COMMUNITY

GOOD CAUSES

Paul Martin Paul Martin

Polar Bear Plunge

The annual Lexington Polar Plunge fundraiser for Special Olympics Kentucky was held at Texas Roadhouse on Richmond Road in March. The annual fundraiser challenges brave jumpers to plunge into frigid mid-winter water in support of Special Olympics Kentucky.

Pie Day

Richmond Place Senior Living invited Lexington residents to make donations of non-perishable food items to help stock God’s Pantry with nutritious food. Richmond Place thanked the drop-off donors with cherry pies in a belated celebration of President’s Day (delayed by weather).

NEWS

Central Library reopens

The Lexington Public Library announced the reopening of the first floor of Central Library, located in downtown Lexington. Central Library now offers limited in-person services, including access to computers, fax/scan services, popular titles, and holds pickup, all on the first floor. Appointments are available for customers wishing to access the Kentucky Room and its local history collections. Beaumont, Eastside, Northside, and Tates Creek branches also offer limited in-person services. Curbside services remain available to all customers.

Text-to-911

Text-to-911 is now available in Lexington. This service is helpful to those who are non-verbal, hard of hearing, deaf or speech impaired. It’s also useful if the caller is facing a threatening situation and a voice call could increase the threat; or if the caller is unable to speak due to illness or injury.

Memorial Planned

Sandy Davis spent decades in Lexington working in the media and advertising community, as a volunteer for many non-profits, and as an artist and photographer. She was also a longtime dedicated staffer at the Woodford Humane Society. As an entrepreneur, she founded the Art Movement Gallery, transforming Lexington businesses into art studios as she rotated the work of local artists into their spaces.

Her sudden death last summer left Lexington shocked and grieving, even moreso, as there was no opportunity to gather in person to console and mourn collectively.

Sandy touched so many lives with her light, her smile, her love, and her art, that the community wants to celebrate her life and legacy, and share memories of her in person.

Although she had since relocated to her beloved hometown of Boston (and a family memorial was held there), she always held Kentucky in her heart, and Lexington claimed her as a native daughter.

A Spring memorial is planned on Friday April 30 at 5 pm to share memories and stories and images of Sandy, and the process of gathering volunteers to create an Annual Memorial Fundraiser in Sandy’s honor (supporting local affordable spay-neuter programs) has begun.

The Memorial is subject to community guidelines and restrictions regarding gatherings, and all scheduling updates and modifications will be announced at the Facebook Memorial Page, “I Knew Sandy Davis.” Please RSVP at the facebook page.

All friends are welcome to join the facebook group and to share photos and memories. □

Lord of the Strings At the Movies with Ben Sollee In a particularly tense scene in Land, the new wilderness

BY KEVIN NANCE survival movie starring and directed by Robin Wright, a huge grizzly bear appears at her remote cabin in a rugged mountain region of Wyoming. Her character, Edee — who has taken refuge in the wild after a personal tragedy back in the city — cowers inside her outhouse as the bear huffs and growls inches away, prowling for food. Lexington native Ben Sollee, a classicallytrained cellist, recording artist, and film composer wrote the movie’s score last year with string trio Time for Three. And the bear scene was an obvious opportunity to shine. “I wrote probably five different pieces of music for that scene,” Sollee recalls in a recent interview. “I wrote some intense action music: TINK-eh-dink-eh-dinkPhotos by Austin Johnson & Megan McCardwell eh-dink-eh,” he says, his fingers drumming on a table, after filming a promotional segment for LexArts’ Fund for the Arts campaign. “Then I wrote some more mysterious stuff, boh KAY doo BAH, with some weird metallophone instruments. And then I wrote some low piano notes, which was a little bit scary. I tried action energy, fear-inducing suspense, mystery thriller. And none of them worked. They’d put the music in the movie and the answer Scan for Video would come back: Great music. Doesn’t work.” Wright’s best known work is as an actress (The Princess Bride, House of Cards, and Wonder Woman to name a few), and Land is her directorial debut. She and her team ended up dropping the music for the bear scene altogether, opting instead for dramatic sound design: the sound of the bear growling, its claws crunching the snow, the terrified Edee breathing heavily inside the outhouse. Earlier in Sollee’s still-young career film composer, this might have been upsetting. But with several movie and TV projects under his belt — including Beauty About Ben It’s been more than a decade Mark (2017) and the documentary Maidentrip (2013) — he took it in stride, knowing now that making since NPR labeled cellist Ben Sollee as a movies is an intensely collaborative process with a “top ten new artist to watch,” followed quickly lot of trial-and-error along the way. by similar acclaim in the Wall Street Journal. It “As a younger composer, I struggled when was a few years later that Paste Magazine wrote, I’d written something I was really into but it

“It’s rare to find music that’s so simple and yet so didn’t get used in the film. I’d say, ‘Can’t suggestive, so sparse in its arrangements and you see how perfect that would be in yet so brimming with energy and inspiration.” the movie?,’” says Sollee, 37, who Sollee and his family contracted COVID last attended Lexington public fall, and he’s a recovering “long-hauler” with continuing lingering symptoms. schools and played in Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras before studying the cello at the University of Louisville. He gave a miniconcert while filming the LexArts promotion, and answered questions about his years with CKYO, which he credits for helping to launch his career as a professional musician. “But that’s one of the beautiful things about cinema. At the end of the day, the film tells you what it needs, and it’s a big team effort with the director, the actors, the designers and editors. Composing music, while it’s important, is just this one piece of the larger thing, which is the story, and it all has to come together for the film to really land. So mountain music with droning fiddles that evoked the folk tradition of Kazakhstan.

“The DNA of that song got into the movie,” he says. “My catalog has a very handmade, intimate quality to it, and I think that’s what she was seeking.”

Sollee says he now spends about a third of his creative energies on scoring films and TV, another third on creating and/or curating live arts events, and the final third on performing, recording and touring. His output has slowed a bit since last November, when he contracted Covid-19 and he has since suffered from lingering effects of the disease, including losing his sense of smell along with bouts of dizziness and “brain fog.” He’s

You write a bunch of music and most of it’s going to get cut out. But that’s just part of making music for movies.

it’s a process of attrition.

You write a bunch of music and most of it’s going to get cut out. But that’s just part of making music for movies.”

And bear scene or no, the score is a significant achievement for Sollee, featuring his signature combination of classical technique with rootsy Americana, Appalachian folk, and hints of Eurasian melodies. It was exactly that melding of influences that had brought his work to Wright’s attention several years ago, when a friend of hers sent her a mixtape that contained Sollee’s song “Prettiest Tree on the Mountain,” and, later, she heard his song “Embrace,” which fused Kentucky doing much better now after a month on a new nutritional regime which he credits with helping to reduce Covid-related inflammation. At the LexArts event he seemed in fine form, belting out several songs with gusto while playing his cello.

“He’s so down-toearth for a guy who’s now working with people like Robin Wright,” says Maury Sparrow, communications director for LexArts. “We were really lucky to have someone from Central Kentucky back home after forging such a successful career, and to share his success with those who might support the arts here. It’s great that he’s so willing to give back.” □