Koplow Chimes in with Memorial to Ralph Corbett

(first published in The Cincinnati Post March 4, 1992)

A sound and light show at Music Hall?

Not exactly, but composer Philip Koplow's "Legacy: J. Ralph Corbett," to be premiered by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra this weekend, promises to be a visual as well as an aural experience.

Imagine 900 metallic chimes distributed among the audience, sounding in concert with the CSO as flashing lights cue them.

Imagine the light glinting from those chimes.

"They're going to be all over the hall," said Koplow, who conceived the 22-minute work to celebrate Corbett's "good works."

Corbett, his wife Patricia and their Corbett Foundation renovated Music Hall; funded programs at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music; and made contributions to the arts, education and medical research.

Corbett died in 1988.

The chimes in "Legacy" are 11- to 14-inch color-coded tone bars, to be struck with sticks by the audience on cue from CSO music director Jesus Lopez- Cobos and colored lights from the stage. Each chime produces one of five pitches.

The audience "chimes in" toward the end, creating a progression that is repeated 17 times while the orchestra weaves around it.

the public is invited to take a whack at the chimes at a free rehearsal at 7 p.m. Thursday at Music Hall.

"Legacy" also includes six choirs and an expanded percussion section. Four high-school choirs plus the May Festival Youth Chorus and Northern Kentucky University Chorale will be positioned behind the audience, further enhancing the sense of community participation.

Involving the audience in his music is nothing new for Koplow, a professor of composition at NKU. For his 1977 "On Imagination," written for the dedication of NKU's Fine Arts Center, audience members were cued to strike a nail on a string with another nail. "It sounded like hundreds of wind chimes," Koplow said.

Koplow has also written pieces for orchestra and music boxes and for orchestra and toy instruments.

Koplow thinks that audience participation is one way to break barriers between today's audiences and contemporary music.

The chimes in "Legacy" are being donated by NuTone, the company Corbett founded in 1934. "Legacy" is funded by WGUC-FM, the Louise Taft Semple Foundation and the Thomas J. Emery Memorial.