It’s A Grand Night for Singing

It’s late summer at the University of Kentucky, which can only mean one thing: It’s A Grand Night for Singing.

For 17 years, UK opera singers have joined voices with leading singers and dancers from the Lexington community to give music lovers ringing renditions of Broadway classics, exuberant performances of pop hits, and vice versa.

This year’s edition will take you all the way back to classics such as George M. Cohan’s Give My Regards to Broadway and Roger Miller’s Worlds Apart from Big River to recent hits such as Mel Brooks’ rousing Transylvania Mania from Young Frankenstein. The show runs the next two weekends at UK’s Singletary Center for the Arts.

UK Theatre presents As It Is In Heaven

HARRODSBURG — For the second consecutive spring the University of Kentucky Theatre is presenting Arlene Hutton’s As It Is In Heaven at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill. The play is set in the village in 1838, at a time known as the “Era of Manifestations,” when many Shakers were experiencing visions and receiving spiritual gifts. The play by Hutton, whose family hails from Corbin, examines jealousies that arise when members of the Pleasant Hill group start experiencing these visions and gifts.

This is director Rhoda-Gale Pollack’s third time directing Hutton’s play, which is being presented in a tobacco barn that was renovated for the Chamber Music Festival of the Bluegrass. Donna Phillips is the music director. The UK production runs May 15-24, 2009.  By Rich Copley | staff.

The City

Gene Woods is deep in a groove.

With his Stratocaster in hand, he’s singing a song — one of his songs — into a hot mike. At a break, he spins to his left to put the focus on vocalists Jane Harrod and Lara Brier as they purr the chorus.

Seconds later, the singers are out front on their own as Woods and drummer Arthur Rouse, percussionist Steve Parrish and keyboardist Tom Martin get into a little jam at the back of the stage.

“What really makes this exciting for me is the ability to express ourselves in original music,” Woods says of the band, The City, a jazzy, bluesy act that’s just starting to make some noise in Lexington.

He’s not doing it for the money.

Woods has a pretty good day gig: He’s chief executive of St. Joseph Health System.

Most of his bandmates also have solid day jobs. Brier is the drama teacher at Sayre School. Harrod is a landscaper, Martin is the editor of Business Lexington, and Rouse owns Video Editing Services. Parrish recently retired from a career as a psychiatric nurse.

“He’s still a psychiatric nurse,” Martin jokes, and Woods adds, “We just don’t pay him on this side of things.”

Rounding out the lineup for the band are:

■ Brian Powers, bass, who works at the University of Kentucky College of Law and is working on setting up his own law practice.

■ Chris Goode, trumpet, attorney.

■ Mike Meuser, trombone, attorney.

■ Dr. Jay Zwischenberger, harmonica, chief of surgery at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

■ Paul Osbourne, saxophone, who has had a variety of jobs, including stockbroker and financial consultant.

“All these day gigs are to put food on the table,” Osbourne says. “My life is music. Since I was 13, I played music.”

Everyone in the band has significant musical experience, and several are playing in other bands. They all have had other careers but have kept music as part of their lives.

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Bird is the word

Exercise rider, jockey, owners and trainer speak about their 135th Kentucky Derby winning horse on Sunday, May 3, 2009.

Mine That Bird wins the 135th Kentucky Derby

Longshot Mine That Bird wins the 135th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, May 2, 2009. Photos by David Perry, Pablo Alcala, Ron Garrison, Charles Bertram, Mark Cornelison | Staff; Jonathan Adams, Estill Robinson, James Kenney, Daniel Houghton

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