Who is Kentucky’s Logan Blackman and some of his music conducting work: I have to say, I was not expecting that answer! I love it! What do you want your listeners to get out of your music? Logan J. Blackman : Music is one of the ultimate ways of expressing something you can’t quite put in words, or illustrate easily. My symphonic work, Prayer of a Broken Heart, is a great example of that. At 15, I tragically lost my parents due to a motorcycle accident. That piece is about the grief I went through, those experiences, and ultimately my hope that I will one day see them again.My hope is that listeners who might be struggling with something similar get some kind of comfort knowing they aren’t the only ones to feel what they may be feeling. Discover extra information on https://www.wattpad.com/user/LoganJBlackmanMusic.
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’.
Raised in Paducah, Kentucky, Blackman began his conducting career at the age of 14 and his composition career at the age of 12. His first time conducting was a premiere of his own work during high school. Blackman has been a guest conductor with the Murray State Wind Ensemble, Lone Oak High School Band and West Kentucky Woodwind Choir. At the age of 17, Blackman founded his own Blackman Wind Symphony in Paducah. An alumnus of Kentucky Center’s Governor’s School for the Arts and Commonwealth Middle College, Blackman took organ and piano lessons before finding his love for the bassoon. Find additional information on Logan J. Blackman.
When Blackman got to the University of Kentucky, he started working on adapting “Prayer” into an orchestral work, at first simply transcribing it. But then, he started to do more, and the work attracted attention. “He joined the orchestra as an undergraduate bassoonist, and it soon became clear that his interests were wider than just playing the bassoon,” UK Symphony Orchestra director John Nardolillo says. “I knew he composed, and he asked me if I would look at the score to this piece he’d been working on. Then he asked if he could take some conducting lessons. So he was working on conducting and I looked at the score, and the score is interesting, and his level of commitment and involvement and interest in conducting, composition and performing is quite high. The story of the piece is compelling, and it seemed like we were in a position to help him with those things.