Down On The Corner
• Tim Wilson will record his next Capitol album at the Comedy Caravan, making a total of five albums by Wilson that have been recorded at the Caravan. Clearly, Wilson is a fan of the sound of the club.
• The Louisville Orchestra has been awarded $57,500 from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the preservation and dissemination of the archived recordings collection of LO recordings made for its First Edition label. The grant will fund a two-year project to "resurrect hundreds of original autograph scores and world premiere master tapes." A limited number of the recordings, which had been unavailable, have begun to be offered online in CD format by the Orchestra.
This grant is excellent news for Louisville's music scene, as the First Edition Recordings earned the Orchestra an international reputation when they were first created and sold. Their re-release will help the LO both financially and in terms of status.
• The Louisville Youth Orchestra will hold auditions for the 2001-2002 season for interested musicians through age 21, August 24-27. The LYO has six different ensembles of orchestral instruction, with abilities from beginning strings to pre-professional. For more information, contact Melody Welsh-Buchholz, Executive Director, LYO, 233 W. Broadway, Ste 600, Louisville, KY 40202 or call 502-584-0135.
• If you were planning to submit a song or two to the Billboard Song Contest, better get moving: the deadline is June 15. For more information, log on to www.billboard.com/songcontest or call Director Ryan Gadenhire at918-624-2100.
• Nashville is jumping on the "new music conference" bandwagon. Their event, Nashville New Music Conference (2NMC), will happen on October 10-14, 2001. Wanna play it? Contact David Hooper at 615-985-0149.
• Louisville Dulcimer Society member Michael LeCompte won first place in the Mid-Eastern Regional Dulcimer Championships at the 27th Annual Dulcimer Days at Historic Roscoe Village in Coshocton, Ohio. The event was his first competition. In addition to a new Appalachian dulcimer and case, LeCompte received an expense-paid trip to the national competition in Winfield, Kansas in September.
• Here's a little tidbit for musicians with material on public access channels. ASCAP reached an agreement on final license fees with local cable operators for use of ASCAP-licensed music in locally originated programming a while back. They made a special distribution of the part of the retroactive fees they collected to members with performances on local cable during that period in August and again in December. They also decided that there might be performances on local cable systems that are not "adequately recognized by these distributions," so they set aside some for subsequent distribution for documented performances on locally originated programming. If you have compositions on local cable only, you can file a claim for some of this money. Of course, you must be able to document the performances, but I'll leave all that to you and ASCAP. You can get the forms from the ASCAP website at www.ascap.com. All claims must be postmarked by June 30, 2001, so get cracking.
• Over at Ramcat Sound Productions on Barrett, they're offering up some summer specials: eight hour blocks for $315 and thirty hour blocks for $1000, both of which are less than their usual $45/hr charge. The price includes an engineer and a producer.
Frank Richmond has joined Mom's Music in Jeffersonville as a Keyboard/Piano Instructor. Richmond is a classically trained musician with a considerable repertoire
Codas
• Loyall, Thelma Thompson, 90, died in Louisville on May 14. She was a former piano player for the now-disbanded Lou Anna Gospel Trio.
• White, Stephanie Ann, 48, died May 13 in New Albany, IN. White was a violinist who performed with her husband Terry White as Foolish Pleasure. She also taught music at the Georgetown and Grantline Elementary Schools.