Need some help deciding what to go to this arts season? Check out these picks from our staff here at 90.5 WUOL!
FROM THE SEA
October 11-12, 2019: Water is a recurring theme in classical music. I say "is" because this Louisville Orchestra concert includes a new mulit-media work called Seaborne by Garth Neustadter. Neustadter's music is performed by The Percussion Collective accompanied by visual footage of Hawaii. Jean Sibelius' musical depiction of water nymphs and Claude Debussy's La Mer (The Sea) make for thrilling musical counterpoints to the new piece. - Alan Brandt
https://vimeo.com/335031069
HYPE MAN: A BREAKBEAT PLAY
September 11 - October 13, 2019: Actors Theatre will be showing HYPE MAN by Idris Goodwin. The show will follow a rap trio’s rise to success paralleled with their need to address social justice. Actors Theatre isn’t shy about putting the plight of Black America on stage (see the review of PIPELINE on 89.3 WFPL), and this show is a perfect example of their activism. You can hear more about it from the playwright himself below. - Jecorey Arthur
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtAQXcKtS84
DASHON BURTON
October 25, 2019: Bass-Baritone Dashon Burton brings his powerful presence to the Second Presbyterian Church Concert Series for a concert of art songs called “Brick by Brick: Changing American through Song,” which “explores the thin line of folk/traditional music and concert music, and its journey into the concert hall.” He'll sing from Copland's Old American Songs, other art songs and arias, and African-American spirituals. - Daniel Gilliam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLkVUNT6cz0
NEW LENS: A/TONAL
November 10, 2019: 21c Museum Hotel has teamed up with 90.5 WUOL Classical Louisville for New Lens, a series of concerts and conversations exploring diverse and intriguing sounds and ideas in new music, art, and society. A/Tonal Ensemble, a local music group, will present music inspired by the current exhibition at 21c Museum Hotel. - AB
BOURBON BAROQUE
November 30 & December 1, 2019: Yeah, you’ve heard the Hallelujah Chorus a lot, but what about the rest of George Friederic Handel’s monumental oratorio Messiah? Bourbon Baroque’s now annual tradition is a performance of the complete work, on “period instruments” and with performing techniques consistent with what would have been done in Handel’s time. - DG
CLASSICS: GOSPEL AT THE SYMPHONY
February 22, 2020: The Louisville Orchestra will be having a one-night-only worship called GOSPEL AT THE SYMPHONY. A collaboration with St. Stephen Church, the largest African American church in the state of Kentucky, is exciting, but programmed with a Duke Ellington classic and Snarky Puppy’s Cory Henry, makes this a must-see concert and a historical one for our local symphony. You can get a taste of Cory Henry with the Metropole Orchestra below. - JA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8j7XJxew7s
EMERSON STRING QUARTET
February 2020-November 2020: The Chamber Music Society of Louisville, a presenting organization, is bringing the legendary Emerson String Quartet back to Louisville for a series of concerts celebrating the 250th anniversary (the Sestercentennial!) of Beethoven’s birth. Emerson will play all sixteen, spanning two seasons for CMS Louisville. - DG
KENTUCKY VOL. 1
April 3-4, 2020: Louisville Ballet's Artistic Director Robert Curran is planning a massive 3-part series of ballets under the collective title of Kentucky! Reminiscent of Robert Schenkken's The Kentucky Cycle, Curran plans to explore human connection and resilience through four Kentucky families as they intersect and thread through each other’s lives for generations. Musician/Composer Scott Moore returns to Louisville Ballet as collaborator to provide the music for the production. - AB
DA’VILLE CLASSIC: DRUMLINE SHOWCASE
April 27, 2020: the 14th annual DA'VILLE CLASSIC is a Kentucky Derby Festival favorite with drumlines from across the region visiting to showcase their best cadences and choreography. The showcase also features local presenters, River City Drum Corp, and the Revolutionary Sound of the South, Simmons College Marching Falcons, better known as “Stick Control” when the drumline is in the spotlight. - JA