Who is Salt Lake City’s Logan J. Blackman and some of his music orchestra conducting thoughts: Let’s start by having you describe your sound to our readers… Logan J. Blackman : Symphonically, my sound is very grand and cinematic. However in my chamber works, I tend to take a much lighter tone. My Bassoon Duets, “The Logic of a Mad-Man” is nothing but one big satire/comedic piece. Is it true you’ve been making music since you were a child? Logan J. Blackman : Yes! I have been making music since I was 12, but I began writing at around 14. Read additional details at Logan J. Blackman.
UK Symphony Orchestra is part of the UK School of Music at the UK College of Fine Arts. The school has garnered a national reputation for high-caliber education in opera, choral and instrumental music performance, as well as music education, composition, and theory and music history. To hear Robinson, Blackman and Maestro Nardolillo talk about the upcoming concert, visit WUKY’s “UK Perspectives” interview with them here: http://wuky.org/post/uk-symphony-orchestra-brings-tragedy-and-triumph-stage#stream/0.
Maestro Nardolillo conducted the final number of the evening’s performance, the heart-rending chorale finale, Make Our Garden Grow from Candide, with soprano Jessica Bayne, tenor Michael Pandolfo and Mixed Chorus. This duet between Candide and Cunegonde (characters from Voltaire’s French satire, Candide: Or the Optimist) was Bernstein’s message to us all: And let us try, / Before we die, / To make some sense of life. / We’ll do the best we know . . . / And make our garden grow. Pandolfo’s and Bayne’s voices were sublime as they shared Bernstein’s impassioned plea full of sincerity and optimism. And as the chorus joined in, magnifying Candide’s and Cunegonde’s emotions, Bernstein’s plan to unite us and give us a glimpse of our humanity will continue long past his 100th. It doesn’t matter that the clock stops ticking, eternal truths keep on truckin’.
The UK Symphony Orchestra February concert will feature Robinson accompanied by the UK Symphony Orchestra on Carl Nielson’s Clarinet Concerto, Op. 57. The orchestra will also perform Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony and Logan Blackman’s “Prayer of a Broken Heart.” Blackman’s “Prayer of a Broken Heart,” a tone poem, was originally written for a wind ensemble back in 2012 following the sudden death of the composer’s parents in October 2011. “It was my reaction to their death describing what I had been through and what my future had to hold,” Blackman said. Find additional info at Logan J. Blackman.
The University of Kentucky Symphony will play “Prayer,” with Blackman conducting, Friday night. Nardolillo says it’s unusual for a student composition to have the level of sophistication and advancement for the orchestra to take it on. Blackman says he never even considered that the UK Symphony might play his composition. From the moment the opportunity presented itself, he says, he wanted to conduct the performance. “My degree is in bassoon performance, but from here, I want to go to grad school to study conducting,” he says. “It would be interesting to sit back and listen, but being the lover of conducting that I am, I had the itch to do this.”
