- Tonight on our place, our time, a day in the life of a maestro, a visit with a nationally known artist and the images and sounds of fall in Hampton Roads.

And here is your host, Vianne Webb.

- Good evening.

We're beginning a new adventure tonight.

This is the first program of a cultural magazine.

We're calling our place our time.

We're going to look at here and savor the people, the places and the things that express and give shape to the arts and to the character of our region.

We'll do that with interviews, essays, performances, features and briefs that will describe and reveal our region while they celebrate it.

Our place, our time, will be about us, about the adventure we share of living in Hampton Roads.

We're excited about our new program and hope you'll come along with us.

Often when a conductor steps in front of an orchestra, he enjoys two great advantages.

He doesn't have to see the audience and he doesn't have to make a sound.

Last year, Winston Dan Vogel stepped in front of the Virginia Symphony as its seventh music director and quickly began making changes, changes in personnel in the kind of music the orchestra plays.

And in its sound we're going to see and hear Maestro Vogel off the podium now from the front, I'll talk with him.

But first, our reporter, Tim Morton, spent a day learning what the maestro does at home and the office.

When he isn't conducting, - He lives in Norfolk's, west Belvedere on an inlet of the Lafayette River.

If that sounds grand, his house isn't, and his manner combines un pretension with a joyous teasing, fun.

His pace is Allegro.

He begins his day.

Like many of us with a cup of coffee, a Turkish blend poured in, in grainy heaps.

Drink it and you'll have a headache by noon.

- This is a very good coffee.

I buy it in New York.

In the most important thing, they should be drunk because I don't eat all day.

Just drink coffee till night.

- Today he'll be a painter as well as a maestro.

The garage door has been scraped and the navy ship blew, call it gray paint, is ready for the brush.

He's been wanting to get to this for a couple of weeks now.

- Look like easy job.

You can take days with me.

See, I'm not a professional.

I like to see it.

Perfect.

Hello?

Hello.

How is everybody?

Hey Julie.

Look, I got this thing Mary - At the office.

The kitting and kaing goes hand in hand with serious business.

- I keep Winston State book and other than conduct a subscription concerts, he is rehearsing with the William and Mary course for an upcoming concert.

He has parties that he has to attend, he has to attend the executive committee and the full board meeting.

We have one of those each month and he speaks at a lot of community club type things.

He is very hard to keep up with.

- He's a piece of work.

He's, he's, he's quite disorganized in many ways off the podium.

Getting him to the concerts on time and in the right place is often a challenge.

We've had some close calls that way, partly because we've played in 10 different places already this year.

So a lot of those places are new and different to him and he has to get out a roadmap and get there.

But he's absolutely a warm, caring individual with a great sense of humor.

So he is a joy to work with - Every time I call somebody.

On other line, the life aan Shalom Kiel, Dan Fogle - Vogel speaks six languages and going after far flung soloists to appear with the orchestra he might call Israel or Italy, - Luc Dan Fog.

- He's been wanting to get to this all day back home in silence, pencil and hand like a baton.

He prepares for the music making of the evening.

- What I'm trying to do here is to rewrite the meter of this piece according, according to what I feel the composer wanted to as the melody.

Obviously the pump repeat repeats twice now.

I put a common denominator and how should I conduct it?

So I believe pom.

So the second part is like a smaller version of the first.

- It's the first time he's eaten since the cup of coffee and the food is a hamburger and fries at Wendy's.

He likes it because nobody recognizes him there and he can study his music in silence.

- The maestro who likes hamburgers and french fries is with me now to talk more about himself about music and about the season of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.

Thank you for coming, Winston on our first show.

Thank you.

I know of course that this is only your, the beginning really of your second year here.

And did you have any sense of what our expectations of you were, of what we wanted and expected from you?

- I, I believe so.

I believe the, the board, the people in charge of publicity in the orchestra and people I come in contact with in case I do something wrong.

You know, they let me know after a while, so I just try to, yeah, I think a conductor is a person like any other person, so I just try to be myself.

- I think we saw that in the piece and I think you've won a lot of friends here.

What about at this point, assessing this first year you've had with the Virginia Symphony.

I know that you had ambitions and expectations for this orchestra.

Go back over those with us a bit.

It's been about a year since we've talked about that, if you will.

- Well, when I got the position I pledged to the board and the public that I'm going to do anything in my possibility and capability to make this orchestra sound good.

Sound good means that my expectation for the long run, which is not that long, are to make this orchestra on a level of the smaller major orchestra in the United States to exceed any orchestra on its level financially and to sound very decent.

So people who come and pay for the tickets can come out and say, oh, we listen to a very, very good concert on the level sometimes that I hear in major orchestras like in Denver, like in Buffalo, like in Baltimore and so forth.

- I understand the measure.

How do you assess the growth of this orchestra at the end of this first year?

- I feel this is a handsome beginning for growth of orchestra.

It's a long way still.

It's a long way past.

I don't know what measures are to be taken, you know, within a month.

I mean two, three, I don't know how much effort is to be taken on the part management and orchestra, you know, to bring the level higher daily.

But it's a very, very grueling and in other words also nourishing kind of a process.

What I'm looking now is from the people which I accepted, which are to my estimated estimate of my colleagues and the audition committees are far superior to, to the in level of performance, you know, to the level which we left behind.

And I hope that for these people when they get into the field of production and be really part of the orchestra, it takes few months, you know, to amalgamate themselves, to - Build the team, - To build a team, to be also socially, to to be accepted and be a part of it.

Then there could be a a real contribution in valuable contribution to - How do you think that this increased proficiency will affect the programming that you've planned?

What are you looking for that even beyond this season?

- Well, programming wise is not withstanding the people in the orchestra.

Although you're right, if we have a special gifted in instrumentalist, in set certain instrument, which is rare, you know, I would certainly think about scheduling a piece which could cater to this particular person and show him at his best.

It's be good for the public, but good for the orchestra, good for himself surely.

But I program, well add in advance, not withstanding the changes in the personnel.

I have programs which are adventurous in a way.

Some are, what do you call, meat and potatoes, you know, so the public will come again and again because - The things we love for good reason.

- Yes.

And the educational material pieces of music, which I believe the orchestra needs to play to grow and public needs to be aware to listen to.

- What do you have scheduled since you have an opening tomorrow night, the second of the season?

Or is it the third?

- This is my second concept.

- Your second because you had a guest conductor, right, the last time.

What have you scheduled for tomorrow evening?

'cause you're touching all of those bases.

The thing we love and something new.

- Well, I have in the program three pieces.

Interesting enough, they're all really 20th century, but none of them is real modern.

We have an American piece, a concerto for viola and female choir based on English nursery rhymes, beautiful nursery rhymes sung by the choir and also, you know, in the viola in a way, and orchestra.

It's a bombastic piece of about 40 minutes, but it's so delightful.

So I'm sure people will be astonished to know that this piece was premiered in 1975.

Only.

The other piece in the program is Debu C Une, which is a colossal piece of music.

And we used to, now because we have a choir, we will play it in entirety with the last movement, which as the ladies sing, ah, throughout.

Then we start with overture like piece, which is called Ballad and Pascal by a Swedish composer, K Berg.

It was performed by Eugene o Mandy before he was famous, you know, back in the thirties word premier.

And I think it's a beautiful written piece, beautiful swish song, you know, based on, again, written in the thirties of the century, but sounds like last century.

- Sounds very exciting.

Winston, thank you for doing this first program with us.

I think that symphony orchestras, just by their size, the number of players they take then reach out into the community as much as any other performing group and really matter to the lifeblood of our community.

So thank you.

- Thank you.

- Charles Sibley came to Norfolk 32 years ago to begin a college art department and to paint pictures.

He was a gifted teacher.

He's retired now, but he remains one of our best known and admired painters with works in permanent collections of such museums as the metropolitan in New York, as Harvard University and at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk.

Our reporter Kim Simon produced this profile - As a teacher.

He was an artist, as an artist.

He was always a teacher to the hundreds of people who studied with him.

- Charles comes on pretty much as the gentleman, but he's certainly not adverse to, you know, approaching the vulgar, you know, of launching a good scatological joke, you know, on unsuspecting and naive ears just to startle right to shock one's perceptions.

- I've never seen a person who could say the wrong thing and get the right response from the students.

He would go into a class that was older students and tell them that they were old and couldn't paint and, and it would shock them into making great paintings.

- It a is able to translate that whatever is going on in his mind, his his concerns and his maybe fears and his joys, it seems to immediately get transferred to his work.

It's, it's a very direct translation from, from himself to his work.

- Charles Sibley loves to paint.

He's a private man, soft-spoken at times, self-effacing, though passionately devoted to his art.

Born in Huntington, West Virginia.

Sibley now resides in Portsmouth.

His studio home accented with African and pre-Columbian artifacts collected from his travels, suits him well.

He delights in the quiet beauty of his garden and the intimate memories of his old fashioned upbringing, the prose of Emerson and Twain and the poetry of Elliot.

He's romanced by the blues uptempo tunes of the late twenties and early thirties.

Original recordings of Ruth Edding, Josephine Baker and Gene Austin provide him with the necessary company as he paints throughout his day.

Charles Sibley distills worlds of information through shapes, light, and color, showing us people in places outside our normal realm of experience, be it a mistreated migrant worker, a captive pound dog, or inviting vistas from foreign lands.

Charles Sibley, however, is best known as a regionally acclaimed artist and teacher.

It was he, after all, who was responsible for the emerging number of artists in Hampton Roads.

Though he argues it was more a matter of timing then of talent for if not he, then eventually someone else.

But it was Sibley who came to Norfolk in 1955 to establish an art department at Old Dominion University.

What was then the College of William and Mary, as it was he who encouraged and developed so much of the local talent in Hampton Roads.

He made the decision to teach rather than take the financial risk of becoming a full-time artist.

It was a decision not without its costs.

- When I was teaching, I oftentimes resented very much the circumstance which deprived me of energy.

I would if you do a reasonable job and you teach all day.

And remember, I was teaching evening school plus day school, a heavy schedule at periods of my life.

By the time evening came exhausted, I couldn't paint.

- Sibley found time to paint, often working on several canvases, which he would move on and off his easel.

It is a practice.

He continues now full time since his retirement.

- The work is out there someplace in my mind, in my past and my experiences.

If I work every day, then these things can be harvested, otherwise I'm missing it all.

- His harvest has proven fruitful.

An extraordinary technician with a varied palette and very personal style.

His impact as an artist is evident.

Few artists, according to Dr. David Steadman, director of the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, have done so much to help a region see itself.

- Charles is one of the very rare artists who have been able to really help us to see the region in which we live.

On the one hand, it's the landscape with, in our case this, this extraordinary wedding of large sky, flat land, active sea.

The quality of light that suffuses all of this - Less publicized and less recognized are siblings.

Figurative works, the frail and forgotten figures.

He coaxes from beyond intense, darkened backgrounds.

- Designing with a human figure is certainly complicated and very wide field and most people have centered in on the young and the beautiful.

And I've always been rather bored by it.

I like to see the body that has some record of having experience in life.

And among those things, illness, tragedy, happiness, fulfillment, or lack of fulfillment.

And the record that it leaves on our, not just the face but the entire body.

And I enjoy expressing myself about this so I do it.

- All of Sibley's figures are defined by distinctive, dignity, mood and personality of particular interest are the eyes.

- And I hope occasionally that it does have an impact where someone peers out at you and asks something or seems to be declaring something.

And that's what I intended with those eyes that look out, that they, that they grab hold if possible.

- At age 65, Charles Sibley continues to soothe, unsettle to captivate, criticized by som for his diversity, for never having stayed with one particular style.

He's changing his palette and approach once again.

Boulder colors of higher intensities are replacing the somber Hughes of earlier paintings about his present work.

He comments, - It's becoming more abstract.

I think that I still will enjoy doing a quite realistic figure occasionally, but I like the design latitude that bending the figure any way you want, provides you.

With - Sibley's time is now his own.

And with it, he paints.

- I want to continue to work and let it take me wherever it goes.

As long as I try my best and devote myself to it, then I will go where my work leads me.

- Next on our place, our time, we'll turn to music and hear a young guitarist and teacher at Norfolk State University.

His name is Sam Dorsey.

Recently, the great guitarist and citizen of the world, Andres Segovia died.

This music, Sam will play by Eduardo de la Matza comes from Segovia, Spain and from near the time Segovia was born.

Thank you Sam.

That was lovely.

We'd like to hear from you.

We want you to take part in our adventure on our place, our time.

We want to hear your comments and suggestions.

Address your letters to WHRO television care of our place, our time, 5,200 Hampton Boulevard, Norfolk, Virginia 2 3 5 0 8.

Reading and responding to your letters will be a regular feature on our program.

For our final segment tonight, we're going to celebrate the season of the year.

Many people think is the most beautiful in Hampton Roads.

It's the season we are in now.

Autumn, one of our resident artists, Tammy Thornton, has been on the road camera on her shoulder, looking for the colors, images, and movements of fall.

Next week on our place, our time, we'll look at the Virginia stage company season and talk with artistic director Charles Towers about the controversial play.

Glen Garry Glen Ross.

We'll look at African art in Hampton Roads, including exhibitions at the Chrysler Museum and at Hampton University.

And pianist.

And singer, Connie Parker will join our place our time.

We hope you will too.

Goodnight.