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This excellent piece from LEO Weekly offers the most balanced and informative reporting I’ve seen so far on the difficult financial situation at the Louisville Orchestra. [Disclosure: I have been the orchestra’s resident conductor since 2008.]

One elementary school teacher in Louisville who attends the LO MakingMUSIC program annually with her students asked this year’s class for their thoughts on the experience:

What surprised me

• The way they started the orchestra
• How big the bassoon was
• That the bow is made of horse hair
• How fast the musicians plucked the strings
• That we got to sing along with the orchestra
• How singing with the orchestra sounded so different from singing with the piano
• The different timbres of instruments
• How high the violins could go
• How awesome they were
• That the conductor could keep his arms up for so long

What I learned

• About different kinds of instruments
• That some instruments have a double reed
• The bigger the instrument the lower the sound
• It’s fun to be quiet and listen
• What some of the instruments were made out of
• That brass instruments can play softly
• That not all conductors use wands

What I liked best

• The way the conductor talked to us and told us about different instruments
• Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
• How gracefully everyone played and how bows went up and down at the same time
• Singing – it made me feel part of something special
• How the musicians were so passionate about what they were playing

So great – this type of feedback keeps me more grounded in my mission as an artist than almost any other aspect of my work.

GPOYW These guys were fired up about Beethoven 5 today EDITION

[Shot with Instagram outside the Brown Theater in Louisville]

An artful making-of for an even more artful film, Suzie Templeton’s Oscar-winning stop motion Peter and the Wolf. This video piece was created to introduce screenings of the film that feature a live performance of Prokofiev’s score, which is what I’ll be doing tomorrow with the Louisville Orchestra.

P.D.Q. Bach – New Horizons in Music Appreciation for orchestra & commentators: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony

One of my favorite interpretations of Beethoven 5, and certainly the most amusing of the many thousands that have been attempted since the work’s premiere in 1808.

[From an album that also features appearances by Jorge Mester, former and current music director of the Louisville Orchestra; not to worry, my performance of the Fifth with the LO tonight won’t reach for the comedic heights scaled by Schickele, Mester, et al.]