Copious Notes

Humana Festival 2008 wrap-up

Annie Parisse as Becky Shaw and David Wilson Barnes as Max in Gina Gionfriddo's brilliant Becky Shaw. Below, Barnes, Mia Barron as Suzanna and Davis Duffield as Andrew in Shaw. All photos in this post by Harlan Taylor | Actors Theatre of Louisville.

It isn’t uncommon to look at the Humana Festival of New American Plays lineup, get all excited about a new work from a familiar author, and then walk away deflated by an effort that wasn’t quite all it could have been – maybe wasn’t even near. This year, the marquee names were Gina Gionfriddo and Lee Blessing, well known writers with solid resumes of stage hits.

And it is exhilarating to report that the results were a masterpiece and a great play from the pair.

Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw was the masterpiece at the festival that wrapped up March 30 at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

It is a play that has everything going on: witty banter, a compelling story and wise observations about the human condition. You only realized it was a long journey after the standing ovation died down.

We started in a tense hotel room meeting. Following her father’s death, Suzanna and her mother Susan were locked in a bitter argument about Susan’s financial status and new boy toy. Attempting to mediate was Max, the financial planner who was taken in by Susan and Suzanna’s family after his mother died when he was 10. The scene ended with Susan storming out and Max and Suzanna consummating their relationship.

Fast forward a year, and Suzanna was married . . . to Andrew, a guy Suzanna met on a ski trip that Max told her to take to help heal after her father’s death. Andrew and Suzanna have set Max up on a date with Becky Shaw. The moment you saw Becky, you knew this would not go well with perfectionist Max. Becky was flighty, living the life of an aimless high school graduate at age 35. But she also showed an early ability to cut to the heart of situations, avoiding a lot of the analysis Suzanna piled on.

That’s the first act. Act II twists and turns several times, coming to a surprising but surprisingly real ending. It also made you think a lot about the characters and how they interacted along the way.

Max was at many moments an incredible jerk. Casting him correctly will be a real key in future productions, because we need to maintain some sympathy for him for the play to work. But sometimes, as much as you hated to admit it, Max was right.

Suzanna and Andrew are good folks, but it was sort of a surface goodness, and Gionfriddo made us contemplate how useful it was.

Becky Shaw was the best exploration of relationships and emotions at Humana since Donald Margulies Dinner With Friends, which came out of the 1998 festival to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

And Blessing’s Great Falls was also an outstanding and searingly honest play.

Philharmonic '08-09 music and soloists

The Lexington Philharmonic's 2008-09 season will include music by Osvaldo Golijov, Feb. 13, the first time the popular contemporary composer's work has appeared on a Philharmonic program. Photo by Sebastien Chambert from osvaldogolijov.com.

It feels somewhat appropriate the Lexington Philharmonic went up against Gypsy this weekend, because the orchestra has been slowly revealing its 2008-09 season. First, we got concert dates, then we found out about the program for George Zack's final concert on the podium as music director. Now, we get the music and soloists for all but one concert.

A lot of this year's candidates have talked about balancing seasons of new music and standard repertoire, and several of next season's concerts do that, including the programming of music by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube, who is known for his scores of Godzilla movies, and Osvaldo Golijov, whose work is often performed by Kronos Quartet and who recently scored Francis ford Coppola's Youth Without Youth. Fans of the traditional classical canon won't want to miss the March 27 lineup of Beethoven, Mozart and Brahms.

The season's final layer will be removed April 25, when the remaining candidates to succeed George Zack will be unveiled. The hopefuls will be conducting all but two of next season's concerts, with the  announcement of the winner, and our next music director, expected to come next spring. Here's what they will be playing, and who they will be performing with:

Sept. 12: George Zack, conductor; Aaron Rosand, violin -- Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Violin Concerto; Johannes Brahms, Symphony No. 1.

Oct. 24: Hai-Ye Ni (photo, right), cello -- Ottorino Respighi, The Birds; Franz Joseph Haydn, Cello Concerto; Sir Edward Elgar, Serenade in e minor; Zoltan Kodaly, Dances of Galanta.

Nov. 21: Conrad Tao, piano -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, selections from Idomeneo: ballet music;  Dmitri Shostakovich, Piano Concerto No. 1; Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 3 (Eroica).

Dec. 19: Jefferson Johnson, conductor; Lexington Singers and soloists -- George Frideric Handel, Messiah.

Jan. 23: Daniel Mason, violin, and viola soloist TBA -- Akira Ifukube, Ballata Sinfonica; Mozart, Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola; Antonin Dvorak, Symphony No. 6.

Feb. 13: Yolanda Kondonassis (photo, right), harp -- Osvaldo Golijov, Last Round; Alberto Ginastera, Harp Concerto; Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 (Pastorale).

March 27: Andre Laplante, piano -- Beethoven, Leonore Overture No. 3; Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 21; Brahms, Symphony No. 4.

April 17: Lexington Singers -- Gabriel Faure Pavane and Requiem; Beethoven Overture to the Creatures of Prometheus and Choral Fantasy.

Contact the Philharmonic for season ticket information.

Concert notes: Alfred Savia

Alfred Savia takes questions from the audience in a pre-concert chat prior to his conducting gig with the Lexington Philharmonic. (Below) Moderator Joe Tackett finally got an answer he liked on the bass concerto question. Copyrighted photo by Rich Copley | Lexington Herald-Leader.

Think Alfred Savia was scared last night, conducting a concert with the Lexington Philharmonic that was essentially an audition to become the orchestra's new music director?

Well, consider this from early in Savia's career: At 22, when he was in graduate school, he conducted at a festival of Leonard Bernstein's music, with Bernstein in attendance.

"One of the first public performances I ever had was conducting one of Bernstein's pieces with him in the audience, looking over my left shoulder," Savia recalled at last night's pre-concert chat. "No pressure."

Are you talking about this Lexington gig? Because, you know, conducting Lenny for Lenny would seem to raise the bar for pressure pretty darned high. Like all his predecessors in the search for George Zack's successor, Savia sat for a chat with LPO bassist and librarian Joe Tackett to answer questions before the concert. Out of this season's five contenders, he came across as the least scripted, pulling memories from a career that only appears to be confined to the South and Midwest.

"Tell us about your studies in Siena," a member of the audience asked.

"Ah, now you've tapped another one of my passions, which is Italy," Savia responded. "It's one of those great Tuscan hill towns."

He went on to talk about the Siena, its history and his work there in terms as clear and concise as the concert he conducted an hour later, even drawing a comparison to the town he's vying to become a part of: "The one thing Siena has in common with Lexington is horses. You have the Kentucky Derby, and you raise all these horses here. And at the Piazza del Campo, which has all these cobblestones, they pack dirt around the whole perimeter of the piazza, which is a huge piazza, and they put barriers around the inside of the piazza, and on the outside are all the buildings. And on that pathway, they have this horse race. But it's more than a horse race. It's medieval pageantry, and they dress as they would have in medieval times, and its opulent costumes . . . The race only takes a minute or two, but there's all the pageantry."

In our compressed American sense of time, it sounds somewhat akin to donning a seersucker suit or a wild hat sipping a julep.

On the podium, Savia cut the figure of the football player he once was before a coach told him to choose between the gridiron or clarinet. He usually worked the edges of the stand toward the orchestra, rarely spending more than a second in the middle as he conducted. Make sure to read Loren Tice's review at LexGo.

Savia proved to have the best solution to the question of when to talk to the audience, utilizing the stage changeover time between the first and second pieces on the first half of the concert. He relayed some interesting information about the configuration of the orchestra for Ralph Vaughn Williams'  Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and gave the Niles Quartet the recognition it richly deserved. Using the changeover, when we're usually left to watch stagehands work, was an effective approach to talking to the crowd. But if Savia is hired or comes back, he and the orchestra might want to choreograph it better. Giving the hands room to work made Savia prowl the dark edge of the stage. Some people I was sitting near seemed oblivious to the fact someone was in front of the crowd with a microphone and kept on chattering with each other. A spotlight may have highlighted that Savia was back out front.

There was one great moment for pre-show emcee Tackett. After a season of being stymied on his question about how many bass concertos each candidate will program, Savia said, "Ask who my first soloist was in Evansville, this season."

The answer was bassist extraordinaire Edgar Meyer, who played two concertos. Regardless of how anyone else felt, Savia undoubtedly earned some bass cred last night.

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

See the acclaimed UK Women's Choir, Sunday

The University of Kentucky Women’s Choir will present a benefit concert at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Hillary Boone Center to support its trip to the Music Educators National Convention in Milwaukee, Wis.
The invitation to perform at the conference is one of two prestigious honors that director Lori Hetzel and the Women’s Choir have received this year. The group also has been invited to perform for the Southern Region Division of the American Choral Directors Association.

The fund-raiser will feature UK Opera Theatre star Brandy Lynn Hawkins, performing selections from Georges Bizet’s Carmen, and Megan McCauley, one of the winners of the 2007 Alltech competition. The concert also will feature a new spiritual by Roger Holland II, renowned composer for the Harlem Boys and Girls choirs, and UK professor Noemi Lugo singing two unpublished Venezuelan works.

In the copyrighted 2003 file photo, above, Hetzel readied the Women's Choir for a trip to sing at Carnegie Hall. Want any more evidence these ladies are good?

Introducing Alfred Savia

Alfred Savia conducts the Lexington Philharmonic in a Tuesday night rehearsal. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photos by David Stephenson.

Tonight, Lexington gets to meet candidate No. 5 to succeed George Zack as music director of the Lexington Philharmonic, and he's the closest neighbor of the first audition season.

Alfred Savia hails from Evansville, Ind., where he has been the music director of the Evansville Philharmonic  Orchestra for 19 years. In fact, some mutual players between the Evansville and Lexington Phils were among those who tipped Savia to the Lexington gig, and suggested he might be good for the group.

This evening, he'll take the Lexington Philharmonic out for a test drive at the Singletary Center for the Arts, conducting Gioacchino Rossini's Semiramide Overture, Ralph Vaughan Williams Variations on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 8.

Earlier this week, we sat down with Savia at Buddy's for a chat about his music and his interest in Lexington. Here's a transcript of a portion of that interview.

Copious Notes: You easily have the longest tenure at one post of any of the candidates that have come through this season.

Alfred Savia: It's worked out that way. It's fortunate for me to have had a lot of other activities to balance with that. For six of those years, I was the associate conductor of the Indianapolis Symphony.
For three years, I was involved in bringing the orchestra in Orlando back to life. I was associate conductor many years ago when they had a full-time orchestra there, and I was the artistic director as they were emerging. In Indianapolis, even though there were six years formally as associate conductor, I continue to conduct quite frequently there. I was just on the phone with them about some of their summer programs. I do at least half of their summer season, still.

And I have sort of reconnected with the orchestra in New Orleans, where I was resident conductor before Evansville and Indianapolis. I just came back from my third time there since Katrina. Evansville has been a really wonderful base. It's a position that gives me time to do a lot of other things, as well.

CN: How has the New Orleans orchestra fared since Katrina?

AS: It actually had a rough time before Katrina, and one could have thought Katrina would have been the ultimate blow, but it's actually been the opposite. They've really rallied. When I was resident conductor in New Orleans, it was called the New Orleans Symphony. I went there really with the knowledge that things were precarious financially. The executive director was very open. He was a friend of mine and really wanted me to come and the orchestra wanted me there. But he also warned me, and his warnings turned out to be quite true. Fortunately, for myself, I found another position. But that orchestra was teetering many years and eventually did fold. The last concert they gave as the New Orleans Symphony -- before they had a hiatus of 14 months and then began playing again and eventually went under -- I conducted a family series and we added the the Farewell Symphony and had the musicians leave one by one. CNN covered it, and there was all kinds of national attention for that.

But eventually the orchestra reformed and is run as a cooperative orchestra. The board is 50 percent musicians, 50 percent business leaders and community leaders. With most orchestras, the board is non musicians. In this case, it's a cooperative. It took them a while to get a season going. They would just say, 'We're going to get as much work as we can put together and subdivide the pie.' Then Katrina hit, and of course they canceled a major part of the season, the whole first part of 2005 and '06, and they started it up again, I think, around March, and that's when I went in . . . They subsequently invited me back last season and just again this season.

CN: What has made Evansville a great base for you?

AS: Well, first, it's a great orchestra.

Album review: Delirious' 'Kingdom of Comfort'

Delirious is (L-R) Jon Thatcher (bass), Tim Jupp (keyboards), Martin Smith (lead vocals), Stu G (guitars) and Stew Smith (drums). By David Dobson | EMI Christian Music Group.

Sorry to be a coupla days late with the weekly review. Clooney-mania in Maysville and some other things put us behind. But here goes.

You might feel guilty listening to Kingdom of Comfort on your pricey, high-capacity iPod. That wasn't exactly Delirious' intention with the thought-provoking song about the material and often isolated world we live in and the terrific album of the same name, a collection of new vertical classics from the Brit rockers.

With album cover art featuring a spilled shopping cart, there is an unmistakable indictment of consumer culture, but the lyrics address it as a comfort that keeps Christians from ministry-- from going forth into the world -- and lures them into unwittingly supporting injustice:

I rob myself of innocence
With the poison of indifference
I buy my stuff at any cost
With a couple of clicks I pay the cost
'Cause what I gain is someone else's loss

It is hardly a comfortable place for the band to go in a Christian pop culture that usually takes aim at easier targets to sell and often promotes consumption as conspicuously as Madison Avenue. But the band does it smartly, in a song that can haunt you as you make decisions about how to use money and time.

It's something of an extension of Our God Reigns from 2005's The Mission Bell, Delirious' last album of new material -- recall the lyric about how an order of Chinese take out could pay for an AIDS patient's medicine? The men of Delirious seem to have something on their minds.

One of those things is definitely making some great worship rock, a logical place to go for a band that has blazed the genre's trail. There are definite possibilities for joining Our God, I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, Majesty and pretty much the rest of the Delirious catalog as worship classics.

But Kingdom of Comfort, which releases April 1, really excels when it's at its most challenging, see the title track, or sonically adventurous, see the Radiohead-esque flourish at the end of How Sweet the Name. Delirious is in a good place for an established band, giving fans a lot of what they expect in the soaring, passionate rock, but clearly continuing to incorporate new ideas into its music. They don't let themselves get comfortable, which is good for us.

Out this week: It's another relatively quiet release week with Starfield's I Will Go being the marquee release. Next month, look for new Hawk Nelson, P.O.D. and Run Kid Run, among others.

Concerts:

4Him's Mark Harris at Northeast Christian Church on Friday, March 28. (That would be tomorrow.)

Newsboys at Pikeville's Eastern Kentucky Expo Center at 6 p.m. April 6.

This is a little ways off still, but Hawk Nelson, Run Kid Run and Jeffrey Dean play Winchester's George Rogers Clark High School July 5.

Zack on Zack's last concert

George Zack, shown conducting his last performance of Handel's Messiah, just announced the lineup for his last concert. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photo by Charles Bertram.

Last week, we got word on who will play and what will be played on George Zack's final concert conducting the Lexington Philharmonic as its music director, on Sept. 12: violinist Aaron Rosand playing Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68.

So, why those pieces and this soloist? We asked Maestro Zack if he could talk about his choices in an e-mail. Here is his reply:

Why Aaron Rosand?: He was a very young artist when I was in school at Wichita State University in the late sixties. His performance was with the Wichita Symphony under James P. Robertson and he played the Sibelius Violin Concerto. He so impressed me with his musicianship and violin skills that I vowed one day to have an orchestra worthy of his appearance. I arrived in Lexington in September 1972 but all the soloists for the coming season had already been selected by the artistic committee. That was necessary in order to secure dates for artists that usually worked a year or two in advance of the coming season. That meant 1973-74 was the first time I was able to hire artists of my choice. The spring of 1973, I attended the Symphony League's national conference and studied the rosters of artist managements looking for Mr. Rosand. I found him and approached his management with the following introduction: "I would like to hire the finest violinist in the world for next season!" Jacques Leisser, his manager, quickly replied, "that would be Aaron Rosand." I answered back, "you're right, now let's talk dates and fee." Since I was new to my position, Jacques made Aaron available to us at a very low fee that would not cripple the LPO budget. We settled on a date and fee and Jacques asked what piece I would select. "Sibelius."  He agreed and away we went on a history that included all the major concerti covering three centuries. We have since become fast friends and share many mutual friends here in Lexington and Florida.

Why the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto?: When I realized that my last concert was going to be this September, I called Aaron personally and asked him if he would consider playing with us again for my final appearance on the podium. He immediately agreed. I gave him his choice of works to perform and his immediate answer was "Tchaikovsky." That, in short, was the way that came about.

Why the Brahms First Symphony?: As to the selection of the major symphony on the program, Brahms First Symphony in C Minor for me was the obvious choice! When I arrived in February/March of 1972 to guest conduct as a candidate for the position with the LPO, my program consisted of The Freischutz Overture of Weber, the Bruch Violin Concerto, and Brahms First. I wanted to add a bit of Greek symmetry to my career here by ending my last concert with what I started with, hence, Brahms. I have always felt the work gave the orchestra a magnificent vehicle with which to demonstrate musicianship as well as technical prowess. It also would give me an opportunity to hear just what I was getting into as far as the  ensemble's willingness to work, ability to perform a major work, and to assess the various sections of the orchestra. With this as my last work, the audience can  now hear this marvelous ensemble they have in their midst and know that is more than worthy of support into the future.

Casting change at Studio Players

After opening weekend, there has been a casting change in Studio Players' production of Ladies at the Alamo. Rachel Rogers has been replaced by director Tonda-Leah Fields (photo, right) in the role of Dede.

"The board acted in accordance with notification from her mother that she was too ill to perform on Sunday," Studio spokesperson and Alamo cast member Pam Perlman said Tuesday. "So as to not put additional pressure on Rachel, we have elected to replace her for the remainder of the run."
The play will continue through April 6. Perlman said she did not know the nature of Rogers' illness, which caused the Easter Sunday performance of the play to be canceled.

"She is a brilliant actor and we hope for her improved health," Perlman said.

Read Candace Chaney's review of Ladies at the Alamo.

Clooneys live up to reputation

George Clooney gives 17-year-old Ariana Bowles the thrill of a lifetime by taking their picture together at the Maysville premier of Leatherheads. The resulting picture is below.  Copyrighted Herald-Leader photos by Charles Bertram.

My first encounter with Nick Clooney was when I called him out of the blue. I was up in the Maysville-Augusta area in 1998, trying to get a little sense of George Clooney's roots for a preview of Out of Sight. Some folks in Maysville told me I should give Nick a ring, and I dialed his number with some trepidation, expecting a gruff response.

Far from it, he invited me and photographer Janet Worne to come over. We sat in the living room of Nick and Nina Clooney's Augusta home and chatted about their son, who at the time was making the risky move of leaving the successful NBC drama ER for the uncertain world of cinema. Nick, who at the time was a host on American Movie Classics, knew his son had star quality, but also knew the movies are a tough business. Mom and dad hoped things would go well.

Fast forward 10 years, and they most certainly have. Gorgeous George is now an Oscar-winner, two-time sexiest man alive and one of the top movie stars on the planet, Janet.

But home has always remained a big deal for him, which he showed Monday night in bringing a premier of his new movie, Leatherheads, back to his family home of Maysville. His co-star, Renee Zellweger, said Clooney had been talking about a Maysville premier since the movie started filming.
It's the same thing his Aunt Rosemary did in 1953 when she came home with her movie The Stars are Singing in 1953 and again in  1997, when she came home to marry her longtime love Dante Di Paolo.

They brought their stars home and the accompanying glow.

With the Clooneys, there's never any sense this sort of thing is an act. Monday night on the red carpet, it was clear George loves his roots in Northern Kentucky, understands the impact he and his famous family have had on Maysville, and he wants to help that continue.

You could see that in the way he spent a solid hour on the red carpet with fans and media. And it was fun to see how his star could serve as inspiration for other Maysville kids who might want to follow in their footsteps -- from former Miss America Heather French Henry who seemed so tickled when George looked over and said, " . . . and there's Heather," to theater student Jessica Moulis, who was visiting home on spring break from California State at Northridge, where she's studying theater.

"It's pretty inspiring to see how it is possible to come from a small town and make it," she said, clutching a lottery ticket for the 10:30 (though it must have started much later than that) screening of Leatherheads.

If she or others do make it, the Clooneys have set the precedent that stars from Maysville remember their roots and they are gracious.

Check out our coverage of the Leatherheads premier in Maysville on LexGo.

Live from Maysville

Doug Hendrickson, middle, joked with Nancy Hunter, left, and her daughter Katie Hunter, right,during a mid-afternoon snow shower before the Kentucky premiere of George Clooney's new movie Leatherheads, at the Washington Opera House in Maysville. (Below) George Clooney's costume from the movie stands at the entrance to the theater's auditorium. Copyrighted Herald-Leader photos by Charles Bertram.

Click here for our coverage of the big night in Maysville.

UPDATE BELOW

Driving into town, the sign at the Bank of Maysville reads, "Welcome, George and Renee," and a few blocks down, the McDonald's marquee says, "Welcome Home George Clooney."

The little Northern Kentucky town has rolled out the reddest of carpets for tonight's gala premier of Clooney's latest acting and directoral effort, Leatherheads, with Clooney and co-star Renee Zellweger in attendance. The stars reportedly landed in Georgetown and were heading up to Maysville as the crowd outside the Washington Opera House began to build.

At the entrance to the theater, guests will walk past posters for the movie and one from his aunt Rosemary's effort, The Stars are Singing, which had its gala premier at Maysville's Russell Theatre in 1953. They'll also walk past Clooney's costume from the movie, which is a comedy about the dawn of the National Football League. Theater manager Mike Thomas happily guided a tour of his place, which is usually home to the Maysville Players. In fact, tomorrow night, he'll be heading up auditions for the company's upcoming production of Nunsense.

But tonight, it's glitz and glamour, with a guest list that includes Clooney's parents, Nick and Nina; his Aunt Rosemary's lifelong friend Blanche Chambers; Gov. Steve Beshear; one of Maysville's other sweethearts, former Miss America Heather French Henry and her husband, former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry; and Lexington's own Wayne Bell, who emceed that 1953 premier.

Interesting story about Ms. Chambers and that premier, which Maysville Mayor David Cartmel relayed: Chambers rode to the premier in the open Cadillac with Rosemary Clooney, but then she had to go sit up in the segregated balcony. Rosemary defied the law though and had Chambers sit with her.

Tonight, Chambers has a seat down front, and it's not an issue.

A lot of folks in Maysville -- and coming in from places as far away as Clarksville, Tenn. -- don't have seats for either the 8 p.m. showing or 10:30, which will be attended by the state champion Mason County Boys Basketball team. Clooney, Thomas said, is set to meet the team during the first screening, but also intends to watch the movie with his mom and dad.

Even if they couldn't get in, a steadily growing throng started gathering at 10 a.m. in the subfreezing temperatures to watch the celebs arrive.

Herald-Leader ace party correspondent Beverly Fortune was out chatting up the crowd. She ran into Karen Edwards of Edgewood, who was celebrating her 44th birthday standing in line for the procession down the red carpet.

"I'm so excited he's coming back to Maysville," she said, "I'm so glad he's coming to honor the city."

UPDATE -- As afternoon is wearing on, more people are gathering on Third Street in front of the Washington Opera House, and celebs such as Nick Clooney are beginning to appear. While some of the folks joining the throng are getting off work, some folks who work in offices around the theater are hanging out and inviting friends and family in for bird's-eye views of the action.

Standing in a bathroom at Carlson Software, Judy Brown, whose daughter Lauren Brown works for the company, said, "You've gotta get close to Hollywood when you can."

The Philharmonic's busy candidates

This week, we’ll see Alfred Savia of the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra in Indiana, the fifth and final candidate this season for music director of the Lexington Philharmonic. The two-year search will end next spring after  another season with up to six auditions.

But it’s not as if the four candidates we’ve already seen went home and are sitting by their phones, waiting for Lexington to call. They’ve been busy conducting, announcing seasons, even trying out for other jobs. Here’s a rundown of what’s been up with them:

Kayoko Dan: In terms of media coverage of her activities, Dan, who auditioned in October, has been the quietest candidate. According to a short profile published in January in The ­Arizona Republic, Dan’s primary duties as assistant conductor of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra have been leading school and “People’s Pops” concerts.

Alexander Platt: The November guest conductor just signed a five-year contract extension with the Waukesha Symphony Orchestra in Wisconsin that will take him through the 2012-13 season. We should note that in the orchestra conducting world, music directors often hold more than one post, and his new contract in Wisconsin in no way puts him out of the running for the Lexington job.

He is also in the running for the music directorship of the Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra in Arizona, where on March 7 he conducted a program including Jean Sibelius’ Symphony No. 3, which he also conducted here. Platt also has continued his first season as principal conductor of the Boca Raton Symphonia.

Darryl One: Three other orchestras are considering One, who auditioned this season in Flagstaff; Midland, Mich.; and Beaumont, Texas. All of those orchestras are making decisions this spring. At his current post, One wraps up another season with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra in Texas in late April.
Daniel Meyer: The candidate who ­auditioned in February has been announced as a finalist for two music director posts in Virginia — Fairfax and Richmond — as well as in Fort Wayne, Ind.

He also is continuing his regular duties as music director of the Asheville Symphony in North Carolina and Erie Philharmonic in Pennsylvania and as resident conductor of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Alfred Savia: This week, in Lexington, he’ll conduct an all-orchestra concert of Giacchino Rossini’s Semiramide Overture, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, and Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8.

Earlier this month, Savia was back in an old stomping ground, conducting the ­Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. He once was resident conductor of the New Orleans ­Symphony Orchestra.

We’ll have more on Savia, as we have with the other conductor candidates, later this week at LexGo.com and in Friday’s Weekender.

Meanwhile, what else is up with our conductor search?

The names of the remaining candidates will be revealed at an event before the April 25 season finale, featuring outgoing director George Zack conducting the Philharmonic and Lexington Singers inWolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.

Zack’s final concert will be Sept. 12, with violin soloist Aaron Rosand, and the program will feature Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68. The rest of the season is expected to feature guest conductors, save for the annual performance of Handel’s Messiah in December, to be conducted by Lexington Singers music director Jefferson Johnson. By this time next year, we should be close to knowing who will succeed Zack.

Anything can happen in Met's 'Tristan and Isolde'

Michelle DeYoung as Brangaena and Deborah Voigt as Isolde in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Tristan and Isolde. Copyrighted photo by Ken Howard | The Metropolitan Opera.

Initially this weekend's Met Live HD broadcast of Tristan and Isolde looked interesting because we don't get much Wagner live (or pseudo-live) here in the heartland and it offered the endurance test of a five-hour-and-35 minute running time.

But a check of the headlines tells us this could be an intriguing show just to see what happens.

Tuesday night, lead tenor Gary Lehman slipped off a bed-like surface, which he was lying on, into the prompter's box -- methinks this could be the dastardly work of silk sheets. Lehman was actually Tristan No. 3. Tristan No. 1 Ben Heppner, fell ill before opening night. He was replaced by his cover, John Mac Master, whose performance was widely panned. Lehman actually finished Tuesday's performance, but Saturday, we will see the Met debut of Robert Dean Smith, Tristan No. 4.

And don't think darling Isolde has gotten off unscathed. Last Friday, Deborah Voigt came down with a monster stomach bug and had to be replaced mid-performance.

So, with all this just going on in the friendly confines of Lincoln Center, who knows what we may have in store when we get to see the show nationwide. Click here for local showtimes.

'Arcadia' photo album

Marc Roland as Ezra Chater and Adam Luckey as Septimus Hodge in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of Arcadia. Copyrighted photo by Charles Bertram | Herald-Leader

Actors Guild of Lexington's new production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia is up and running now through April 6 at the Downtown Arts Center. Whether you were at the theater last weekend or have tickets for an upcoming show, we hope you enjoy this photo album from the show.

Also, be sure to check out Candace Chaney's review of Arcadia.

Actors Guild has announced a programming change: The Arcadia performance originally scheduled for this Sunday, which is Easter, has been rescheduled for 7:30 p.m. April 3, which is a Thursday.

Album review: Shawn McDonald 'Roots'

Seattle based singer and songwriter Shawn McDonald, whose latest album is Roots. Photo courtesy EMI Christian Music Group.

On the first spin, Shawn McDonald's Roots sounds like a nice album.

Listen to it again. Let it sink in. Notice sonic flourishes like the toy piano on the opening track, Clarity, and the liberal and effective use of strings throughout the disc. Listen closely to how much of the album is scripture, and appreciate how McDonald interprets the verses. Shadowlands, on listen six or seven, gives you a ba-da-bing moment: Oh! Psalm 23. I was just grooving to the syncopation and soulful singing.

On previous efforts, McDonald has been known for being a bit more raw and ragged. This album shows a lot of accomplishment -- an ear for what the song needs, an interpretation, and the skills to execute it. McDonald essentially operates from an acoustic palette but finds a wide range of strokes so the album never blends together or loses a listener's interest. Sometimes, it's not obvious what a song will become. Waltz in 3 starts of a clever idea that winds in a classical reinterpretation of the appropriate theme, "Won't you take me, and make me, beautiful." There are several spaces of beauty and loveliness on this disc, including the final tracks, Winter and Hallelujah, which brings back the toy piano so subtly you barely notice, until you've taken time to notice. But you'll find these things, because Roots grows on you.

New today: It's a quiet new release today with only one marquee release, Colour from electronic and ambient artist Andy Hunter. His previous efforts have been amazing, so we'll give it a listen.

Concerts:

4Him's Mark Harris at Northeast Christian Church on Friday, March 28.

Newsboys at Pikeville's Eastern Kentucky Expo Center at 6 p.m. April 6.

Humana Festival: 'All Hail Hurricane Gordo' review

Patrick James Lynch (in the Chargers helmet) as Gordo and Matthew Dellapina as Chaz in Carly Mansch's All Hail Hurricane Gordo at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. Copyrighted photo by Harlan Taylor | Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Carly Mensch's All Hail Hurricane Gordo raises concerns before the show even starts.

In a filthy living room, a greasy-haired guy plays Nerf basketball, calling a little play by play for himself and whooping it up when he gets a basket. Eventually, his nerdy housemate comes in and they face off in an aggressive game in which the fellow with bad hair emerges victorious.

It's not that the intro isn't fun. It's just that it raises the question of whether this is just the latest hipster, slacker show at the Humana Festival of New American Plays. That's not a blanket slam. Just last year, Carlos Murillo's dark play or stories for boys was a youth-oriented effort that emerged as the best of the fest. But Actors Theatre of Louisville has picked some clunkers in pursuit of younger audiences such as Alexandra Cunningham's 2000 effort No. 11: Blue and White -- plays which seem to have something to say, but in reality say little except for using in lingo that will be so last year by the time the next Humana rolls around.

Gordo leaves you wondering if this one will fall into the latter category for a while, but also lays out enough mysteries to keep you involved long enough to find out it is actually an excellent piece of theater from a clear and compelling young voice.

Those mysteries include, why does Chaz have all of these phone books piled up around his desk?

Why does Gordon have outbursts where he slams his head into the wall?

What exactly happened here?

The two are adult brothers living on their own. Gordon clearly has issues and limitations, and though Chaz seems more together, it appears he definitely has his issues to. A new young roommate, India, helps bring some of these problems to the surface and to a semblance of resolution.

Casting in the top roles really helps draw us in. Patrick James Lynch has the manic energy of the spastic Gordon, and though he would  clearly be tough to live with,  we see the sweetness and lost child residing beneath that facade. That same child exists in Matthew Dellapina's Chaz, though with a job, a schedule, and even some volunteer work, he appears more together. Whatever happened to them, we know early on, it must have happened when they were young to arrest certain aspects of their development.

The play leaves us thinking about loss and our responsibilities to our loved ones and how they may conflict with our responsibilities to ourselves. And it leaves us thinking about brotherly love, which will always be hip, no matter what generation you hail from.

Town and gown works for Lexington arts

The University of Kentucky Percussion Ensemble, led by James Campbell (far right), has brought a lot of national recognition to UK, and plays concerts of repertoire you wouldn't normally hear in a community Lexington's size, without a major University. Photo courtesy of the University of Kentucky.

A few weeks ago I took a look at the front page of Arts + Life. There was a story about a double bill of plays by University of Kentucky Theatre, a piece about UK soprano Afton Battle in the national semifinal round of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and, inside, a story about a new UK ­musical and operetta club.

A few nights later, I was in UK’s Singletary Center to hear the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, and I noted that concertmaster Daniel Mason directs UK’s string program, principal violist Joseph Baber teaches composition at UK, principal … well, you get the idea.

Even when you’re not dealing with a UK organization, there’s a good chance there will be a tie to the university.

That is not to diminish the efforts of artists from other area schools. I’m reminded of folks such as Stephanie Pistello, a Transylvania University theater graduate who now directs the New Mummer Group in New York; John Ellison Conlee, who graduated from Centre College’s theater program and went on to a Tony Award nomination for his performance in The Full Monty; and singers such as Corey Crider and Norman ­Reinhardt, who got their starts at Morehead State University and Asbury College, respectively, before filtering through grad school at UK on their way to burgeoning opera careers. We have a wealth of colleges and universities in Central Kentucky with substantial arts programs. And covering UK arts extensively is not a subversive effort at boosterism (my dirty secret: I was born and raised a Duke fan).

There’s something to be said for having a major land-grant university in your city. It elevates the possibilities for what you can do and what your community demands.

George Clooney update

It feels like a critical mass has formed of things Clooney, warranting a bit of an update:

Covers: Harriett covered (oh, alright, pun intended) one of George Clooney's recent magazine fronts over at Fash Food. But he also appeared on the cover of Esquire, again. At first, I gripped the mag wondering, "How many times can they put this man on the cover!?" But then I looked at the story -- which actually answers the question: 5.

As a writer, you look for fresh spins and approaches to often covered material, and I loved what A.J. Jacobs came up with for George C: They showed him himself on the Internet.

The article opens: "He is in the backseat of a dark SUV . . . and is, for the first time in his life, reading his own Wikipedia entry."

And he's off into the gushing, gnashing and frequently factually challenged world of celebrities on the web -- "A sort of This is Your Virtual Life," Jacobs writes.

~ Clooney makes a point of noting that his imdb entry leaves off his first film role, as an extra in the Kentucky-lensed feature And They're Off.

~ He comments on fellow Kentucky A-lister Johnny Depp when shown the Hollywood Stock Exchange, where he was trading at $46 -- "It's not just payday and numbers," Clooney observes, "Because if it was just numbers, Johnny Depp would kill everybody."

BTW, Depp was Esquire's January cover boy. So on the Esquire exchange, we'd say Kentucky is way up.

~ Faced with the Facebook group George Clooney is NOT the sexiest man alive, Clooney dictates a response to Jacobs: "That's (expletive). He looks great for a 70-year-old." (You can actually see the post on the page.)

~ He responds to the site George Clooney is GAY GAY GAY: "No. I'm gay, gay. The third gay was pushing it." (Sorry, I searched for the original site for a bit. But after a while, you conclude looking for a site called "George Clooney is GAY GAY GAY may not be the best use of company time.)

~ And he brushes back Rupert Everett's comment that the Ocean's movies are, "a cancer to world culture," saying, "Dude, weren't you in Dunston Checks In?

All in all, the Esquire cover story proves to be inspired fun with Clooney showing his talent for self deprecating humor. It's well worth picking up.

Homecoming?: Word is, Clooney may bring his latest director effort, Leatherheads, home to Maysville's Washington Opera Theatre, where his  aunts Rosemary and Betty first performed. According to Maysville's Ledger Independent, if the screening works out, it will be the first film shown at the theater since the Rosemary Clooney era. Clooney's parents, Nick and Nina Clooney, are working to make the screening happen. The movie opens nationwide April 4. We'll let you know if this Northern Kentucky event becomes a done deal.

Above: Clooney (center) in Leatherheads, which is about the start of professional football. Copyrighted photo by Melinda Sue Gordon | Universal Pictures.

Back to 'Brothers:' Burn After Reading, Clooney's latest teaming with reigning Oscar winners for best director Joel and Ethan Coen, now has a release date: Sept. 12. Considering the cast and the Coen's status as current Oscar champs for No Country for Old Men, this should be a big deal. The co-stars include John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and reigning best supporting actress Tilda Swinton. Pitt and Clooney play Washington D.C. gym employees who find the memoir of an ousted CIA official, played by Malkovich. Clooney and the Coens previously teamed up for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty.

Met's 'Peter Grimes' this weekend

Anthony Dean Griffey in the title role of the Metropolitan Opera's new production of Peter Grimes. Copyrighted photo by Ken Howard | The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera’s Live HD broadcasts go dark this weekend with Benjamin Britten’s modern masterpiece Peter Grimes.

Anthony Dean Griffey sings the title role in this story of a fisherman who hopes for a better life but suffers from misfortune and bad temperament. The opera is known for letting the audience decide whether Grimes is a true villain or a victim of society. This production is directed by John Doyle, whose Tony Award-winning production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company originally was staged at Cincinnati’s Playhouse in the Park.

Anthony Tommasini's review for The New York Times provides a nice, quick historical accounting of the 1945 opera at the Met, and he says that Griffey's performance adds new dimensions to the role:

"Mr. Griffey, even though his voice has heft and carrying power, is essentially a lyric tenor. And it is disarming to hear the role sung with such vocal grace, even sweetness in places. Every word of his diction is clear. You sense Grimes’s dreamy side struggling to emerge. The moments of gentleness, though, make Mr. Griffey’s impulsive fits of hostility, his bursts of raw vocal power, seem even more threatening."

The opera will be shown at 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Regal Hamburg Pavilion 16, Lexington Green Movies 8 and Richmond Mall Cinemas 8; and at 3 p.m. March 16 at Lexington Green and Richmond Mall. Tickets are $22 for adults, $20 for seniors and $15 for children. Click here for links to advance tickets.

If you can't make it to the movie theater, Peter Grimes is also the Met's radio broadcast this week, heard in Central Kentucky on WEKU (88.9 FM).

Splitting Harrys

There were seven Harry Potter books, but we'll get eight movies.

Rather than try to shove all of the exposition and explanation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into one either super-long or super-brisk movie, the folks at Warner Bros. have elected to end the cinematic portion of the tale with two movies, which will be shot simultaneously and be released within six months of one another, according to Variety.

Let me start or join the chorus of, "What a relief," if not, "Why just the finale?" Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, due at theaters in November, is going to take some work to bring it into one movie.   The last two movies have achieved a lot on style points and faithfully aging the teen trio at the center of the saga. But they have sacrificed large swaths of story, including entire subplots, and moved at such quick  paces there was little room for nuance or contemplation.

And Deathly Hallows needs that space. One of the big mysteries is, at what point in the story will they cut it, or will screen scribe Steve Kloves rejigger the tale a bit to give that first half a rousing finale?

Above: Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Copyrighted photo by Jaap Buitendijk | Warner Bros. Pictures.

Library film looks at 'Lexington's Greatest Generation'

Lexingtonian Helen Evans atop the Eiffel Tower while serving as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Corps in World War II. Photo courtesy of Helen Evans.

Note: Friday night, Lexington will get its first look at Our Part: Lexington's Greatest Generation, a documentary about Lexingtonians during World War II, produced by the Lexington Public Library. There will be a free showing of the film at the Central Library on Main Street, followed by a USO dance. This story will be in tomorrow's Weekender section, but it seemed like a good idea to give you a heads up:

Thurman Wagoner got off a boat in New York City, fresh from serving in Europe during World War II. He wanted a hot dog. A few steps off the boat, he couldn’t stand the wait anymore, so he broke ranks and ran to get four hot dogs. When he turned around, there was Harry Truman.

The President asked Wagoner where he was from.

“Kentucky,” Wagner replied.

Truman said, “That’s a damn good place to be from.”

Wagoner (photo, left, courtesy of the Lexington Public Library) has a bunch of stories like this, including one about how a few bottles of wine got him out of trouble for leaving his unit for a week after serving on D-Day. But he had never told them to anyone outside his family until a camera crew from the Lexington Public Library came along.

Our Part: Lexington’s Greatest Generation is a new documentary from Thom Southerland and Thai Emmerich of the Library Channel (Channel 20 on Lexington Insight cable system). The movie will premiere Friday night at the Central Library, followed by a “USO dance.” It will show for the next month on the Library Channel.

The film was made in conjunction with the Library’s One Book One Lexington project, an initiative to encourage residents to read a book together. This year’s book is Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest ­Generation.

“We’re not trying to compete with Ken Burns or anything,” Southerland said, referring to the documentary filmmaker whose The War was a hit on PBS last fall. “We wanted to be as local and specific as possible.”

Your 'Arcadia' study guide

Adam Luckey is Septimus Hodge and Becky Pearcy is his brilliant student Thomasina in Actors Guild of Lexington's production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, which starts previews tonight and opens on Friday. Photo by Charles Bertram | Lexington Herald-Leader.

Total admission here: I was afraid of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia when I went to a rehearsal for the Actors Guild of Lexington production on Monday night. I'd been hearing all of this stuff about Chaos Theory and proofs and things and could just feel my eyes glazing over before I set foot in the rehearsal hall. I frequently tell people there's a reason I work with words and not numbers.

The play is simultaneously set in the early 1800s and the present day in a house on the English countryside. We see intellectual and sexual dramas of the past unfold while present day scholars attempt to solve the mysteries and interpret the discoveries of those days.

Turns out, it is an engaging play. This is not a review, as I only saw a rehearsal. Look for Candace's take on Saturday. But I can say that I was drawn into the literary and romantic plotlines and intrigued by the discussions of science and math, particularly teenage Thomasina's ability to make discoveries that were mind-blowing even today. That said, it was helpful afterward to have some background on what was being discussed to better understand the play. So, no, you do not need a study guide to understand Arcadia. But, if you'd like to do a little advance reading, here are notes prepared by director Ave Lawyer:

Download arcadia_primer.doc

Dateline Flyover

Michael Friedman, Jim Lewis and Steven Cosson (L-R) discuss This Beautiful City, the play about the evangelical community in Colorado Springs, Colo., which they created as part of 32nd annual Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actor's Theatre of Louisville. Photo by Maggie Huber | Lexington Herald-Leader and LexGo.com.

Note: A few weeks ago, I was invited to join the bloggers at Flyover, a blog at ArtsJournal.com written by nine arts journalists from across the country who work outside of the major cultural capitols such as New York and Chicago. It was quite an honor, which I compared to being asked to join your favorite band, as I have been an avid Flyover reader since the blog launched. I also like being part of it because it makes Lexington part of a national arts conversation. So, today I put up my first post. Sometimes, when appropriate, I'll cross post between here and Flyover, and sometimes I'll write posts exclusively for that blog. Here's an excerpt from today's post, and I invite you to follow the link at the bottom to go over to Flyover and read the rest and read posts from my fellow Flyover bloggers:

Last week, I saw a performance of Lee Blessing’s new play, Great Falls. It was a great piece of theater that belied the bells and whistles of so many shows today by focusing on two terrific, well-traveled actors under the guidance of a first-rate director.

And I was nowhere near New York City. Not even Chicago or San Francisco. I was in Louisville, a town most people only think about the first Saturday in May. But every year, somewhere around the last weekend in March, the Derby City becomes the center of the theater world with critics and theater professionals flocking in for the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

The festival, which has launched critically acclaimed plays such as Crimes of the Heart, is now into its fourth decade. It has had its up years and down years, but with recent hits such as Dinner with Friends and Omnium Gatherum, people still come to Humana hoping to be among the first to discover the next great thing.

See the end of this post at Flyover.

Album review: Inhabited's 'Love'

Inhabited are Marcus Acker, Sara Acker and Charlie Harper. Photo by Travis Weerts | Blackpulp.

Inhabited’s Love grabs your attention at first listen with sounds you don’t hear a lot in Christian rock: Marcus Acker’s staccato guitar groove, a little punctuating rap, the throaty alto of frontwoman Sara Acker and a beat that sets your toes tapping, if not your hips swaying. Remember, we’re talking about music directed at a community where some people still consider dancing immoral, no matter what King David did. Inhabited does this a lot on its sophomore album, and that’s when the Houston-based band is at its best. The first single, Hush, is a primo example, a girls’ empowerment tune fueled by a call-and-response rap and a steady beat from drummer Charlie Harper. Even in a more meditative mode, the trio can maintain that clubby composure, such as I Want to Know.

That is not Inhabited’s only sound. The group also offers up some traditional rockers and ballads, and does them well. Song to the Fatherless is a particularly lovely song taken, like many of the bands lyrics, from interactions with fans. The title track has mainstream Christian radio written all over it. But Inhabited’s strength is in its more distinctive voice, and it would be great to see that develop in future projects.

New music today includes: Re:Zound's Abandoned to You, Shawn McDonald's Roots and In Christ Alone: Modern Hymns of Faith & Redemption from Matt Hammitt and Bethany Dillon.

Check out our Winter Jam photo album, if you haven't already.

Selah will be in concert at Ashland Avenue Baptist Church's new Great Commission Center at 6 p.m. Sunday, March 16. Tickets are $15 and available at the door in advance by calling (859) 266-4341.

Don't forget Mark Harris of 4Him fame at Northeast Christian Church on Friday, March 28.

Newsboys will be in concert at Pikeville's Eastern Kentucky Expo Center at 6 p.m. April 6.

If you want the cheap rate for Ichthus, there's not much time left. March 14 is the last day to get an all-weekend ticket for $89. Then it ticks up to $98, and the kids rate goes from $57 to $53 from ages 7-10.

If he'd stayed with the bow tie . . .

MSNBC has reportedly canceled Tucker Carlson's show which was on at . . . uh, I think it was . . . Anyway, the blogosphere is filled with commentary on this and why his show didn't work. My opinion: He turned his back on bow ties. Tucker used to be one of the few prominent bow tie wearers in media, but somewhere along the way, he abandoned them in favor of open collars and straight ties. You know, loyalty counts. If he'd stayed with the bow tie, maybe things would have been different. Of course, maybe Tucker could turn his fortunes around going back to the bow tie. You know, once you learn to tie one, you never forget.

Double the opera from UK

Colleen Lauve as Gretel and Sarah Klopfenstein as Hansel during the dream sequence from UK Opera Theatre's production of Hansel and Gretel. Photo by Tim Collins | University of Kentucky.

Every University of Kentucky Opera production has two casts. The main reasons are the UK voice program wants to give stage experience to as many students as possible, and the opera company schedules its performances on back-to-back nights. Performing many operatic roles two consecutive nights would be a voice killer, somewhat akin to asking the UK football team to play two games on consecutive days. The voice of an opera singer, like the body of a football player, needs time to recover. So you’ll notice most professional opera companies such as Louisville’s Kentucky Opera schedule their performances on a Friday and Sunday, or some other lineup with at least a day between shows.

So, since UK Opera doubles up, a lot of opera goers end up seeing a different cast from many of their friends, and only one of the casts gets reviewed for the paper. We think UK Opera is worth reviewing because of the generally high quality of its productions and its status, without a pro opera troupe here, as Lexington’s de facto opera company. With adult tickets going for more than $30, they're also charging real money to get in, which obligates the company to perform at a certain standard. But, with limited resources of time and space, plus a desire to get you a timely review, we usually only review the opening night cast. (And  when you're talking about one of these gut-wrenching Puccini or Verdi operas, you can only take it once a season or so.)

Sometimes I do see both casts though, and it’s always interesting to see how different performers interpret the same roles and music. Such was the case this weekend when after having reviewed the “Hansel” cast of Hansel and Gretel the previous weekend I ended up in the Lexington Opera House Saturday night seeing the “Gretel” cast. This happened through a combination of my daughter receiving a free ticket to the show through her school and my lovely bride being cool to the idea of venturing out to drive on ice and in sub-freezing temperatures.

The affirming thing was the other cast did not alter my overall upbeat assessment of the show. But stage director Sally Stunkel did allow the actors latitude to do their own interpretations of the characters, which gave us different views of the show. The biggest alteration came in the role of the Witch. In the Hansel cast, Mark Kano played up the clownishness of his dude-looks-like-a-lady assignment to steal the show. Gretel cast Witch Natalie Krupansky had more of a psycho take. There was never a hint of safety in her wild-eyed performance.

As the title siblings, Sarah Klopfenstein and Colleen Lauve of the Gretel cast seemed like a slightly more sophisticated, older take on the kids than the Hansel cast’s Brandy Lynn Hawkins and Amanda Balltrip. But the primary difference there was in voice: Hawkins and Balltrip are simply two of the strongest voices at UK, and hearing them unite provided some thrills. Speaking of vocal thrills, Eric Brown sang the role of the Father in the Gretel cast.

Was either cast appreciably better? That’s somewhat in the eye of the beholder.

But the third reason UK double casts is it can. The voice department is fully capable of fielding two casts for the same show, and the winners are local opera fans, particularly ones looking to get two-for-one on each show.

See a photo album from Hansel and Gretel.

10 Years on the Job

Lately, I've been having these weird realizations:

~ Jim Clark  has been president of the LexArts more than five years.

~ HorseMania was eight years ago.

~ The Lexington Legends are heading into their eighth season.

~ Broadway star Laura Bell Bundy is nearly 27 years old ... and I ­covered her senior-year musical at Lexington Catholic!

They're moments that can make you go all Edvard Munch (right).

They're moments when you realize that you've been around long enough that things that were once news are now fixtures on the landscape. I'm feeling like something of a fixture, too.

Ten years ago today was my first day of work at the Herald-Leader. I wasn't sure where to park or what to do when I got through the door.

Back then, I was a young reporter with a young ­family. Today, my Lexington tenure is twice that of my first two gigs combined, and my kids are in the latter stages of elementary school. Like them, after a decade in this sort of job, I hope I've learned a few things. Things like ...

It's good to have been around a while: When I got here, I was hearing about groups such as Junkyard Players and Lexington Musical Theatre and people like University of Kentucky sculpting legend John Tuska and Lexington ­Ballet founder Nels Jorgensen - all of whom would live for me only in yellowing newspaper clips and stories people told me. But I also got to meet and cover folks such as now-retired Singletary Center for the Arts director Holly Salisbury, former Lexington Arts and Cultural Council director Dee Fizdale, the late Lexington Opera House impresario Dick Pardy, and artist and philanthropist Lucille Caudill Little. They all played critical roles in the development of Lexington's arts community, and it's good to have been here in time to cover them and see firsthand what they brought to the table.

I've seen moments of discovering new talent, like Adam Luckey popping out of bed naked in Actors Guild's 1998 production of The Monogamist, and things coming to an end, like the Lexington Shakespeare Festival.

In these 10 years, there have been groups that have flourished, others that have gone through trials and come back, and others that have suffered and never been quite the same.

A decade gives you perspective, and the No. 1 thing I can say about Lexington arts during the past 10 years is that they are growing.

Humana Festival: 'Great Falls' review

Halley Wegryn Gross and Tom Nelis in Lee Blessing's Great Falls at the 2008 Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Photo by Harlan Taylor | Actors Theatre.

Great Falls doesn't look like much when you walk into the theater. The set is a beige carpet with some brush on either side, suggesting the vast western United States Lee Blessing is driving us into.

As the play gets going though, we discover we don't need much in terms of bells and whistles for a powerful night of theater. We get that from Blessing's words, achingly honest performances from Tom Nelis and Halley Wegryn Gross, and sensitive directing from Lucie Tiberghien. At first it seems we may be witnessing a kidnapping, as Gross' character taunts Nelis about what will happen to him in prison. But we quickly see that with all that 'tude, there's little fear. The 17-year-old girl may not have counted on a long trek from Omaha to Wyoming when she hopped in her ex-stepdad's car, but she's more along for the ride than her words suggest. And his affection is somewhat fatherly, not sinister. He's a writer who sees brilliance in the words his ex-stepdaughter pens, and he wants to maintain a relationship with her.

The pseudo-kidnapping is an effort to explain himself and the infidelities her perpetrated that eventually broke up his marriage to her mother.

So, it's not a kidnapping per se, but these two have a lot of baggage, and over the course of 90 minutes, they do engage in rough, bloody verbal combat. They both come across as authentic people who want to be good but have deep flaws, starting with their mutual narcissism. And the play itself goes into some uncomfortable areas. Let's just say the girl has experienced a bunch of things you hope would never happen to a teenage girl, but the police blotter and the courts affirm they happen far too often at the hands of predatory males.

Humana can frequently get wrapped up in high concepts and bells and whistles -- and scenic designer Paul Owen does have some nifty ways of introducing things such as hotel rooms and a museum to the play. But Blessing's play reminds us the essence of great theater is a strong script with acting and direction to match.

Click here for information on this and all shows at this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays.

Winter Jam 2008

Bart Millard of MercyMe at Winter Jam 2008, March 6 at Rupp Arena. Copyrighted LexGo photo by Rich Copley. Click here for more Winter Jam pictures.

The last few years, NewSong's Winter Jam has played -- excuse us while we clear our throats -- Louisville. But Thursday night, the Christian rock show came to Kentucky's real big house, Rupp Arena. That brought us a heapin' helpin' of MercyMe, Skillet, BarlowGirl and several others.

Now, we could go on about the high points, like the fast pace of the show, or great moments like Skillet's Korey Cooper swinging back on stage to play with the Barlows. But we know that you'd rather see some  pictures. So, here they are.

We also sincerely recommend you check out Holt International, an agency that promotes support and adoption of overseas orphans, which NewSong is promoting on the tour.

Did SNL boost Hillary?

If you go by what some folks are saying about this week's Super Tuesday Jr. primary, Barack Obama might wish the writers were still on strike.

In an effort to explain how they screwed up predictions . . . uh, I mean, contextualize Sen. Hillary Clinton's surprisingly strong showing in Texas and Ohio, even prestigious outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and The Baltimore Sun are intimating that Saturday Night Live's skits the past two weeks parodying the recent Democratic debates and Clinton's appearance on last week's show helped drive her victories. In the skits, questioners from both MSNBC and CNN are portrayed as pampering Sen. Barack Obama and attacking Clinton. Then, last Saturday, Clinton appeared on SNL with Amy Poehler, who does a brilliant Clinton impression -- check the part in the video, above, where she talks about how she'll annoy special interest groups into bending to her will.

It's all been funny. But has it helped Clinton?

Did journalists get tougher on Obama after feeling shamed by the satire of them going easy on the Illinois Senator? Did Clinton's self-deprecating appearance help primary voters warm up to her?

Part of me wants to say that the fact this is even a story is further evidence we are watching the shallowest political coverage in history.

But the part of me that treasures satire loves the fact that people are paying attention to this. Good satire provokes thought and even affects change. So, if Will Forte's portrayal of John King asking Obama if he needs a pillow and Clinton demonstrating an ability to laugh at herself made some voters give her a second look, cool. That said, I sure hope the electorate isn't out there choosing candidates soley based on Saturday Night Live skits.

The bigger question may be for the FCC -- not that we really want to provoke the FCC to meddle in anything else -- and whether all these late night talk and sketch comedy show appearances by candidates  violate any fairness rules. You've gotta believe Obama would like to be on SNL again (alert reader Kevin Hall reminded me he appeared before the strike, in that great Halloween party skit) sometime between now and April 22. They might also rally for a better Obama impersonator than Fred Armisen.

'Hansel and Gretel' photo album

We just posted a new album of photos from the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, which continues this weekend at the Lexington Opera House. The fun thing about this album is, since there are two casts, if you only saw one, this gives you a chance to see what the other crew looked like. You may note that this album is labeled "UK Opera," and we'll try to build it backwards and forwards, picking up some classic shots from productions past and adding ones from future shows. We'll also be looking to launch photo albums on other area groups here at le blog.

The photo, above, is of Amanda Balltrip, who is playing Gretel in the "Hansel Cast" of H&G. Herald-Leader photographer Mark Cornelison shot her in Brown's Bakery on Leestown Road.

~ Hansel and Gretel news: If you missed the Metropolitan Opera's Live HD broadcast of Hansel and Gretel when it showed at movie theaters New Year's week, Great Performances will broadcast the show at 9 p.m. March 26 on PBS. It'll show on PBS HD at 1 p.m. March 30.

Album review: Fireflight's 'Unbreakable'

Unbreakable is infused with a tremendous sense of drama and such skilled use of the power chord to propel a song that its no wonder NBC licensed it to promote its Bionic Woman series. It's also taken Fireflight to the top of the Christian music charts, again.

But that's one song, and in this iTunes era, most anyone can pick up a great track for 99 cents.

Would Unbreakable, the album, be worth a more substantial investment?

Yes. None of the other nine tunes on the disc, which is out today, grab you quite as quickly as Unbreakable. But Fireflight's sophomore release is full of the same kind of drama, skill and conviction that has made that hit a career single for the Floridians. There are a lot of bands in mainstream and Christian rock that seem to feel like they ought to write about issues such as suicide and depression. Fireflight gives you the feeling the band members have to, that they've either lived through or close enough to these and other situations that they can make authentic statements. The band distinguishes itself by always bringing the conversation back to faith, and the role it plays in perseverance and healing.

Take that title track, which is actually sung from the point of view of the adulteress that was about to be stoned before Jesus intervened, according to the Gospel of John. This isn't one of those cryptic mainstream crossovers. It's pretty easy to tell what lead vocalist Dawn Richardson is singing about. There are some routine tracks on this disc such as Stand Up and Wrapped in Your Arms that it almost seems Fireflight needs to get out of its system. But in that big Bionic hit, and several other tunes such as You Gave Me a Promise, are indications Fireflight is soaring toward a substantial career.

A very sad announcement: Third Day guitarist Brad Avery has left the band. He will not be replaced, the group said in a statement on its website. "We appreciate Brad’s many contributions to the band's career to date, including his work on our forthcoming album, but the time has come for us to follow our separate paths," the statement said.

When Avery joined Third Day, he was key to helping professionalize the then-struggling act, which has now become one of the biggest bands in Christian rock history. With fellow six-stringer Mark Lee, Avery has been part of one Christian music's most creative guitar duos.

According to Billboard magazine's Deborah Evans Price, one of the authorities on Christian music, Avery will be pursuing solo projects.

Left: Brad Avery performs with Third Day at the 2007 Ichthus Festival. Photo by Rich Copley.

In concert: Winter Jam comes to Rupp Arena Thursday night with NewSong, MercyMe, Skillet, BarlowGirl and Mandisa.

~ Mark Harris of 4Him fame will be at Northeast Christian Church on Friday, March 28.

Amber Rhodes photo album

Amber Rhodes works with Tiffany Duquette, an intern at Music City News Media and Marketing in Nashville, to resolve issues with her myspace page. Photo by Rich Copley/LexGo. For more photos of Amber, click here.

A few weeks ago, I went on a slightly offbeat assignment, heading down to Nashville to hang out with Lexington's own Amber Rhodes, an aspiring country music artist, for a day. It was a fun and illuminating assignment where I learned about things such "song-plugging" agencies and other mechanics of the country music world I was previously unaware of. You can read the story by clicking here. I also threw together an Amber photo album of pics that ran in the paper and some that didn't, and invite you to check that out, too.

Review: 'One Man's Lincoln'

About a dozen people turned out Sunday afternoon for One Man's Lincoln: Billy Herndon (Honestly) Represents Abe at the Downtown Arts Center.

The place should have been packed.

Blame it on anemic marketing, the first 60-degree Sunday afternoon of the year, or a critical Cats game, but for many theater fans and history buffs, this was a missed opportunity. There are other chances to catch the Wade Hall play though, and you really should, both for the way it illuminates history and Terry Snead's passionate and warm performance.

It's a one-man show, presenting Snead (photo, left, courtesy of Kentucky Repertory Theatre) as Billy Herndon, Lincoln's law parter of nearly two decades in Springfield, Ill., before he became President.

After Lincoln's assassination, Herndon devoted his life to documenting Lincoln's days for the thorough biography, Abraham Lincoln: the True Story of a Great Life, which he co-authored with Jesse W. Weik. Hall's play, which is co-produced by the Kentucky Humanities Council and  Kentucky Repertory Theatre, is essentially a dramatization of that book, with Herndon detailing the life of a man he clearly admired and loved.

We see that particularly well as Herndon describes Lincoln's last day at their office in Springfield before he left to be sworn in as president and assume the office. Snead's voice breaks, his gestures close up, and he turns away like many men do when they don't want to risk letting you see their heart break.

Later, Snead spares no emotion describing Lincoln's visit to the bedside of a heroic Union soldier. For the course of the show, Herndon is a the proverbial guy you'd like to have a beer with -- or maybe, in this case, a bourbon. He's gregarious, with a slightly gravely baritone, and a colorful storyteller. And the stories are illuminating, about Lincoln and his approach to law, his family life, and Herndon's opinions about how Lincoln approached emancipation.

And he's an opinionated chatter, sharing his disdain for Mary Todd Lincoln -- he describes their marriage as so dysfunctional, you wonder how the Lincolns came up with four children -- and Spingfield's pride in sending a president to Washington.

This is a fully professional production by Kentucky Rep, a Horse Cave-based theater that has a contract with Actors Equity, the professional stage actors union. While the setting, and production are fairly simple, it is a thoroughly professional show, led by Snead, a well seasoned actor. It's really as strong a show as you get in the Downtown Arts Center, so hopefully folks will find it for Thursday night's performance, and if you go to the $3-a-head performance in Harrodsburg on Friday, you're getting an artistic steal. The show will continue to tour Kentucky through March.

At these or any other performances, particularly considering we're in this time of Lincoln rememberance, One Man's Lincoln should not be missed.

Farewell to Jamie G

Jamie Gumbrecht on the beat, checking out the jukebox at The Fishtank. Copyrighted photo by Angela Baldridge.

Jamie Gumbrecht did not have an easy act to follow when she got to the Herald-Leader, especially in my eyes.

She was succeeding Heather Svokos, the pop culture writer extraordinaire who, for my money, was the bees knees, had hung the moon and all that. Where on earth could we find someone to match her wit, personality and breadth of popular culture expertise? And could that possibly be found in a 22-year-old, straight out of college? C'mon.

The first half of that question started being answered when I was around 13 years old, appropriately in this case, on television. It was an episode of M*A*S*H where Corporal Klinger was having a hard time filling the shoes of wonderful Radar. At some point near the end of the episode, Col. Potter had to explain that while jobs are the same, people are different, and they do their jobs differently. But that doesn't mean they can't do them equally well and wonderfully. So, I went forward in life with a mentality that people will come and go, and we need to appreciate them for who they are; not trap them by preconceptions of who we want them to be.

The bigger answer came when Jamie flew in for her interview. We went to dinner at Alfalfa's, and I was reminded that people can be wise beyond their years. She was definitely a product of her pop culture generation, but was well aware of the history that preceded it.  And she was extremely well rounded, having traveled to Cuba while in college, interviewed figures such as Condoleezza Rice, and completed internships at the Dallas Morning News and Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- that was a big clue we would not be keeping her forever.

Interview: Mandisa

Ardent observers of American Idol and similar shows often say it is better to make it onto the show, be seen by the masses, and bow out early. The idea is you get the Idol exposure, but then you’re free to go get your own record deal and chart your own path, rather than being locked into the prize.

Mandisa (photo, right, courtesy of EMI Christian Music Group), a competitor two years ago in the season that ended with Taylor Hicks as the winner, took her Idol cred straight to the contemporary Christian market. It’s a strategy that has worked out well for the singer, who comes to Lexington Thursday as part of Newsong’s annual Winter Jam tour. Last year, she released her solo debut, True Beauty, on EMI’s Sparrow Records, one of contemporary Christian music’s biggest labels.

The album was nominated for the Grammy for best pop/contemporary gospel album (Israel and New Breed’s A Deeper Level won) and Mandisa is up for female vocalist of the year and new artist of the year in the Gospel Music Association’s Dove Awards.

To preview Winter Jam, we got on the phone to talk to Mandisa about her music and Idol’s devilish judge Simon Cowell. Here are highlights of the chat:

Q: I was just reading your blog and bio on your website, and you were talking about going to Kat’s wedding and meeting Reuben, and it seemed like there is this little American Idol community. Is that the case?

A: There tends to be. When I was on the show, we were all pretty close, especially the girls. So I went to Kat’s (Katharine McPhee) wedding and Kellie Pickler was there -- she was a bridesmaid and I sang at the wedding. And everytime I meet someone from a different season, there sort of is an instant comaradarie. I think it stems from the fact that there are only a few people in the world who know what we’ve been through, and we can kind of talk about and compare our seasons.

Q: Who do you keep in touch with the most?

A: All of the girls from my season: Kat and Kelli and Paris (Bennett) and Lisa (Tucker). I also talk pretty regularly to Ace and Elliott (Yamin). I try to talk to all of them and from other seasons, Melinda Doolittle and I were friends before American Idol. We used to do studio work together.

Q: Obviously, there is a new season rolling ahead. Have you been watching it?

A: Absolutely.

Q: What do you think when you watch it?

A: Well, it’s different this year than last year, because last year had Melinda in it. I’m not coming into it with any sort of bias, and I will say I am very impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

The one thing that is difficult for me to watch is the first few weeks of the auditions. Yeah, I don’t enjoy that much, seeing the people on there that are not so great. But I have a different take on seeing people being ridiculed, because I was one that ridiculed by Simon.