Lexington Philharmonic announces it’s 10-11 Season

New Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra music director Scott Terrell has planned a mold-breaking 2010-11 season with an eye toward attracting new audiences to the orchestra’s concerts.

“It’s really about sharing as much great music with as many people as possible,” Terrell said Thursday, going over the schedule, which was announced to the public at Friday’s MasterClassics concert.

Terrell leads philharmonic in new direction

By Rich Copley

The standard formula for a symphony concert in Lexington, and with most orchestras, has been a short overture to open the program, a concerto featuring an instrumental or vocal soloist and, after intermission, a longer symphonic work of 40 minutes to an hour.

None of the concerts next season fit that mold.

Terrell participated in planning the current season, his first with the orchestra, but 2010-11 represents his first opportunity to fully think ahead and plan.

Among the highlights of the schedule are concerts with national pop acts Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and Take 6 and local ensembles such as the Kentucky State University Gospel Ensemble and Lafayette High School Chorus; a world-premiere composition; and a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich’s massive Symphony No. 10.

Another difference is that the annual holiday performance of Handel’s Messiah will be at the Cathedral of Christ the King, not the Singletary Center for the Arts, and it will be with the Lexington Chamber Chorale.

Previously, Messiah had been presented at the Singletary Center with the Lexington Singers. But Terrell said he wanted to present a smaller, Baroque version of the piece in a venue similar to where Messiah would have been performed in Handel’s day.

“You constantly want to be keeping things fresh,” Terrell said.

Several of the ideas represented on next season’s schedule, including moving Messiah from a concert hall to a church, echo initiatives Terrell undertook when he was resident conductor of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina.

Among them are “kickback classics” events at the Downtown Arts Center on Nov. 18 and March 24 that will preview the next night’s concert. The events will feature Terrell, the scheduled soloist and members of the orchestra. “It’s going to be an hourlong, interactive program,” Terrell says, “much more casual.”

The season also reflects time Terrell has spent playing talent scout in Central Kentucky in the eight months since he moved to Lexington. Reflecting that are the appearances by Lafayette High’s chorus on the West Side Story program in October and the gospel ensemble from historically black KSU in a January concert geared toward Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But Terrell says the culmination of community involvement will be a Dec. 10 event, “Holiday Spectacular!” which Terrell described as a Boston Pops-style holiday show.

“That will be as many humans as I can cram on the stage as possible,” Terrell says. “It will be a community spectacular of holiday music.”

(The spectacular will not replace the annual Kentucky Christmas Chorus, and the philharmonic is still scheduled to play at that event.)

The February 2011 concert will feature the world premiere of the orchestral version of Daniel Thomas Davis’ Book of Songs and Visions. Davis originally wrote the piece, inspired by time spent in Central Kentucky, for the Chamber Music Festival of Lexington in 2008. It went on to win the prestigious Morton Gould award for composition.

The season will kick off with a tribute to Cab Calloway featuring the band Big Bad Voodoo Daddy on Sept. 30, a concert that will be presented as part of the Alltech FEI World Equestrian Games.

Terrell said that in the coming season he is trying to set the table for more flexibility and innovation in subsequent seasons. He is also preparing for 2011-12, which will be a celebration of the Lexington Philharmonic’s 50th Anniversary.

“We’re working toward what I think the community can support and the orchestra can support as an ideal scenario,” Terrell said. “This is a step in that scenario.”