Classical music

Pianist turns down Olympics for Moscow concert

        Imagine having to turn down an appearance with Keith Lockhart and the Utah Symphony during the 2002 Winter Olympics because you have another gig.

        That was the dilemma faced by pianist Polina Bespalko, 23, recently.

Bespalko

        “I was invited to play several concerts during the Olympics,” says the Moscow-born pianist, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

        But Ms. Bespalko, who has appeared with the Moscow Philharmonic many times, is scheduled to perform in the Great Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, where the legendary Vladimir Horowitz performed his famous homecoming concert in 1986.

        “It's a great honor to play there, and a big responsibility,” she says.

        “She has the facility equal to the gold medalists of the Van Cliburn (Piano Competition), CCM professor Eugene Pridonoff says. “I think she's in that class.”

        Ms. Bespalko, who is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory, came to Cincinnati after marrying Gary Ellerhorst, a member of Southern Gateway Chorus. They met while the barbershop singers were touring in Russia four years ago.

        She began studying with Eugene and Elizabeth Pridonoff last year, attracted in part by Mrs. Pridonoff's background in the Russian piano tradition.

        Earlier this month, Ms. Bespalko won the Silver Medal in the Shreveport (La.) Wideman Piano Competition. She would like to be a concert artist.

        “I dream about that. I also would like to teach; it's a neat thing to teach kids,” Ms. Bespalko says. “It's not important to be famous — it's more important to live your life with music. That's my goal.”

Contest win changes tenor's life

        Tenor Jeffrey Thompson, 23, was planning to give up singing — until he won a major voice contest in September. The former student of William McGraw at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music won first place in the Concours de Chimay International de Chant Baroque in Belgium, over hundreds of applicants.

        “I was the youngest one there,” says Mr. Thompson, a native of Rochester, N.Y.

        His voice is a high tenor, perfect for early Baroque music such as Monteverdi's Vespers, which he sang as a featured soloist in November at St. Peter in Chains Cathedral.

        “It's a lot lighter than a Pavarotti tenor, for instance. I sing anything that's written before late 1700s,” he says. “My voice is very florid (light and quick) and it's higher than most tenors.”

        It's a rare kind of voice. After the winners were announced, one of the judges, William Christie, pulled him offstage “to sign some contracts,” Mr. Thompson says.

        Mr. Christie is the director of Les Arts Florissants, a renowned early music ensemble based in Paris, known for its recordings of Baroque opera.

        Now, Mr. Thompson, who lives in Boston, is scheduled to tour and record with Les Arts Florissants, as well as Les Jardins des Voix, a smaller group of 10 young singers.

        He is hoping to move to Europe.

        “There has been a resurgence of Baroque music. But to be in the United States, it was difficult to excel in the music I was interested in,” he says. “Winning the competition opened my eyes. I'm very blessed that I didn't have to wait to get my break.”

Jazz

Saxophonist plans to give up day job for bright future

        When Robby Bright turned 27 on Dec. 13, it was at the close of a very good year. The Cincinnati-born-and-bred smooth-jazz saxophonist saw several dreams come true in 2001.

Bright

        In August, he did a concert in Louisville with his two major role models, Boney James and Gerald Albright.

        “I was playing with all of my childhood idols,” says Mr. Bright, who lives in Fairfield. “The people I grew up listening to, now I'm getting to play with them and getting to share a stage with them.”

        But 2002 looks even better.

        A Canadian-based booking agency has signed him to a contract and will be promoting him throughout the United States. His profile has risen considerably, due to the success of his second album, Sometimes You Just Know. Released a year ago, it spent 18 weeks on the smooth-jazz charts, bolstered by national air play.

        He started his sax studies at Princeton High School, but when he went to Ohio State University he had no interest in majoring in music. He soon realized, however, that aeronautical engineering wasn't for him.

        It didn't take long, he says with a laugh. “I hated math and I figured out that I liked music.”

        With help from his parents, Karen and Robert I. Bright, he formed his own label and production company, 13th Floor Productions Ltd. He has released two solo albums featuring his work on alto, soprano and tenor saxes and is beginning a third. He's also working on several other projects, including a co-production with Mr. Albright on an album by gospel-jazz act Allen & Allen.

        Add to that a lucrative promotional performance contract that's in the works with a major soft-drink brand, and Mr. Bright's future seems to be living up to his name. So much so that this year he's planning to fulfill that dream of many musicians, giving up his day job as a computer technician/programmer to play music full-time.

        “I've been out here for a while,” says the saxophonist, who wrote his first song on piano at 5 and had his first public concert at 10, playing cello. “But now, things are really starting to pick up.”

Visual art

Gallery owner develops a community of artists

        Her credo is “give more than you take,” and as director of the fledgling SSNOVA gallery on the edge of Brighton, Emily Buddendeck, 28, is giving artists and performers not only the opportunity to find an audience but to find each other.

Buddendeck

        SSNOVA is an unusual combination of gallery, performance space, online archive and network. Artists in any media can log on at www.ssnova.org to find like-minded creators for group shows or advice on artistic direction.

        “It is a point of contact,” she says, “a beacon for artists to see lots of different art and to let them know there is an outlet for them when they're ready.”

        The building, the former headquarters of the Mockbee Co., which still has offices on the third floor, was once a brewery. The singular architecture conspires with paintings, performance art, sculpture and works on paper to provide a rare experience in the warrens of the space.

        Ms. Buddendeck, also an artist and writer, came up with the concept for SSNOVA with real estate developer Fred Lane.

        “He wanted to do an art center,” she says. “We began talking about all the things it could be, and he put it in my hands to interpret the space.”

        Plans include the possibility of regular hours — currently shows are Saturday evenings and by appointment only — the addition of a club, studio and rehearsal space, an artist-in-residence program and loft apartments when the remaining Mockbees move out.

        “We are developing a community between the audience and artists,” Ms. Buddendeck says, “in a non-traditional space.”

        His self-portrait, “House Plant” is a towering stack of art books crowned with an automatronic smiling sunflower that sings “You Are My Sunshine” when a viewer approaches. Joey Versoza, 23, still lives at home with his parents, and that congenial relationship, along with the work of Marcel Duchamp and Japanese animation, inform his conceptual sculptures.

Versoza

        Trained as a painter at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Mr. Versoza's obsession with process and materials led him into the realm of installation. In his early pieces such as “Long Haul” — two bikes parked together with drawing paper laid over their back tire guards — “I was into the "is-ness',” Mr. Versoza says, “into connecting objects physically without an adhered substance. By creating a scenario and sense of space, I have destroyed their function to make them more mysterious.”

        Hidden behind a thin film of humor, in the new tradition of American anime, original presentations of beloved cartoon characters take on sinister meaning. “Rug” made from red and blue Playdough appears to be merely decorative. But in fact, it is “splattered Spiderman,” Mr. Versoza says. “It's what would happen if Spiderman slipped up and failed.”

        Mr. Versoza, assistant to the chief preparator at the Contemporary Arts Center, has shown at the Warsaw Project space and Linda Schwartz gallery in Cincinnati and at the Monique Meloche gallery in Chicago.

Theater

CCM senior has high hopes for next stage of career

        It's been a year since local audiences got a look at Angela Gaylor. Last winter as a junior at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, she did a flashy turn in Grand Hotel as ambitious secretary Flaemmchen (a role played by Joan Crawford in the fine 1932 screen version).

        She took spring quarter off to star as Julie Jordan in Carousel at esteemed North Shore Music Theatre near Boston. That wasn't her first smart career move. The summer after her sophomore year she was working with Stephen Sondheim on a concert version of A Little Night Music with the Philadelphia Orchestra. ""I thought I'd died and gone to heaven,” she says fervently.

        All the gadding-about meant she spent last fall carrying a double academic load so she can graduate with her classmates in March.

        Looking toward CCM's annual senior spring showcase in New York in April, Ms. Gaylor, 22, notes, “It's pretty nerve-wracking. We seem to be in an entertainment recession a little, and it's disheartening to be graduating into this environment,” but she has hopes.

        “Like everyone else, I would like to get a steady job in New York. And I want to be happy with the material I get to do.”

        Ms. Gaylor, who hails from Dayton, does have one more big role coming before she heads for New York in April.

        In February she'll star as Mena in the premiere of a musical Dracula by CCM alums Richard Oberacker and Michael Lazar.

        There is nothing quite like being the first performer to take a role, she says. “There are no barriers.” And this version of the story has a decidedly feminist bent. “She's very strong. (The script) fights the domestic ideology of the (Victorian) era” in which the action is set.

        So strong that she doesn't end up in a coffin in a crypt for the big finale? “I can't tell,” she laughs. “You have to come see.”

Shakespeare Fest actor revels in his roles

       We've adored him as a thoughtful Irish bartender, a speech-impaired Spanish conquistadore, even as Shakespeare's beloved scamp Prince Hal.

Philips

        Brian Isaac Philips came on the Cincinnati stage scene in autumn 1998 as a member of Ensemble Theatre's acting intern company. By the end of the year he'd been snapped up by Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival where he's been a company member ever since.

        “I've always really wanted to be a part of a resident theater that I could believe in and be proud of,” says Mr. Phillips, 26. “I found it pretty quick with CSF.”

        He's dabbled in directing (and is hoping for a mainstage slot next season) and writing, but it's the roles that keep him in Cincinnati.

        Coming up in February he gets a honey of a part in Adam Rapp's Nocturne, about a young man recalling his role in a family tragedy. The festival gives the chilling drama its first production after its New York run.

        “From the beginning, I was all over it,” Mr. Phillips says. “It's one of the few contemporary scripts I've read that I buy into completely.

        “There's a lot about him that I understand — trying to relate to people on an everyday basis, reading a lot. It's true to who I am.”

Film

"Short-film fest founder goes "Underneath Cincinnati'

        Phil Morehart, 27, of Northside, studied history when he was a student at Ohio University in Athens. But for the past few years, the Middletown native has been spending more and more time connecting audiences with local grass-roots filmmakers.

        With Dave Waddell and David Enright, he put on the Happy Catchy Flashy Named Motion Picture Festival for three years, giving anyone with a 10-minute film or video a showcase.

        Happy Catchy has run its course, so now Mr. Morehart is recruiting artists for “Underneath Cincinnati,” a series of short-film shows he is curating, with the help of Sara Mahle, for the Cincinnati Film Society at SSNOVA.

        “Ultimately I'd like ... for every filmmaker in Cincinnati to know there is a place for their films to be shown,” he said. In time, the series may branch out to include filmmakers from Oxford, Dayton and other parts of the region.

        He credits the popularity of the free-for-all Happy Catchy fests with encouraging both filmmakers and fans. “Those three events completely opened up everyone's eyes. I don't want it to completely die out.”

Rock

Teen-age rock guitarist's future far from Unsettled

        Ricky Veeneman can drive to his gigs now.

        He first gained national recognition at 15, winning the 1999 Jimi Hendrix Guitar Competition. He's still playing the Fender Stratocaster he won in that contest, but now he has his own band, Unsettled and, just as important for a 17-year-old, his driver's license.

Ricky Veeneman (left) with his band, Unsettled: Todd Clayton, Nick Baverman and Matt Gandenberger

        “We've probably all been together about a year now exactly,” he says of Unsettled. The quartet is just starting to make a name for itself, releasing its debut CD and becoming a regular attraction at such local venues as the Blue Note in Price Hill. Along with Ricky on guitar, the band features bassist Matt Gandenberger, 19, of Cleves; singer Todd Clayton, 22, of Hebron, Ky.; and drummer Nick Baverman, 17, of Forest Park.

        “We have all different inspirations,” explains Ricky, a senior at Franklin County High School in eastern Indiana. “The drummer's more hard rock, and the bass player's really into the funk, and I like the blues, and it all just comes together. It's a different sound.”

        He's familiar with old-school bluesmen like Muddy Waters, but Ricky's favorite blues guitarist is Stevie Ray Vaughan. “It's his feeling, he just seems so into it,” Ricky explains.

        Unsettled is working on a second CD, and the band plans to expand its playing area in 2002. Meanwhile, Ricky is starting to play slide guitar and is considering colleges. His current choice looks to keep him part of the Tristate scene for a few more years.

        “I want to go for music, definitely,” he says. “My mom is talking about UC. It's a good music school (the College Conservatory of Music) and it's close to home, too. I want to stay around here.”

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