strike, which is heading into its 12th week. Before that, we had late-night talk-show hosts going back on the air without writers and, for the most part, without scripts, struggling to entertain us. The prime-time schedule is starting to fill up with reruns and reality shows because the networks are retaining fresh episodes of hit shows for the all-important sweeps months of February and May.

I don’t even watch that much network TV, and I’m noticing. Hasn’t NBC now aired every Saturday Night Live compilation special in its vaults?

It’s all rather gloomy.

Looking for Laura Bell Bundy's replacement on MTV

Laura Bell Bundy has signed on to stay with Legally Blonde -- the Musical, through the Spring. After that, she will likely be moving on from her first leading role on Broadway, as SoCal sorority girl turned Harvard Law standout Elle Woods. Last month, Laura (photo, left, by Aaron Lee Fineman) told us she's looking to pursue other projects, including her burgeoning career as a recording artist.

MTV, it appears, will be looking for her replacement.

Last fall, the network showed Legally Blonde in its entirety several times, including a sing-along version, an unprecedented move for a Broadway musical that was still running. Now, according to Playbill, MTV is planning a reality series to find an actress to take over the part. The New York Post reports there's a casting call for the show in Orlando on Jan. 21. They are looking for non-union actresses 18 and over, according to the paper.

This looks similar to Grease: You're the One That I Want, last year's NBC series that found Max Crumm and Laura Osnes to play Danny and Sandy in the current revival of Grease on Broadway. University of Kentucky graduate Derek Keeling was in the running for Danny up until the next-to-the-last episode.

For Legally Blonde, this looks like a dicey proposition. Yes, it'll get the show more national publicity. But Elle Woods is a huge, huge part. The stars are going to have to line up just right for the reality show to find an untested actress with the triple-threat talents and stamina to do that part for eight shows a week. So far, the information is simply there will be a reality show, so no word on whether this will be decided by viewers, judges, a combination of the two and if Laura will play any role in the TV show.

'Rent' is closing on Broadway

The Broadway cast of Rent, as photographed in July 2007. Copyrighted photo by Joan Marcus, distributed by the Associated Press.

If you entertained thoughts of seeing Rent on Broadway, at its home base in the Nederlander Theatre, you'd better plan your trip soon. The Broadway hit will close in June after a 12-year run that will make it the seventh longest running show in Broadway history. Here's the New York Times story.

Rent was beautiful for several reasons, including the bittersweet story of composer Jonathan Larson's death just before he realized his dream of composing a successful musical. But these are the two I embrace every time I see it:

~  Yes, the pop-rock musical/opera had been done by 1996, when Rent opened. But Jesus Christ Superstar and its ilk seemed distinctly rooted in the previous generation. Rent, for teens and twentysomethings of the 90s was ours, presenting issues and characters familiar to us. And many of them were so beautiful in spirit, regardless of their vices and circumstances.

~ Rent is a portal to the past. You cannot be a Renthead without knowing Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme. Sure, not everyone will follow that thread. But a lot of people -- particularly kids -- who love and are  enthralled by art will.

The end of Rent's Broadway run closes a chapter in its history, but there are new ones to be written as it continues to tour and becomes available to theaters across the country.

No day but today

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.

Great classical doubleheader on Charlie Rose tonight

Note: We're not sure what happened with KET2 last night. They ran a documentary well past 11:30, and then joined Charlie Rose in progress, well into the Alsop interview. Thanks to TiVo, I caught the 1 a.m. rerun (first run?) on KET and will post some highlights tomorrow.

This is a day when I'm happy to be on the Charlie Rose (photo, right) update list, because he's got a great lineup tonight classical music fans won't want to miss:

~ Alex Ross, the New Yorker critic whose new history of 20th Century Music, The Rest is Noise, is essential reading.

~ Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop, the first woman to be named music director of a major American orchestra.

In Central Kentucky, Charlie's on KET2 (Insight Channel 15) at 11:30 p.m., and then it repeats at 1 a.m. on KET (Insight Channel 12).

Album review: Kevin Max's "The Blood"

Kevin Max of dc talk takes a gospel-rootsy turn on his new CD, The Blood. Photo by Allen Clark from Max's website.

New Year, new website -- checked out LexGo yet? -- and I am going to restart a feature here on ye ol' blog: reviewing new contemporary Christian albums and enumerating the top new releases on Tuesdays. So, let's get down to business:

One of the surprisingly quiet headlines about Kevin Max's new album is that it contains a dc talk reunion. Yes, Kev did invite his former bandmates Michael Tait and Tobymac to join him for a rendition of Prince's The Cross. No, this album sounds nothing like talk.

The Blood is a rootsy effort by Max, not so much in the songs that he chooses, but in the way he presents these tunes. Many of them are timesless classics, such as The Old Rugged Cross, which Max opens the album with, mining his baritone for a Johnny Cash vibe. His voice is a bit too sweet to be confused with the Man in Black, but he does employ a way of sliding up to some phrases that sounds like it would be at home in a 1960s gospel recording studio. He bookends the disc with One Way-One Blood, a duet with Johnny's sister, Joanne Cash. In between are gems such as Run for a Long Time featuring former American Idol competitor Chris Sligh and that classic, People Get Ready, with Erica Campbell. Max has some the best moments to himself though, with stripped down arrangements of songs such as Trouble of the World and They Won't Go When I Go, sparsely populated with instruments such as slide guitar and upright piano as Max testifies for his music. The only real misstep is a trio of Up Above My Head with Vince Gill and Amy Grant. As a track unto itself, it's fine. But it's a conspicuously contemporary track in the middle of a wonderfully retro album.

Out this week: It's early in the year, so there isn't much going on in the new album game except Winter, the second installment of four solo EPs from Switchfoot frontman Jon Foreman. Fall, which came out in November, ia a gorgeous disc which sounds at once like unplugged Switchfoot but also adds some unexpected dimensions to Foreman's sound. Check back next Tuesday for a full look at Fall and Winter.

UPDATED: Golden Globe Awards -- Making the best of it

The Insider host Lara Spencer announces Cate Blanchett as the winner of best supporting actress in a motion picture. No word as to whether she chose to make a disparaging comment about Blachett's performance in I'm Not There at the Beverly Hills ceremony. Copyrighted Associated Press photo by Mark J. Terrill. Below: Access Hollywood's Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell hosted the TV version of the Golden Globe announcements. Copyrighted photo by Jack Guy for NBC.

UPDATES BELOW

At the end of one of the freakiest weeks in awards season history, we had -- ta-da -- Billy Bush doing  analysis at the podium?!

"At the end of the day, it's a woman imitating a man," he said, right after Cate Blanchett won the Golden Globe Award for best supporting actress in a motion picture, giving the Aussie actress' win an instant cold shower.

Eh, this was about the best we could probably expect from the Globes, which spent most of last week scrambling to figure out what to do with the ceremony, which was scuttled by the Writers' Guild of America's strike against Hollywood producers. Even up until Saturday night, it was a tad confusing as to whether we, the viewers at home, would see an hour or half-hour announcement of the awards. It turned out that there was a half-hour press conference in Beverly Hills, while NBC showed an hour-long announcement show with Bush and his Access Hollywood co-host Nancy O'Dell.

The awards themselves did little to clear up the Academy Awards race. Atonement won the award for best motion picture drama, but the dramatic acting honors were split between Daniel Day Lewis for There Will be Blood and Julie Christie for Away from Her. In the comedy and musical categories, where the honor invariably will go to a serious musical if there is one, Johnny Depp won for his performance in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which also won for best motion picture comedy or musical. Really, Sweeney may have the most traction heading into the Oscar race with those wins, as the drama awards and supporting acting and directing honors, which are not split between dramas and other stuff, were spread around. If anyone truly appears to be in a stronger position thanks to the Globes, it would be veteran French actress Marion Cotillard, a surprise, though highly-deserving winner for best actress in a comedy or musical for La Vie en Rose.

Click here for a complete list of Golden Globe winners.

Jamie Gumbrecht is usually our TV person, and as a lot of you know, she's off in Iraq right now. But we will note that months ago, she pointed out AMC's Mad Men, which was a big winner for best television show drama and best actor in a television drama for Jon Hamm. For our own TV watching, we'll cheer Tina Fey's win for best actress in a TV comedy for 30 Rock though whine Pushing Daisies didn't get something. Now we have to hope that the writer's strike doesn't kill it.

It would be nice if it killed this kind of awards show, and maybe served as a catalyst for getting the writers and producers back to the bargaining table.

Yes, the hour-long announcement show was quick and efficient. But the big, bloated and often unpredictable ceremonies are part of the fun of awards season for fans. Last night had no sense of occasion. It did have Billy and Nancy, who no one has ever looked to for critical commentary on movies and TV, analyzing the awards on the fly. Access, after all, is a gossip show, not a show about the art and craft of film making. From the duo, we got -- ahem -- gems like this:

~ Bush telling us we shouldn't see Depp's win for singing in a musical as a surprise because he came to Los Angeles singing in a rock band, as if that and leading a Stephen Sondheim musical are the same thing.

~ O'Dell acting surprised at Julian Schnabel's win for best director of a motion picture as if she'd never heard of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly -- right now, word is it will open later this month in Lexington. Apparently everyone who has seen it has been blown away, so it wasn't such a surprise if you were paying attention.

We will give the Access hosts some props. It was nice to see someone making a point about how silly the comedy and musical combo categories are, as Bush did several times. And O'Dell got in a funny inside dig when the show trotted out a nearly 10-year-old clip of Angelina Jolie in a pool, wearing a see-through dress, after her first Golden Globe win. Pointing out the clip has been shown numerous times on Access, O'Dell said, "Yes, the show is produced by men."

Funny. But this writer's strike is getting less amusing by the day.

~ I knew it felt sorta lonely watching the Globes last night. According to the Associated Press, NBC's broadcast ranked fourth for its time slot and only 7 percent of the TV audience last night.

~ According to the World Entertainment News Network, George Clooney wants to get involved in mediating talks between the writers and producers.

Met finalists may already be winners

UK opera alum Patrica Andress never advanced beyond the regional rounds of the Met auditions, but has since had a successful career in the United States and Europe. Copyrighted Herald-Leader/LexGo photo by Sam Richie, taken in 2000.

The Tri-State regional round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions is coming to Lexington for the third time since the Lexington Opera Society snatched the annual Met star search from Louisville in 2000.

University of Kentucky singers are one-for-two in parlaying the home-stage advantage into a trip to New York for the national semifinals. In 2001, theatrical baritone Corey Crider made the cut and found himself on the Metropolitan Opera stage in April. In 2004, dramatic soprano Lillian Roberts looked like a promising candidate but hit the stage hampered by a busy travel schedule and a cold, and failed to advance. This year, UK has some promising competitors.

Soprano Afton Battle has been blowing away pretty much everyone who hears her. Several UK voice professors said they would not normally advise a 26-year-old soprano to carry Turandot’s In questa reggia into a Met audition. But Battle did at the Kentucky Districts in November, and it turned heads, even among the judges.

Battle was taking an offensive approach after the Districts, saying it is time for UK to win at the national level again, “to start a new tradition, and give us someone else to talk about in addition to Greg Turay.”

Turay was the last UK student to win in the national competition, in 1995.

The same year Crider advanced, former UK baritone Mark Whatley advanced to the national finals, though he did not win. (Copyrighted photo, left-to-right, of Whatley and Crider by Mark Cornelison.)

Giving UK a triple threat to advance this year are countertenor Christopher Conley and soprano Hannah Smith. Conley is making his second trip in as many years to the regionals. He struggled as a tenor but has blossomed after finding his higher range, and he seems to have matured several years in the 12 months between district competitions. Smith was a revelation with a delightful rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s Glitter and Be Gay. She’s the sort of singer you could listen to all night.

The districts usually send three competitors to the next level, but only one singer traditionally advances from the regional round. Judges, however, can send more at their discretion.

Any of the three UK hopefuls could score a victory for the Bluegrass and give us a good excuse to turn our attention to New York later this year. In related news, mezzo-soprano Brandy Lynn Hawkins, who has just been accepted to the Washington National Opera’s young artist program, advanced to a regional out of Tennessee. So there are four UK singers vying for a trip to New York.

But even if that doesn’t happen, these singers might already be winners.

Ichthus 2008: Movin' on up

Jeremy Camp playing in the afternoon at the 2004 Ichthus Festival. This year he'll be under the stars. BTW, this photo seriously gets my guitar avarice going. Copyrighted Herald-Leader/Lexgo photo by Brian Tietz. Below: Jon Weece, photo by David Perry.

I don't know if Skillet, Jeremy Camp, Kutless or Tobymac have Movin' on Up, the old Jeffersons theme song, in their set lists. But the tune would be more than appropriate for any one of those acts when they play the Ichthus Festival this year.

They've each been reliable daytime and early evening players at Ichthus for the past several years. But now they're getting their shots at closing out or being the next to last acts of the night.

The festival will again have a soft opening on Wednesday, June 11, with a Gotee Records showcase at 7 p.m.

Thursday night, the headliners will be Skillet, which has delivered some of the fest's most scorching sets the past few years, followed by Camp.

Friday it's Kutless, followed by Toby, who has played every Ichthus since he became a solo artist in late 2001.

Saturday night may seem a little toned down by comparison, with the David Crowder Band, followed by Casting Crowns. Ichthus director Jeff James says that's by design, to maintain the worshipful tone that is set earlier at Ichthus Saturday with the  communion service en masse.

There are some noteworthy Ichthus debuts this year, including Leeland, which recently played with Casting Crowns at Rupp Arena, and Stellar Kart, a surprise nominee for artist of the year in last year's Dove Awards. Both bands have new albums coming out Feb. 26.

Click here for the complete Ichthus lineup and ticket information.

The mainstage speaker lineup includes Southland Christian Church Pastor Jon Weece, technically last year's Herald-Leader person of the year. We say technically, because he actually came in second in polling to the late thoroughbred star John Henry -- give us a break, we're in the Horse Capitol of the World. Weece told our Andy Mead he couldn't think of a better horse to lose to.

James says he is asking speakers to address the theme, "Listen. Live," based on James 1:22, and Ichthus will be providing podcasts of speakers and study guides through the Ichthus website as the festival draws nearer.

Among re-jiggers and new features at this year's fest, James mentions:

~ An expanded Starbucks Coffee shop, with an acoustic stage  presented by Gotee Records.

~ The teaching sessions will include a musicians' track and a athletes track, addressing issues of faith specific to both pursuits.

~ Continuation of the mission projects preceding Ichthus. Last year, Ichthus started working with Lexington and Eastern Kentucky agencies to provide mission experiences, particularly for groups coming in from out of town, because now that the festival is a summer event, youth leaders are looking to make it a week-long experience.

Financially, James says the Festival is still feeling the financial pinch of moving to the summer, but last year's shortfall was substantially less than 2006. The move was made after a string of years hampered by bad weather at Ichthus' old slot in late April. Since moving to the second weekend in June in 2006, the festival hasn't seen a drop of rain.

Should NBC News be presenting the Golden Globes?

Writer Jeff Greenstein, right, with ABC's Desperate Housewives joins striking writers outside the NBC Studios in Burbank, Calif. His sign refers to comments made by NBC Entertainment Chief Ben Silverman. Copyrighted Associated Press photo by Damian Dovarganes.

We hinted a few posts back that NBC News essentially presenting the Golden Globes "press conference" Sunday may raise some hackles in journalistic circles, and sure enough . . .

The Los Angeles Times has a pretty comprehensive story this morning about the issue, which is basically this: Yes, the Golden Globes are certainly a newsworthy event. But, should NBC News be scripting and staging said event, essentially to save the network and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association after the striking Writers' Guild of America refused to give the Globes a waiver so union members could write for the show -- yes, a lot of that stuff is written. The writers also threatened to picket, and most of the stars, who are members of the Screen Actors Guild, said they wouldn't cross a picket line to attend.

Our own George Clooney told Access Hollywood, "All I know is I belong to the six unions. I am a union guy. I will do what the Writers Guild says or asks."

Yesterday's LA Times had a piece about how this union tag team is really giving the Writers' Guild the upper hand in this the strike.

One quote in today's Times piece about the NBC News controversy gives you an idea of how nasty things are getting:

"It feels like the nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school are trying to cancel the prom, but NBC wants to try and keep that prom alive," NBC entertainment chief Ben Silverman told radio host Ryan Seacrest on Monday.

Wow, way to reach out, Ben.

Strike website United Hollywood responded, "maybe it's the fault of the 'big, jock bullies' who won't return to the bargaining table."

UPDATED: The Scottish Opera, this weekend

Maria Guleghina as Lady Macbeth in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Giuseppe Verdi's Macbeth. Copyrighted photo by Ken Howard for the Metropolitan Opera.

Update: Zeljko Lucic will actually sing the role of Macbeth after all. The Met sent out a press release late Friday saying Lado Ataneli is, "indisposed."

The credits barely rolled on Hansel & Gretel last Sunday, and the Metropolitan Opera’s Live HD broadcasts are already gearing up for another weekend with the company’s new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth.

This will be Shakespeare-based opera from the perspective of an honest-to-goodness Shakespearian  theater master, British director Adrian Noble. He was the director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1991 to 2003, where he directed Macbeth twice, and he has several West End and Broadway credits as well. The global audience will not see the Macbeth that opened this production, as Lado Ataneli will step in for Zeljko Lucic, who opened the show in October. But we will see original Lady Macbeth Maria Guleghina and maestro James Levine will be in the pit.

I was in New York the opening night of this production, and tickets were available. But I chose to stay with the group I was with instead of peeling off to see the show. Riding to the airport, I read Anthony Tommasini's New York Times review, and wanted to kick myself for not following my instinct. It's not that Tommasini gave it a total rave, but he conveyed some interesting things about the approach and the musicianship that made it sound like a great night in the theater. The HD broadcast won't totally make up for not being there, but it's a nice second chance.

Showtime is 1:30 p.m. Saturday, in Central Kentucky at the Regal Hamburg Pavilion, Lexington Green Movies 8 and Richmond Mall Cinema 8 and the encore is at 3 p.m. Sunday at Lexington Green and Richmond Mall.

Open House

One of the frustrations of being an arts and entertainment writer here in Lexington is we are getting more things to cover, but we aren't getting more space to cover them. No, this isn't going to be a whiny post about being part of a dying industry, because I don't believe that's the case.

Gary Pruitt, the president and CEO of the McClatchy Company, the Lexington Herald- Leader's parent company, is dead on when he says that daily newspapers are in a better position than any other media outlet to take advantage of the Internet, and I'm not quoting him just because I have a performance review coming up. He is exactly right, if the papers do it right.

LexGo, is an example of doing it right.

LexGo is our new arts and entertainment website which launches today. It is the result of months, probably a year, of work by the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com's entertainment news and online departments. I can crow about it because very little of what makes it great has to do with me, though I am certainly committed to being part of making LexGo Central Kentucky's most comprehensive and useful outlet for information about arts and entertainment.

Essentially, that's the idea behind LexGo.

Before today's launch I had a chance to surf around Lexgo a bit, and there is a lot to find. Like a great movie or play, it works on several levels.

We need Jon Stewart

The Daily Show host Jon Stewart in a 2006 photo by Ken Fitzsimons, courtesy of Comedy Central.

More than Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien, the return of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart seemed rife with peril. After all, the guy sits at a desk for half-an hour doing largely scripted material. Without his striking writers, and apparently being barred from writing himself, as he's a member of the Writers' Guild, what exactly would he do?

Stewart's first night back since the beginning of the strike, Jan. 7, was a little painful. The host fell into the trap of thinking everyone was as preoccupied with strike as he was, and he used a segment with Cornell University labor relations professor Ronald Seeber to vent his frustrations at not being able to strike a David Letterman-esque deal to get his writers back to work.

But better than anyone else in television, Stewart knows when he's bad, and judging by the opening of his second show, a lot of people also told him as much after that first show back.

The past two nights, he has been much more on his game, not only at being funny, but also at picking apart the news of the day.

Who's afraid of Schoenberg?

Rob Kapilow, whose What Makes it Great?  segments are a highlight of Performance Today. Photo by Peter Schaaf, courtesy of Kapilow's website. 

At the risk of seeming like KET's PR guy, I do feel compelled to highlight another one of its offerings this week.

Folks who listen to American Public Media's Performance Today (heard in Central Kentucky at noon and 8 p.m. on WEKU FM-88.9) are familiar with Rob Kapilow's What Makes it Great? segments, in which he rips apart a classical music classic to show you its wonders.

Tonight, he brings the concept to TV with I Can't Believe it's Schoenberg on Live from Lincoln Center, which will be shown here and in much of the country at 10 p.m. on PBS. Schoenberg, for folks who aren't hip to one of classical music's more divisive figures, is a composer whose name will make some people's faces contort like you just opened a package of rancid bratwurst. He was a pioneer of atonal and 12-tone music, which is usually not easy on the ears.

Kapilow, with help from members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, will be looking at Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), a work he wrote early in his career before he made his move into atonality and 12-tone music. The piece had dual inspirations: a poem of the same name by Richard Demel and Schoenberg's first meeting with Mathilde von Zemlinsky, who he later married.

The first half of the program will be a discussion of the piece, followed by a performance of it in the second half hour. That will end the broadcast, but folks who want more can tune in at PBS.org to hear the Chamber Music Society perform Johannes Brahms String Sextet No. 2.

Golden Globes 2008: Award Show haters, this one's for you

Writers walked the picket line at CBS in Los Angeles Jan. 7. Copyrighted Associated Press photo by Ric Francis.

You could debate through an entire three-hour epic whether the writers or producers or both lose in the decision to scrap the lavish Golden Globe Awards ceremony in favor of an hour-long press conference Sunday night. But there is a clear winner: Anyone who hates long, drawn-out award shows.

You don't have to worry about any half-soused star hijacking the microphone for an extended, incoherent speech. There will be no teary actress getting "played off" by a merciless orchestra. Fear not the inexplicable montage of movie clips from movies with titles that tangentially relate to global warming, or something as random. And the self-congratulatory spiel from the presenters . . . well, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will probably still find a way to make that happen.  But it will seem more in line with the proceedings, which reportedly will be a televised "press conference" where winners will be announced and it is hoped some actors may show up to accept their trophies.

The Golden Globes are, of course, the latest casualty of the strike by the Writers Guild of America, which has brought virtually all scripted television programming and movie making to a halt -- David Letterman's Worldwide Pants production company and, as of Monday, Tom Cruise's United Artists Films have reached independent agreements with the guild. The press conference, couched in between several live and recorded specials is an attempt to salvage something from the program that was originally supposed to constitute most of NBC's programming Sunday night.

There are a few questions for NBC News here, like, are you supposed to be the tourniquet for your entertainment division when its business goes sour? What's the deal with calling this a "press conference" when no other broadcast outlets can cover or carry it. (Print journalists will get in. Yay, us!)

It would be a shame if this is finally the year Johnny Depp, one of our Kentuckians on the Hollywood A List, finally won after seven previous tries but didn't get to savor the moment. I'd love to hear what Johnny, who is nominated for Sweeney Todd, would do for an acceptance speech. But now it looks like we'll have to wait for the Oscars, if even then. If writers and producers don't get back to the table and negotiate, that Feb. 24 ceremony is imperiled too.

But you know, after Sunday, we may decide we like this one-hour-and-done format.

The Berlin Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall on KET

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall in November. Copyrighted photo by Joe Sinnott for Thirteen/WNET.

One of the cultural events of 2007 in the United States was the Berlin Philharmonic's extended visit to New York in November.

Two posts ago, we were discussing Germany's fall from its status as a cultural cradle into evil during the World Wars. The 17-day Berlin in Lights festival celebrated the city's re-emergence as a cultural capitol. We get to see highlights of the event at 9 tonight on KET. Great Performances' Carnegie Hall Celebrates Berlin will feature the Philharmonic performing Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 9, as well as excerpts from a performance of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with 120 dancers from Manhattan Public schools. We'll also be treated to hotshot young conductor Gustavo Dudamel, who just made his debut conducting the New York Philharmonic and has been named the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, leading his Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela in Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra.

Coverage of the festival made it sound amazing, so this sampler should be a treat.

Interview with Harold Prince

The masquerade scene from The Phantom of the Opera, which comes to Louisville this week for a three-week stand. Below: Jason Mills as the Phantom and Sara Jean Ford as Christine. Both copyrighted photos by Joan Marcus and courtesy of the Louisville Broadway series.

This is a full transcript of an edited interview that ran in today's Herald (ha, I nearly wrote Harold) Leader:

There are numerous credits in Harold Prince’s 57-year Broadway career as a producer and director that would be impressive on their own.

Prince’s directing turns include the original productions of Cabaret, Sweeney Todd and last year’s Kurt Weill show LoveMusik. But he still has his hands in Phantom of the Opera, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that now holds distinctions such as being the longest running show on Broadway and grossing $3.3 billion worldwide, which Lloyd Webber’s company claims makes it the most financially successful entertainment enterprise of the 20th Century. Later this month, Phantom will celebrate its 20th anniversary  on Broadway.

The show’s United States tour, which just celebrated its 15th anniversary, sits down in Louisville this week for a three-week run. That gave us a chance to get on the phone with Prince, 79, to discuss this most successful endeavor.

Copious Notes: When you were approached with Phantom of the Opera, did you have any sense of how successful it would be?

Harold Prince (photo, right): No, I don’t think anyone ever dreams that something like this will happen to them. Why would you? I just thought, “I would like to do that.’ It’s a romantic musical and I haven’t seen a romantic musical in decades. So, I said yes, right away.

It was interesting. I was in London, at a restaurant, sitting at one table, and sitting at another was Andrew with Sarah Brightman, his then wife. I was sitting by myself, and he said, ‘Come have coffee with us.’ It was the Le Caprice Restaurant. And I went over, and he said, ‘I’ve been thinking of something and I want to run it by you: What do you think of a musical version of Phantom of the Opera?’ And I said, ‘Do it,’ and he said, ‘Will you?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Why were you so instant? That’s not like you,’ and I said, ‘because I’m desperate to see a romantic musical, and I think everyone else must be.’

You know, musical and romance should be rather usual currency. But they’re not. The last totally romantic musical I had seen was South Pacific in 1949.

So we did it, and we did it for the same reason: assuming that people would like to lose themselves in a romantic musical and lose themselves in an atmosphere that does not reflect what’s out on the street or their personal lives.

Q: Why had Broadway and the West End gotten so far away from romantic musicals?

A: I really don’t know. It’s so odd, it hadn’t occurred to me. I guess you could say My Fair Lady was a romantic musical in so far as at the end he says, ‘Liza, bring me my slippers.’ But that’s not conventional romance. I don’t really know. Musicals were usually peppy, they started out romantic but peppy. But let’s face it, South Pacific is a really intense love story, beginning to end, and this turns out to be one as well. Audiences seem to want that very much.

(Rare) Book review: 'The Rest is Noise' by Alex Ross

Critic and impresario Joe Horowitz and critic Alex Ross speak at the NEA Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera at Columbia University in October.

No one could ever accuse me of being a prolific book reader.

I’m not a speed reader, and with a wife, two kids, a busy schedule and a job that demands a lot of reading, the large swaths of time needed to devour a book are few and far between for me.

I do have a pile of good intentions — books that were started but faded from mind as more fetching reads emerged.

So, when a book overcomes those hurdles and continues to reassert itself, I know I’ve found something special. “Special” is an understatement for Alex Ross’s The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century.

At this point, I might be the last journalist to sing this remarkable tome’s praises, but I’m going to sing them anyway because this book is essential for knowing and understanding the history of classical music in the 20th century. It’s an important period to understand for anyone who cares about the genre. The 20th century was the time in Western culture when classical music went from enjoying a prominent place in society to more of a niche genre that struggled to figure out whom, if anyone, it was supposed to address.

There are all kinds of theories as to why this happened.

Pssst . . .

Check this out.

Late night TV sans writers: Interesting . . .

Conan O'Brien returned to the air sporting his "strike beard" Jan. 2. Copyrighted photo by Dana Edelson, courtesy of NBC. Below: David Letterman returned to his Late Show with writers. Copyrighted photo by John Paul Filo, courtesy of CBS.

After Conan O'Brien finished a bit on his Jan. 3 show in which he spun his wedding ring on his desk, with a producer timing the spin, a woman in the audience shouted, "Again!"

Conan paused and said, "Trust me, there's time to do it again." Sitting back in his chair, he added, "Let's not be in a rush to do it again."

It was one of many moments Conan wung it on his first show back since the start of the strike by the Writer's Guild of America. The strike is not over, so the 12:35 a.m. gabber was on the air without writers, and, as a Guild member unable to do any writing for himself -- his lead in, Jay Leno, apparently interpreted the union rules differently, but more on that in a few graphs. 

So, Conan was out there without a script, finding out how long an hour can be on national television.
Since Conan is a naturally funny guy, he was reasonably (though notably darkly) amusing trying to navigate through a show without the usual trappings.

That was interesting, but for how long?

The return of the late night talk shows yielded varied results:

~ CBS' Late Show with David Letterman bowed with working writers, thanks to a deal Letterman's company worked out with the Writers Guild to come back to work for his show and the follow-up Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

One of Letterman's highlights was a Top 10 list of striking writer's demands, delivered by writers. No. 3 was Law & Order scribe Gina Gionfriddo, who has a new play, Becky Shaw, premiering at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville. Her demand:  "I'm no accountant, but instead of us getting 4 cents for a $20 dollar DVD, how about we get $20 for a 4-cent DVD?"

There was a lot of self-deprecating humor, like Biff Henderson coming in, well into Letterman's monologue , to ask when the writers would be back. And Letterman even leaned on some things he said he would have done if the writers had not returned. The "Know Your Staff" segment turned out to be a sweet moment where Letterman interviewed an associate producer and showed something a lot of us who cover arts and entertainment already know: most of the people who work in the field are moms and dads, husbands and wives, just like us. Their work just happens to be seen by millions of people.

But overall, Letterman's mood was crabby, and probably moving even closer to the loose spirit of his old NBC show.

Meanwhile, back at the Peacock: On The Tonight Show, Jay Leno followed in the spirit of his predecessor, Johnny Carson, who returned from a 1988 writer's strike penning his own jokes to relatively good reviews. That's got Leno in hot water with the union, which contends members can't even write for themselves on struck productions. It was occasionally painfully obvious Conan was following that rule.

Outside of the controversy, Leno writing for Leno worked to an extent, as he touched on topics including the presidential primaries. Before he was the Tonight Show host, Leno was one of the funniest comedians out there, and there were reminders of that Wednesday and Thursday. But he was also clearly stretching and filling time.

Where Leno and O'Brien may find themselves at the biggest disadvantage is after the monologue, when they go to the couch. The conventional wisdom seems to be stars will be loathe to cross picket lines to appear on struck shows, while Letterman's couch will be safe with the Union label. Jan. 2 was a prime example: Letterman had Robin Williams, Leno had Mike Huckabee.  Leno did win the ratings battle that night, but if this drags on, you have to think Letterman will gain ground with a better written show and more star power.

Funny thing is, while the writers are picketing the NBC shows and ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live!, those programs may just be proving how important the writers are.

Business up front for Family Force 5

Family Force 5 are (L-R) Crouton (drummer Jacob Olds), Nadaddy (multi-instrumentalist Nathan Currin), Soul Glow Activatur (vocalist Solomon Olds), Chap Stique (guitarist Derek Mount) and Fatty (bassist Joshua Olds). Photo by Neil Visel, courtesy of Gotee Records.

We make a couple of trips a year down to see the in-laws in Georgia. The past few drives, I haven't been able to go through this little town north of Atlanta without thinking:

I give my props to the speak and spell
It taught me grammar in the A-T-L
Growing up as a kid in Marietta
I puts those beats all into my sampler
Played the loops all night on that Casio
Dreamin' of hearin' my songs on ur stere-ere-o

Right now, you could be thinking, "Wha?" or you could be one of the thousands of voters who helped Family Force 5 sweep CCM Magazine 2008 Readers' Choice Awards, and you recognized those lyrics from Cadillac Phunk. The "crunk rock" quintet from the Atlanta area -- Kountry Gentleman is another one of their infectious tunes -- won for best artist, best band, most underrated artist, best website, best live performance, most likely to be the breakout artist of 2008 and artist you'd most like to see on the cover of CCM. The seven honors of course granted the wish of those who voted for FF5 in the last category. It was granted five times, actually, with a different cover for each member of the Family.

This is an honor that splinters away from the critics lists, because the album that energized the Family fans, Business Up Front/Party in the Back, was actually a 2006 release. But 2007 was undoubtedly the year that the album broke. Every Ichthus Festival, I want to give an award to the band that was not a headliner, but might as well have been, based on audience response. Last year -- gotta get used to '07 being last year now -- that act was easily FF5, which quickly kicked the event into overdrive with a 4:10 p.m. Thursday set.

Overdrive is not a problem for these guys.

Family Force 5 has two major things going for it: The band really doesn't sound like anything else in the Christian market, and it's really hard to come up with a mainstream comparison. Most important, FF5 is a lot of fun, whether you are listening to an album or seeing them at a show. Clearly there are crossover expectations for these guys, which shouldn't be much of a problem either, because so much of their material is not explicitly Christian, and they can go toe-to-toe with the best of the current pop market. In the short article that accompanies the reader's poll feature, the band says their style and not being  explicitly Christian enough for some listeners has led to a few uncomfortable moments. They're simply the latest band to grapple with that controversy, but their messages sink in on multiple listenings.

As 2008 dawns, nothing seems to be getting the band or their fans down, particularly when we're drivin' through Mari-et-ta.

Dr. Brown's wish list for 'Caspian'

Asbury College professor Devin Brown, who we talked to last month regarding The Golden Compass, has published an insightful wish list for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which is due out in May, at Christianity Today's website.   It's an insightful piece from the author several Narnia commentaries and the new, Inside Prince Caspian. Brown's suggestions come from a literary perspective but, unlike a lot of literary criticism of movies, do make sense for film. Basically, he's looking out for the integrity of C.S. Lewis' story, which he feels first Narnia film, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, didn't do.

Opera review: Metropolitan Opera's Live HD 'Hansel and Gretel'

Gretel (Christine Schafer) and Hansel (Alice Coote) are enticed to enter the witch's house in the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Hansel and Gretel, with scenic and costume designs by John Macfarlane. Below: The "angels" prepare a feast for the children. Copyrighted photos by Ken Howard for the Metropolitan Opera.

Usually, when we say a show is fantastic, we mean that it was “excellent, superlative,” as Merriam-Webster defines the word. That’s definition No. 3. But in definition No. 1, according to the dictionary’s Web site, fantastic also means “conceived or seemingly conceived by unrestrained fancy.”

The Metropolitan Opera’s new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel fits either definition. In Richard Jones’ production, originally for the Welsh National Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the opera’s design has been reimagined by artist John Macfarlane. He created a dreary and contemporary present for the unfortunate siblings. But once they enter the haunted forest, it’s a world of wild dreams and nightmares that complements Humperdinck’s timeless family opera.

The New Year’s Day afternoon performance was shown in a live, high-definition broadcast at movie theaters around the world. In the HD broadcast, before the curtain rose, shots of children in theater seats were interspersed with images of musicians warming up and updates on how far we were from showtime. At the Regal Hamburg Pavilion in Lexington, the audience was also dotted with kids, including a family of five that was dressed as if they were at Lincoln Center.

The images that went across the screen aren’t likely to vanish from any of those little boys’ and girls’ minds any time soon: craggy trees in dark suits, a high-concept apartment serving as a forest, the “angels” in the dream sequence portrayed as ultra-portly chefs who serve the children a sumptuous dinner, complete with a fish-head maitre d’. It’s a great show for kids — old enough and mature enough to handle some frightening and grisly images — because it shows so many ways that creativity can be used to make a compelling piece of art, from Humperdinck’s music to Macfarlane’s designs and everything in between.

The danger with high-concept pieces is that the concept will overwhelm the drama. But this H&G, with an English libretto by David Pountney, is still about the title 10-year-olds (sent into the forest by poor and incompetent parents) who must survive by their wits and a faith that God will hear their prayers. The kids are, of course, portrayed by adults — Christine Schäfer, who plays Gretel, has two kids of her own. But they ably get the mannerisms of children down, from their goofy dance in the first act, to the way Hansel’s (Alice Coote) chin trembles in the forest. It makes the Children’s Prayer in Act II all the more poignant, because we feel like we are seeing kids in trouble. And they are, as in Act III, they are enticed by the witch who wants to fatten them up and eat them. Even when he’s acting like Julia Child’s evil twin, Philip Langridge’s witch conveys plenty of menace.

Metropolitan Opera general director Peter Gelb has said he wants the venerable opera house to be a place where great artists come to work, be they musicians, stage directors or visual artists. This is a production that fully realizes that goal.

The New Year's broadcast was a great alternative to meaningless college football games (yes, even the arts writer has to take a shot at the crock that is the Bowl Championship Series), and if you didn't get to catch it, it repeats at 3 p.m. Jan. 6 (in Central Kentucky at the Lexington Green and Richmond Mall cinemas). The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre will also offer up its own take on Hansel and Gretel in March.