Homegrown talent, new work in Philharmonic’s 2016-17 season

The Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2016-17 season will have a decidedly local feel from the get-go.

It will open with Richmond’s Tessa Lark, whose early résumé includes the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras and Foster Music Camp in Richmond, and has gone on to receive many accolades, including a 2016 Avery Fisher career grant.

She will be on hand Sept. 16 to play Samuel Barber’s iconic Violin Concerto on a concert that will include Peter Iilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.

“I’ve been after her a couple of seasons to get her here,” Philharmonic music director Scott Terrell says. “Part of the other thing about next year, I think, is some of our local talent going nationally, she being a product of this region, of Appalachian playing, but going on to a major career.”

The season will end with piano soloist and composer Conrad Tao, who will be the University of Kentucky artist-in-residence next year and who made his Lexington debut as a teenager in 2008, performing on the concert after Terrell’s audition concert in the race to succeed George Zack as Philharmonic director.

At the time, the auditioning conductor, Jeffrey Pollock, told the audience they would be able to say they saw Conrad Tao before he became, as he said with a deepened voice, “Conrad Tao.” Indeed, his career has taken flight as a soloist and composer.

A familiar name will take on a new role at the Philharmonic as Ryan Shirar becomes the orchestra’s arranger-in-residence. Terrell says Shirar’s touch will be particularly evident in educational concerts and similar events where the orchestra needs custom arrangements. Shirar is a University of Kentucky graduate who went on to found Paragon Music Theatre, which ran until he departed to study at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is now based in New York and has a long list of clients.

The season will feature plenty of new work, including a staged presentation of the Stephen Paulus oratorio To Be Certain of the Dawn, Astor Piazzolla’s Concerto for Bandoneon with bandoneon soloist Hector Del Curto, and a multimedia program featuring Christopher Theofanidis’ The Legend of the Norther Lights.

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 11:43 AM with the headline "Homegrown talent, new work in Philharmonic’s 2016-17 season."