IF YOU GO

What: Blue Eyes Is Back, Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, James R. Cassidy, conductor; John Vincent, vocalist; Mary Ellen Tanner, local vocalist; the Frankettes and the KSO Kids When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday Where: Greaves Concert Hall, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights Tickets: $25 and $20. (859) 431-6216

The orchestra will be taping the concert for a live recording - one of five planned recordings the Kentucky Symphony will make this year.

Recording, says Cassidy, is a good way to mark the legacy of the ensemble that he founded 13 years ago. Now, with a major donation (he would not reveal the amount or the donor), Cassidy has many big plans in the works for his orchestra.

"Thirteen seasons is nothing to sneeze at, and if you look at what we've played - the variety -it's remarkable," says Cassidy.

His programs this season range from an evening of music made famous by crooner Frank Sinatra, featuring some of band icon Nelson Riddle's original soundtracks, to a blockbuster program in March of Beethoven's major choral-symphonic music, including Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.

In April, he will mount a semi-staged production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita, with Tony Award nominee Nancy Opel and Broadway star Thom Sesma.

Hands-on maestro

Cassidy has his hand in literally every facet of the orchestra. A master of marketing, his promotions have always been the most daring of the classical music organizations in the area.

Take January's concert, "Killer Bs," featuring soprano Amy Johnson in Alban Berg's Lulu (a torrid tale of a woman who becomes a prostitute and is killed by Jack the Ripper), as well as music by Bartok and Barber. For the brochure picture, Cassidy found a stiletto knife at a flea market and stabbed the score of Bartok's The Miraculous Mandarin on the program.

"It's fake blood," he admits. "But where the knife is, is exactly where the Mandarin is stabbed in the music."

The orchestra's second recording will feature its November concert of light classics - a hit parade of music that most people know from cartoons and commercials.

Cassidy also plans to record the orchestra's smaller ensembles: The KSO Boogie Band, the Newport Ragtime Band (a disc of music by Cincinnati's ragtime composers from the turn of the century) and the Floodwall Jazz Quintet (music by French jazz artist Claude Bolling).

The orchestra's 48 core players (who are paid union scale) increase to about 90 total musicians for larger concerts (the extra players receive a "stipend," Cassidy says). His budget is about $700,000, and there's no endowment, which makes each season a "break-even" year, he says.

"It's a goal of ours to compensate our musicians better," he says.

Another, more long-range goal is to build a concert hall of their own. The orchestra, which has no affiliation with Northern Kentucky University, rents Greaves Hall on the NKU campus.

Is it pie in the sky?

"No," Cassidy says. "With the donation we received, we have been able to begin a master plan. We need something on this side of the river that would serve the entire region. But we've never had that put down in a plan, something with real numbers. We are in the process of doing that right now."

Although a state-of-the-art concert hall could cost up to $60 million, he is talking with architects and theater consultants, admitting, "It's sticker shock."

"But the reality is," he adds, "you look at what the Kentucky Symphony has done, and we need to say, how do we do this?"

E-mail jgelfand@enquirer.com