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As things were getting geared up for the Lincoln Bicentennial, Kentucky Humanities Council director Virginia Smith noticed something was missing: a Lexington event.
Hodgenville (Lincoln's birthplace), Louisville and several other cities had planned celebrations, but not Lexington.
A talk with University of Kentucky Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey took care of that.
"The Humanities Council had given support to the new opera River of Time," Smith says, referring to the work being composed by Joseph Baber that will be premiered by UK Opera Theatre next year.
McCorvey suggested a few scenes from the opera, a performance of Aaron Copland's Lincoln Portrait and some selections by the American Spiritual Ensemble, which he directs. Voilˆ, an event was forming.
"He said, 'Let's put it together. We can do it at the Singletary Center,'" Smith recalls. "I swallowed hard, and we went ahead."
The Humanities Council is used to putting on small events featuring a few people for audiences of 50 to 100.
Our Lincoln, on Feb. 10, will feature 300 to 400 performers in a program that appears to be on its way to selling out Singletary's 1,500-seat Concert Hall. Nick Clooney will serve as master of ceremonies.
In addition to the opera and Spiritual Ensemble, the performers will include:
• The Lexington Singers and its children's choir, performing Kentucky Is My Land, a song based on a poem by Jesse Stuart.
• The Lexington Philharmonic playing Lincoln Portrait, narrated by Roger Leasor.
• The Lexington Vintage Dance Society performing dances of Lincoln's era.
• A portion of the play One Man's Lincoln, performed by Kentucky Repertory Theatre of Horse Cave.
• Chicago Symphony violinists Nathan Cole, a Lexington native, and Akiko Tarumoto performing Ashokan Farewell.
• Performances by Kentucky Chautauqua artists portraying Abraham Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln and others.
• A reading by Kentucky poet laureate Jane Gentry Vance.
"I wanted to do something along the lines of a Kennedy Center gala," McCorvey says of the program, which amounts to a sort of informal kickoff to Lincoln events during the next two years.
McCorvey and the Spiritual Ensemble will be in Hodgenville, Lincoln's birthplace, two days later for the big national ceremony that will be attended by first lady Laura Bush and possibly President Bush.
In putting Our Lincoln together, Smith and McCorvey say, they have not had any trouble attracting artists to participate in the program to celebrate the president who oversaw the Civil War and the abolition of slavery.
"As we go through history, we find out how courageous and important Lincoln was to what we are as a society," McCorvey says.
The event organizers note that if people want to see this show, they have to buy a ticket. While she was able to secure funds to present the program, Smith says the budget did not allow for filming of Our Lincoln for TV or any other medium.
