How the pandemic accelerated change, slowed director search for Lexington Philharmonic

The Lexington Philharmonic orchestra was already taking big strides toward redefining the orchestral experience and what it means to be the city’s orchestra before a global pandemic.

But while COVID-19 brought everything to a screeching halt for a while, the orchestra’s directors say the last year has accelerated its drive for change. The main thing it slowed down was the search for a new music director, a process that was a little over halfway through when the pandemic forced the cancellation of the remaining concerts on the Philharmonic’s 2019-20 schedule in March 2020.

“What we thought we were going to finish in a year will take us almost three,” Philharmonic Executive Director Allison Kaiser said in a mid-afternoon meeting in the orchestra’s offices at ArtsPlace. “But that doesn’t diminish our commitment to bringing in the right person.”

Like the orchestra, we’ll get back to that, in a bit.

Late last month, the Philharmonic unveiled a 2021-22 schedule that still has some blanks to be filled in as it stairsteps back into the live concert experience.

Philharmonic General & Personnel Manager Sarah Thrall says that while things look promising with the vaccines and the decline in cases, some unknowns still make planning tricky.

“What we’ve done is we’ve said we think that summer and fall, it’s going to be beautiful out, so we’re going to do these outdoor concerts that are safe, and then give it a little bit more time,” Thrall said. “Then we’re going to do indoor concerts, right, starting in October, November, December, that will be a small chamber orchestra — 25 to 30 musicians — of course, safe, going by whatever health and safety guidelines there are at that time.

“And then, in 2022, we hope to get back to our full-scale concerts.”

The season is called “Stories,” with three chapters containing three concerts each.

Chapter One will unfold over the next three months:

July 17: “Harvest & Hear” a family-friendly musical and culinary scavenger hunt through three of Seedleaf’s community gardens in north Lexington.

Aug. 14: Picnic with the Pops with Revolution! The Music of the Beatles at the Meadow at Keeneland. Visit lexpops.com, call 859-233-3535, or email boxoffice@rupparena.com for more information about tickets.

Sept. 18: “A Symphonic Stroll: LexPhil at Josephine Sculpture Park,” will be “an immersive evening of music, art, and nature” the season announcement says, pairing LexPhil musicians with sculptures at Frankfort’s Josephine Sculpture Park.

The Philharmonic already had a successful outdoor show last month with its “Beat of the Heartland” concert with Lexington hip-hop artist Devine Carama at the Loudon House lawn, and the directors say the additional offerings illustrate a continued commitment to get into the community in new and unexpected places. That continues with three venues for three indoor shows that make up Chapter Two.

Oct. 16: “Queens Rule” at the Lexington Opera House will feature a commissioned arrangement from Duke Ellington’s unfinished opera, “Queenie Pie” and Franz Josef Haydn’s “Symphony No. 85 ‘The Queen.’” There will be supporting events taking a closer look at “Queenie Pie” and music from the hit Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” which was set in Lexington and based on the novel of the same name by Central Kentucky author Walter Tevis.

Nov. 20: “Sorrow, Strength, and Love” at the Lyric Theatre & Cultural Arts Center, which will focus on music by Lexington-born composer Julia Perry, including “Stabat Mater,” which launched her career when it was composed for her mother in 1951.

Dec. 18: “A Cathedral Christmas,” the Philharmonic’s annual Christmas program, returns to the Cathedral of Christ the King with the Lexington Singers. John Nardolillo, the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra’s (UKSO) Music Director and Conductor, will be the guest conductor.

Concerts at new venues to the orchestra and its audience, with new works and new names increasingly became part of the Philharmonic’s programming under previous music director Scott Terrell, as did diversity in the music presented.

The Philharmonic and diversity

Kaiser and Thrall say the national conversations about race following the murder of George Floyd and other extrajudicial killings of people who were Black prompted conversation at the Philharmonic. In addition to commitments to present music by diverse composers such as Ellington and Perry, who were Black, played by diverse musicians, the orchestra is also looking at its own structures and practices.

“The orchestral industry is based on European models and European thinking and European composers,” Kaiser says. “So, there’s a lot of things that are baked into how we do things that we’re not even aware of them being barriers or obstacles to people of color or populations that are not Eurocentric populations.”

In addition to exploring what the Philharmonic presents and how it operates, Kaiser says the orchestra wants to look at things like traditional models for training orchestral musicians and the expensive process of orchestral auditions to see how the orchestra can influence change downstream. Interim artistic advisor Kelly Corcoran, who is a music director candidate, was instrumental in helping guide the orchestra through some of those questions as well as planning the upcoming season, which will conclude with the end of the music director search.

Philharmonic music director search

Presuming it is once again safe, the Philharmonic plans to return to the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts Concert Hall for performances in the Winter and Spring of 2022 for Chapter Three, including the final two music director candidate concerts, with Julia Tai and Keitaro Harada, as well as another show with a guest conductor. Dates and repertoire for these concerts will be announced this fall.

In addition to Tail, Harada, and Corcoran, Akiko Fujimoto and Thomas Heuser are also being considered for music director. One candidate, Enrico Lopez-Yañez, withdrew from consideration just before the pandemic.

While the pandemic has delayed a final decision about a new music director, Kaiser says it has helped focus the decision making.

She says, “The pandemic has strengthened our commitment to making sure that in everything we do, that our IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility) values will be carried through every layer of our organization, and every decision that we make, and that our community centeredness has a much stronger place, as we go forward, and as we make a decision about our new music director and conductor.”

Lexington Philharmonic 2021-22 season

What: Tickets will be sold to individual events only for the summer and fall events. Ticketing for winter and spring will be announced when those concerts are set. Picnic with the Pops tickets are sold through lexpops.com.

On-sale: LexPhil members on July 15, general public Aug. 2

More information: lexphil.org; 859-233-4226