‘Queen’s Gambit’ made the right inspirational moves for Lexington Philharmonic concert

In the Fall of 2020, while much of the country was still isolating in the throes of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Netflix series partially set in Lexington became a streaming phenomenon.

“The Queen’s Gambit,” followed the career of chess prodigy Beth Harmon from a troubled childhood in Lexington to the heights of the chess world in the 1950s and ’60s. It was based on the novel of the same name by Walter Tevis, who grew up in Central Kentucky and graduated from the University of Kentucky. Though it was not filmed in Lexington, the story is peppered with Lexington references like Henry Clay High School, the old Ben Snyder’s department store, and even this very newspaper (though we weren’t actually the Herald-Leader until the 1980s).

It also had an Emmy Award-winning score by Carlos Rafael Rivera, which caught the ears of the folks at the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra.

“That music, in and of itself, and the quality of that music and the power of that music was a contributing factor and the seed of this program,” says Kelly Corcoran, interim artistic advisor of the Lexington Philharmonic.

Seed, she emphasizes, because that idea of queens and games and power sent the Philharmonic artistic staff and its collaborators off on a musical romp through genres, centuries, forms, races, and genders resulting in “Queens Rule,” Saturday night’s concert at the University of Kentucky’s Singletary Center for the Arts. The concert, led by guest conductor Tong Chen, also features the Philharmonic’s first collaboration with the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre in many years.

Rivera’s main title from “The Queen’s Gambit” will constitute only four minutes of the show, which will be topped by a suite from Duke Ellington’s unfinished opera, “Queenie Pie.”

“As we were looking at repertoire, I discovered this unfinished opera by Duke Ellington,” Corcoran says. “And he had started writing the piece, but never finished it before he died.”

A few years ago, some Chicago opera companies worked to create a version of the opera with composer Marc T. Gaspard Bolin.

“Marc pulled together all the various sources and manuscripts and, you know, cocktail napkins, different pieces of material that were available from Ellington, and he reconstructed this opera in the best way that he could given that you know, it was unfinished at the time of Ellington’s death,” Corcoran says.

The Philharmonic commissioned Bolin to create an orchestral suite of about 15 minutes, including vocals.

“Ellington was always fascinated by the classical voice,” says Everett McCorvey, director of the UK Opera Theatre. “So, a lot of his works, even though they were jazz and nature, he liked using the classical voice. So, it doesn’t surprise me that he wanted to write an opera because of his fascination. It’s just that he had other things going on.”

Presenting Queenie Pie with the Philharmonic has given McCorvey the opportunity to bring in some favorite singers including Jeryl Cunningham and Erica Gabriel, who play the opera’s main characters: competing beauticians in 20th century Harlem.

But a 15-minute opera and four-minute television title constitute only 19 minutes, and the concert is an hour and 20 minutes.

Expanding the UK Opera collaboration is a much more traditional operatic piece, “The Queen of the Night Aria” — You see the theme here? — from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “The Magic Flute,” which will also be sung by Cunningham. The other opera collaboration will be what is widely regarded as the shortest regularly-performed opera, Samuel Barber’s “A Hand of Bridge,” which is about nine minutes. The opera brings in the concert’s gaming theme, and premiering in 1959, it is from the era “Queen’s Gambit” is set in.

This concert was originally slated for October at the Lexington Opera House. But a surge in COVID-19 cases last fall prompted the Philharmonic to move the concert to this month and the Singletary Center. While McCorvey has long expressed a love for presenting opera in a theater built for the form, he says the move may have been for the best since the Singletary Center’s larger stage will give more room for the orchestra and the singers.

And McCorvey says he is thrilled to be back in collaboration with the Philharmonic, presenting eight singers in this program, giving the orchestra’s audience a chance to see singers who trained at UK, who are still studying there or are on faculty.

“The Philharmonic is a professional orchestra, it’s a professional environment, and it’s what our students should be aspiring to,” McCorvey says.

Rounding out the concert are two orchestral works that represent the oldest and newest, save for “Queen’s Gambit,” works on the program: Franz Josef Haydn’s “Symphony No. 85, ‘The Queen,’” completed in 1786, and Jennifer Higdon’s “All things Majestic,” premiered in 2011.

“I think it’s our role and duty to acknowledge and recognize and celebrate and champion that whole range of repertoire, right, that Haydn can live on a program with “The Queen’s Gambit” and they can be in a dialogue with each other and contribute to each other. And that’s OK, you know; that by championing new repertoire, we’re not abandoning the old.

“They both are valid and important and exciting for audiences to hear.”

Queens Rule

What: Lexington Philharmonic concert with guest conductor Tong Chen, featuring singers from the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

When: 7:30 p.m. April 9

Where: UK Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St.

Tickets: $25-$75, $11 ages 17 and younger and students with valid ID

Online: lexphil.org

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 6:00 AM.