Digital Program

Get Started

  • Performance sites are stationed across Josephine Sculpture Park along mowed grass trails. Reference the event map and follow the purple flags along the trails that lead you to the next performance site.

  • Music is happening at all times! Here are ways to experience Symphonic Stroll:

    1) Start at any site and explore the park and performances at your own pace OR

    2) Follow one of the suggested paths below to experience all five performances.

    4PM Entry: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
    4PM & 5PM Entry: 4, 5, 1, 2, 3

  • Several local food and drink trucks will be located in the hub of Symphonic Stroll activity for your enjoyment, including West Sixth Brewing, Castle & Key, Spotz Gelato, Taqueria El Taco Feliz, Pasta Garage, and Say Cheese!

    Shaded food court seating available.

Skip to Sites: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

Download Schedule and Map.

Site 1: Sound Installation

  • Swing Set: Share a Share (Duyan: Ibahagi ang Balato) by Leticia Bajuyo

    Artist Statement: Visually inspired by gothic architecture and spider’s legs and webs, the structure holding up the swings locks together into a geometric pattern that radiates from the hub of this sculptural wheel.

    The wood seats of the swing are carved, sculpted, and personalized by members of the Filipinx Artists of Houston. Each seat is a portrait - a story. These voices share the swing set as a community whose backgrounds and lived experiences have been translated into a space where each story contributes to the collective.

    OK to swing on with respect. More here.

  • “I was really moved by the idea of working together and communicating without words to keep everyone safe and to get where you are trying to go,” says Green.

    “With this in mind, I'd like to do an installation where each swing triggers a sound when someone interacts.” The piece will include retro black boomboxes swaying to the voices of Lexingtonians.

    “Each sound is interesting on its own,” explains Green “but when they're all put together, they create a beautiful soundtrack that represents the communal spirit of Kentucky.”

    With prompts like ‘community means’ and ‘Lexington is home because’, Green’s sound experience aims to capture the current collective and “share the swing set” that we call community.

  • LexPhil 2025-2026 Saykaly Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence

    Brittany J. Green (she/her(s)) is a North Carolina-based composer, creative, and educator. Her music facilitates intimate musical spaces that ignite visceral responses at the intersection of sound, video, movement, and text.

    Recent works engage sonification and black feminist theory as tools for sonic world-building, exploring the construction, displacement, and rupture of systems. Her artistic practice includes spoken and electronic performance, interdisciplinary collaboration, experiential projects, and acoustic and electroacoustic chamber and large ensemble works.

    Her music has been featured at TIME:SPANS, NYC Electronic Music Festival, WoCo Fest, and Experimental Sound Studio. Her collaborators include the International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Transient Canvas, Castle of our Skins, Emory University Symphony Orchestra, and Wachovia Winds. Brittany holds awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP Foundation, and New Music USA.

    She is a doctoral candidate at Duke University, pursuing a PhD in music composition as a Dean’s Graduate Fellow. 

  • 4:05PM - 4:30PM

    4:55PM - 5:20PM

    5:45PM - 6:10PM

    6:35PM - 7:00PM

Skip To Sites: 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7

  • Marcello Cormio

    CKYO, Music Director & Conductor

  • Dr. Michael Preacely

    Uniting Voices Lexington, Founder & Artistic Director

site 2

  • Margaret Karp, 
    Acting Concertmaster
    C.A. Coleman Chair
    Madison Jones,
    Acting Assoc. Concertmaster
    Gretchen Tucker,
    Acting Asst. Concertmaster
    Meg Saunders,
    Acting Asst. Concertmaster
    Julie Lastinger,
    Principal Second Violin
    Kerry S. Zack Chair
    Raymond Weaver,
    Assistant Second Violin
    Lucas Braga +
    Amanda Ellerbe +
    Sean Elliott +
    Reisa Fukuda +
    Saelim Henderson +
    Stacey Beane Howe
    Marvellous Igwe +
    Ian Jessee +
    Nathan Jones +
    Kristen Kline
    Annette Misener +
    Riki Nagai +
    Julia Poetain +
    Andrew Smeader +
    Julianna Waller-Martinez +

  • Henry Haffner, Principal
    Siyu Michael Jiang, Assistant Principal
    Tyler Brugmann +
    Rebecca Flank +
    Michael Hill +
    Elizabeth Jones
    Chris Lowry +
    Wendy Yates +

  • Benjamin Karp, Principal
    Clyde Beavers, Assistant Principal
    Jerram John
    Rebecca Kiekenapp
    Anna Macintosh
    Myles Yeazell
    Ethan Young,
    The Lexington Chair

  • Victor Döme, Principal
    Maurice Todd,
    Assistant Principal
    Brenton Carter
    Henry Girard +
    Susan Lucas
    James Perera +

  • FLUTES
    Arpi Anderson, Principalz
    Valentina Arango Sanchez +
    Amelia Dicks +

    PICCOLO
    Amelia Dicks +

    OBOES
    Bonnie Farr, Principal
    David Powell

    ENGLISH HORN
    David Powell

    CLARINETS
    Erin Fung, Principal 
    Marian Mayen +
    Celeste Markey +

    BASS CLARINET
    Celeste Markey +

    BASSOONS
    Mackenzie Brauns, Principal
    Alexis Cerise +
    Eve Parsons +

    CONTRABASSOON 
    Eve Parsons +

  • HORNS
    Andrew Bass, Principal +
    Devin Cobleigh-Morrison +
    Joanne Filkins
    Meredith Evans +
    Rebekah Lorenz +

    TRUMPETS
    Stephen Campbell, Principal
    Joseph Van Fleet
    Audrey Schmid +

    TROMBONES
    Tyler Bentley, Principal +
    Elisabeth Shafer +

    BASS TROMBONE
    Carter Woosley +

    TUBA
    Brandon Smith, Principal

  • TIMPANI
    Josh Smith, Principal +

    PERCUSSION
    Paul Deatherage, Principal +
    Matthew Geiger +

    HARPS
    Elaine Humphreys Cook, Principal

    PIANO
    Josh Nemith +

  • Renowned as a conductor of “uncommon emotional intensity” (Marie-Celine) and a “force at the podium” (Eugene Scene), American conductor Mélisse Brunet is a native of Paris, France with an active career on both sides of the Atlantic.  In July 2022, she became the fifth Music Director of the Lexington Philharmonic, and the first woman to hold the position. She is also in her sixth season as the Music Director of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic.

    Brunet is one of the five conductors featured in the documentary “Maestra” by the Director Maggie Contreras and produced by David Letterman and Melanie Miller (“Navalny”) – now available on Netflix. “Maestra” garnered 2nd place and the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary.

    The 2025/26 season features Brunet’s Carnegie Hall debut in a program of new works leading the American Composers Orchestra. Other upcoming highlights include performances with the Phoenix Symphony, Sacramento Philharmonic, Charlottesville Symphony, Louisiana Philharmonic, and Canton Symphony. Recent engagements include those with the Nashville Symphony, Delaware Symphony, Wintergreen Music Festival, New Hampshire Music Festival, Carmel Symphony, Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the Eugene Symphony, the West Virginia Symphony, and the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence (France).

    As a dynamic advocate of contemporary music, Brunet has collaborated with composers such as Shawn Okpebholo, Brittany J Green, Mary D. Watkins, T.J. Cole, Steven Stucky, Michael Daugherty, Shulamit Ran, and Jennifer Higdon, among others. She holds diplomas from the Paris Conservatory, the Université la Sorbonne, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and a Doctorate in conducting from the University of Michigan.

About Short Piece for Orchestra

  • Julia Perry was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1924 and spent much of her young life in Akron, Ohio.

    After earning degrees from Akron University and Westminster Choir College, Perry studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and the Berkshire Music Center (now the Tanglewood Music Center) in Lenox, Massachusetts. Like many American composers of “classical” music in this era, Perry continued her studies in Europe with the likes of Luigi Dallapiccola and Nadia Boulanger. She returned to the United States in 1959 and took teaching positions in Florida and Georgia before returning to Akron.

    Short Piece for Orchestra was written in 1952 while she was studying in Europe and seems to be reaching across the ocean, spanning her multiple musical influences. Perry’s jazz-inflected tunes and the rhythms of her American home are mingled with an angular modernity that evokes her European sojourn. Perry also represents a homecoming for the LexPhil, as the orchestra celebrates the music of someone who deserves to be a voice of the Bluegrass State and its rich musical traditions.

    Learn more at lexphil.org/juliaperry.

About A Mighty Long Way

  • From Shawn E. Okpebholo’s Composer Notes

    Commissioned to mark the 250th anniversary of Lexington, Kentucky, A Mighty Long Way is an orchestral suite that traces the city’s rich, complicated, and evolving story—its triumphs and tensions, buried histories and enduring spirit. The title draws from African American spirituals and freedom songs, where the phrase “a mighty long way” becomes a refrain of testimony—celebrating survival and forward motion. Each movement is a snapshot, not of fixed history, but of a city still becoming: Lexington’s journey from past to present, from soil to soul.

    The suite opens with Hoofbeat Fanfare, a nod to Lexington’s equestrian identity. Strains of First Call—the iconic bugle signal heard at horse races—ride through the orchestra, marking the start of a long journey. Its rhythmic drive captures the vibrant past of a city in motion.

    After Bourbon follows—a raucous and playful celebration of Kentucky’s distilling legacy. Off-kilter grooves, blues-inflected sonorities, and orchestral “hiccups” animate this swaggering movement. It’s an homage to the state’s most iconic export, but beneath the surface lies  something deeper: the messy joy of community and revelry.

    With Cheapside, the suite turns inward. Once the site of one of the South’s largest slave markets, Lexington’s Cheapside now invites remembrance. The music moves between dissonance and restraint—with lament, lyrical clarity, and an undercurrent of tension. Though the sound world is different, I drew emotional inspiration from the second movement of Dvořák’s New World Symphony—particularly the evocative English horn solo. That sense of ache and quiet reckoning felt right for this moment in Lexington’s 250-year history: a city confronting its past while still writing its unfinished story.

    The suite concludes with Beyond Bluegrass. Fragments of Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home emerge, refracted through shifting harmonies and textures. The familiar is reshaped—honoring tradition while creating space for new voices. This final movement imagines a Lexington informed by its history but not defined by it—moving forward with conviction, clarity, and celebration.

  • Named the 2024 Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music by the Chicago Tribune and one of Musical America's Top 30 Professionals of 2023, Nigerian-American composer Shawn E. Okpebholo's music resonates globally, earning widespread acclaim from critics and audiences alike.

    Former LexPhil Saykaly Garbulinska Composer-in-Residence, NPR selected Okpebholo’s art song "The Rain" as one of the 100 Best Songs of 2021, one of only a few classical works to make the ranking. His compositions are featured on twelve commercially released albums, three of which are GRAMMY®-nominated.

    More at shawnokpebholo.com

  • Mélisse Brunet

    LexPhil, Music Director & Conductor

  • Julia Perry

    Composer of Short Piece for Orchestra

  • Shawn E. Okpebholo

    Composer of A Mighty Long Way

Site 3

  • Kentucky musician and composer Ben Sollee, has been blurring boundaries with his musical style and career for nearly two decades – his latest album, Long Haul (2024) is no exception.

    Drawing on tonal influences from the American and global south, Sollee’s vocals and unique cello style thread through each track binding seemingly disparate chapters of his journey – the Long Haul.

    More at bensollee.com.

  • Ben Sollee is joined by drummer Dan Dorff. Sollee alongside LexPhil will perform:

    Something, Somewhere, Sometime
    by Ben Sollee (arr. Ryan Brown)

    Whole Lot to Give
    by Ben Sollee (arr. Jay Clifford)

    Bend
    by Ben Sollee (arr. William Britelle)

    Electrified
    by Ben Sollee (arr. Jay Clifford)

  • Ben Sollee

    Guest Artist

Site 4

  • After cultivating her dynamic voice and performance skills in backup roles and stage plays, Joslyn Hampton teamed with her stepfather, Marty Charters, to compose a captivating set of tunes and assemble an ace band.

    Joslyn & The Sweet Compression combine to deliver a hook-filled mix of funk and soul on their self-titled debut album, released in 2019 and their sophomore album Bona Fide.

    More at joslynandtsc.com.

  • Joslyn Roshae Hampton, vocals, is joined today by Carter Scofield, guitar, Jacob O'Donnell, saxophone, Tyler Papierniak, bass, Rashawn Fleming, drums. Joslyn & The Sweet Compression alongside LexPhil will perform:

    Honey, Be
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Wise Fools
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Truth In The Moment
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Love On The Double
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    What Did You Think Was Gonna Happen?
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

  • Joslyn & The Sweet Compression

    Guest Artist

Site 5

  • After cultivating her dynamic voice and performance skills in backup roles and stage plays, Joslyn Hampton teamed with her stepfather, Marty Charters, to compose a captivating set of tunes and assemble an ace band.

    Joslyn & The Sweet Compression combine to deliver a hook-filled mix of funk and soul on their self-titled debut album, released in 2019 and their sophomore album Bona Fide.

    More at joslynandtsc.com.

  • Joslyn Roshae Hampton, vocals, is joined today by Carter Scofield, guitar, Jacob O'Donnell, saxophone, Tyler Papierniak, bass, Rashawn Fleming, drums. Joslyn & The Sweet Compression alongside LexPhil will perform:

    Honey, Be
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Wise Fools
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Truth In The Moment
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Love On The Double
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    What Did You Think Was Gonna Happen?
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

  • Joslyn & The Sweet Compression

    Guest Artist

Site 6

  • After cultivating her dynamic voice and performance skills in backup roles and stage plays, Joslyn Hampton teamed with her stepfather, Marty Charters, to compose a captivating set of tunes and assemble an ace band.

    Joslyn & The Sweet Compression combine to deliver a hook-filled mix of funk and soul on their self-titled debut album, released in 2019 and their sophomore album Bona Fide.

    More at joslynandtsc.com.

  • Joslyn Roshae Hampton, vocals, is joined today by Carter Scofield, guitar, Jacob O'Donnell, saxophone, Tyler Papierniak, bass, Rashawn Fleming, drums. Joslyn & The Sweet Compression alongside LexPhil will perform:

    Honey, Be
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Wise Fools
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Truth In The Moment
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Love On The Double
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    What Did You Think Was Gonna Happen?
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

  • Joslyn & The Sweet Compression

    Guest Artist

Site 7

  • After cultivating her dynamic voice and performance skills in backup roles and stage plays, Joslyn Hampton teamed with her stepfather, Marty Charters, to compose a captivating set of tunes and assemble an ace band.

    Joslyn & The Sweet Compression combine to deliver a hook-filled mix of funk and soul on their self-titled debut album, released in 2019 and their sophomore album Bona Fide.

    More at joslynandtsc.com.

  • Joslyn Roshae Hampton, vocals, is joined today by Carter Scofield, guitar, Jacob O'Donnell, saxophone, Tyler Papierniak, bass, Rashawn Fleming, drums. Joslyn & The Sweet Compression alongside LexPhil will perform:

    Honey, Be
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Wise Fools
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Truth In The Moment
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    Love On The Double
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

    What Did You Think Was Gonna Happen?
    by Joslyn Roshae Hampton/Martin Arthur Charters (arr. Melisse Brunet)

  • Joslyn & The Sweet Compression

    Guest Artist

Enjoy the concert? Let us know!

As a way to say "thank you" for sharing your thoughts, you will be entered to win two concert subscriptions to these four concerts: Opening Night: The Witching Hour (Oct 11), Heartsong (Nov 22), Jubilee & Joy (Feb 21), and Season Finale: American Stories (Apr 18).