Sherry Chandler

The light glinting off the spike-heeled pump of the black-haired violinist in the third row, the cellist who leaned on his instrument during the piano solos like a drunk leaning on a bar, the trombonist who spent more time shaking spit from his slide than playing (not much work for the low brass last night), the tympanist with the punk red mohawk who kept time with his head and shoulders, the Ichabod Crane figure of the conductor, the pianist who played with so much animation of face and body that I thought first of Jerry Lee Lewis and then of Chico Marx. I worried that I was being irreverent—a typical uncultured American— but the Praque Symphony, appearing last night at the Singletary Center for the Arts at the University of Kentucky, is known as the FOK Orchestra—for Film-Opera-Koncert—so I’m not sure high reverence for the arts is their only goal. A mohawk and a tailcoat is a yoking of dissimilars worthy of John Donne. The program was all Dvorak, who links Prague and the United States. They opened with the Carnival Overture, which I considered a good omen for our own WAMO Sideshow exhibit later this month. Who would have thought one tamborine could be heard above an entire symphony orchestra? That guy must have tough hands. They closed with The New World Symphony (Symphony #9 in E minor—just like a mountain ballad—Opus 95). I was entranced.

But the late night in mid-week and the drive home over snowy roads has me moving a little slow this morning. Be lenient. I could see the lights of Paris (Kentucky, once upon a time we loved the French) glowing against the low-hanging clouds as I left Lexington and began my drive north from county seat to county seat. The closer to home I got, the worse the roads. Downtown Paris, some guy in a rear-wheel drive hotrod was cutting dados along Main Street. Have you ever noticed that roads you’ve driven every day for a couple of decades turn completely unknown when the night is dark and the snow is blowing?