Next on Our Place Our Time, we meet a photographer who documents Civil War battles.

We'll explain how.

We'll sail on a 72-foot science classroom and continue the search with the Virginia Symphony for its new music director.

Welcome to Our Place Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

Throughout this season, we've been following the Virginia Symphony search for a new music director.

The symphony will announce its decision next week in a live presentation here on Our Place Our Time.

But right now, we would like for you to meet the last of the six candidates.

He's Leif Bjaland, who will lead the orchestra in a series of concerts this weekend.

Mr.

Bjaland is the music director and artistic coordinator of the New World Orchestra in Miami Beach, Florida.

He was asked to become a candidate here after making a very fine debut with the orchestra last season.

Tim Morton profiles the conductor who comes with the recommendations of the great Sir George Schulte and the late Leonard Bernstein.

Well, I'm, I'm looking for a community where music can be made under the best possible circumstances.

That is a community that, that has a musical heritage, an interest, the kind of economic stability that allows the arts to flourish and, and a public that's interested in the perpetuation of high level arts.

The opera, the symphony, chamber music and so forth.

It's all here.

And it's in a beautiful setting which is attractive to musicians who might want to come here and play in the orchestra, for example, or to artists, to, to prospective audience members.

So it's, it's a very attractive locale for an orchestra.

Former professor at Yale, affiliate conductor at San Francisco, a guest conductor who gets invited back, Leif Byaland is having an upwardly mobile career.

Bjaland was rehearsing the Brahms second symphony with the orchestra in the new fine and performing arts center at Old Dominion University.

We went upward to talk near the dramatic skylight that spans the front and back of the building.

You are in Miami Beach with the New World Symphony Orchestra.

I understand that's quite an unusual orchestra, isn't it?

Tell me about it and what is the work you've done there?

Well, it is an unusual orchestra.

It's unique.

It's the only orchestra that is made up of musicians who are out of universities, conservatories and so forth who are interested in a high level career in symphonic music, who need further training.

So it's a training orchestra for very high level people.

And it serves that, the purpose of, of giving them a place to blossom and to nurture their abilities so that rather than working part-time as a secretary and a busboy somewhere and then playing in some orchestra, they can concentrate full time on developing their skills in, in orchestra playing.

We've had great success so far and one of our ovoists has just been appointed the associate principal oval of the Boston Symphony.

One of our bassoonists is in the finals, one of two for Chicago.

We have people all over the country in, in big five orchestras and smaller orchestras who have come through our program.

You will be conducting the orchestra this weekend.

And as I understand it, you pretty much had the pick of the program, you and Joe Silverstein.

Why did you pick that program and what does it say about you?

What does it say about me?

I, the Brahms is something that I, that I love very much.

I like the symphony.

And, u, I have a close connection with it.

And it's a very substantial piece, a piece I believe that the orchestra will play very well.

Don Juan is a perfect piece for this time of year, you know, the spring time, the awakening of life and, and the incredible gusto and the hormones that are in this piece written by Strauss as a very young man is, is so energetic and, and stimulating and a wonderful, exciting piece for the audience.

So those were the, those were the thoughts behind those choices.

The Virginia Symphony has had a busy time in recent days with music director candidates.

Joanne Fileta, who led the orchestra in January, returned last week for another interview with the search committee.

Three other candidates, Richard Buckley, Raymond Harvey and Kenneth Keesler also have come back for more interviews.

The field is still bunched.

I ask the chairman of the search, Mrs.

J. Barr, whether having so many good candidates is delightful or confusing.

Well, it's both.

It's delightful that they're all so good that we feel we can't make a mistake.

It's confusing that when we surveyed our audience, the six came practically equal.

The lowest and the highest were not 10% apart.

So we feel that any one of them for that reason is going to be a good selection.

And it also means that a large number of people will be disappointed that their top candidate wasn't picked when no one candidate got such a huge majority.

I would think since all the candidates are roughly equal, the issue now is what do you want?

Well, we have to balance that question in lots of ways because it's what do we want for the musicians?

Who's going to be the best teacher?

Who's going to be the best leader for the musicians?

What do we want for our audience?

Who's going to be the most inspirational?

Who's going to fill those seats that we need to keep filled so that the coffers stay filled?

And who's going to really be the best addition to this area and to this community?

Your press material indicates that you've worked closely with Sir George Schulte.

How long did you work with him and how has he affected the way you think about music?

He, he gave me my first big break.

I I was out of college and I'd gotten a job with a very bad orchestra and I did a youth orchestra and so forth.

So it was really, really rough at the first.

I was then given the opportunity to work with Schulte in a masterclass in Chicago with the Chicago Civic Orchestra.

His energy is the first thing that you, that you're captivated by.

He's, he's incredibly... Gusto is his love of life and all of that.

He he told me many useful things.

Probably the most useful thing I think he's ever told me was, was, was that there are many roads to Mecca.

Or he says, "There are many roads to Mecca," because he has a strange kind of chokey voice.

And there are many roads to Mecca.

You can, you can make your, your life in music in all sorts of different ways and you just have to be true to yourself and be persistent.

And I've tried to follow that advice ever since.

What are your career ambitions?

Oh, that's a tough one.

I think, I think simply put, my ambition is to make music on my own terms.

And that could be in all sorts of different venues at all kinds of different levels.

By, at my own terms, I, I mean in an organization where I can do artistically what I feel necessary and what I'm driven to do and what I want to, to be able to do and create.

And also to have the, the, the freedom and the ability to, to make artistic choices.

So that means, you know, a certain level of, of, of musician which has who possesses the, the flexibility to be able to do many different styles and also the audience that, that's really interested in exploring all kinds of things, all kinds of music.

Leif Bjalan, the last of the six music director candidates, will lead the Virginia Symphony Friday and Saturday evenings in Chrysler Hall.

We'll learn next week who will become the symphony's permanent leader.

If it's Belgium, then there must be Belgian lace.

Belgium is the honored country in the 38th annual Azalea Festival going on in Norfolk over the weekend.

And the centerpiece exhibit is a collection of Belgian lace with pieces dating back to the 14th century.

The collection is at the Hermitage Museum in Norfolk and Holly O'Neill took a look at it.

27-year-old Yolanda Bickman lives in Alst, Belgium.

She works in electronic banking in Brussels, but during her spare time revives the intricate tradition of lace making.

Here, Yolanda is creating bob and lace by twisting the flax Belgian threads through pins marking her design.

There are 70 different techniques for bob and lace alone.

Yolanda was chosen to demonstrate the ancient handicraft because she is a student at Madam de Satalier's Bobbin School in Alst.

Madam de Satalier is the fourth generation of one of Belgium's oldest lace-making families and has brought her lace collection to the Hermitage Foundation Museum.

The collection began with her great-grandfather and includes pieces from the 17th century.

And those same traditions that created the century's old lace is what Madam de Satalier calls art.

You cannot become a famous painter or a famous artist if you have not started with the beginning.

You know, in every art you have to learn something.

The same with lace.

You have to start from the beginning and gradually because of experience and work and techniques, you know, you become a better and a trained person and an artist.

Just to create this small area of lace takes about 300 hours of work.

The whole tablecloth is a combination of needlepoint and bob and lace called Old Flanders and Rosalyn Perlay lace was made by 18 women over three and a half years in the late 19th century.

Lace pieces like some of those pieces that you see here were made by 100, 200 ladies to achieve one piece.

So it's not possible that you find those amount of ladies to sit down today.

Such as this French needlepoint handkerchief ordered by Marie Antoinette in the late 17th century.

Currently, Madam de Sadelier has about 60 women who work to create the 20th century Renaissance and princess lace.

On April 23rd, she will take orders for lace pieces to be made from her 130-year-old business.

The lace makers years ago never were talking about their work or their job, but they were talking about their art.

Lace is art.

Willie Ann Wright photographs Civil War battles.

Well, Civil War battles as fought by modern day reenactors.

With an old-fashioned pinhole camera, Wright finds humor in anachronism.

And the result, as producer Carol Rand tells us, is history that wears an artful smile.

Photography is the youngest of the visual arts.

Invented in 1839, photography was regarded as the consummate process for recording the natural world.

The striking accuracy of photographs made them suitable for historical documentation, but just as photography became accepted as visual record, artists began to experiment with more poetic imagery and thus expanded the potential of the medium.

At first, I had no idea what the focus of my photographic work would be.

I felt the strong urge to go.

In fact, I think Matthew Brady, to quote Matthew Brady, said he heard a voice or he heard fate say go and he went.

Virginia artist Willie Ann Wright continues this tradition of art photography with her recent series of pinhole photographs of Civil War reenactors.

Looking at her postmodern imagery beside its 19th century counterpart, those works by Matthew Brady and his core of pioneer photographers demonstrates the fundamental difference between recording and interpretation.

Wright's portrait of General Custer is a fine example of her interpretive imagery.

Never intending to document Wright strives to capture the intersection of two time zones.

In the 1862 portrait of General Isaac Stevens, photographer Timothy O'Sullivan recorded an excellent likeness.

Seated in a chair on the porch of a house, the officers arranged like Wright's Custer at an intersection of diagonal lines.

O'Sullivan's lines, however, define a stable harmonious space in which to portray the officer at ease.

The obsession of the reenactors who emulate 19th century heroes like Stevens and Custer lures right to follow them from full run to appomattox.

My husband Jack and I were walking downtown in Richmond on a Sunday morning in May 1987 when we were summoned to Capitol Square by the sound of a, of drumbeat.

When we walked into the square, I could hardly believe my eyes.

We'd been transported back into mid 19th century life.

The square was covered with people in hoop skirts, army uniforms that were regimental bands.

Our carriage rolled up and there was Robert E. Lee.

He never actually spoke.

So the illusion was pretty real.

And I did begin to follow the troops to to all these reenactments.

Yes, ma'am.

That's one thing we do is we go through and we study the histories of not just the time during the war, but also the years preceding it as to when we were born.

Okay.

I think I'd like to take a picture.

It takes 10 seconds with this kind of photography.

What I do is I take my dog slide eight and then I remove this and start counting.

I wasn't trying to document the wall as Brady and his his core photographers had done.

I wanted to coax this super imposition of layers of time into my images.

It helps to kind of block out the 20th century and to go back to being a soldier from the time.

After toting a rifle and a four or five miles of hard marching, I feel like one.

10 pounds of weapon and about 60 pounds of gear and all the heavy wool.

It kind of grows on you after a while and becomes a lifestyle.

Wright chose an obsolete camera, but one that proved to be perfect for capturing living history.

Photographs taken with pinhole camera have infinite depth of feel.

And I like the idea of, of being able to manipulate space that way and to work with distortions.

And since my chosen pinhole camera is wide angle, I've had some experience with that type of imagery and had become sort of a trademark of my photography before I got into the reenactment photography.

When I use a four by five negative, I can put it in my four by five enlarger and I have more latitude in framing the image.

In his post-war memoirs, Confederate General Richard Taylor predicted that Civil War soldier life might be relived by some future generations.

He reasoned that without the killing, soldier life had valuable moments.

Willianne Wright's impressions replete with cannons and sabers and pickup trucks.

Echo the prophecy of General Taylor and reveal the spirit of men who firmly remind us that the past is not dead.

It isn't even past.

Willie Ann Wright will teach a workshop in pinhole photography on Saturday, April the 27th at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center.

Since advanced registration is required, we'd suggest that you call the center for details.

Those elegant champions of Gilbert and Sullivan apparatus are back.

On Friday, April the 26th, the Norfolk Savoyards will open a new production of The Mercado.

When Tim Morton went to rehearsals, it was just in time for costume fittings.

As the flowers are blooming in spring, Trellas, the Norfolk Savoyards are back with a new production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mercado.

English-born director Tony Newing distinguished the Mercado from the rest of the Gilbert and Sullivan operators.

It is I think probably one of the most popular.

He certainly got more of the whistleball tunes in it and more people probably therefore know it.

I don't think that Gilbert or Sullivan would have recognized it as their best though.

Sullivan would certainly recognize another one I think as his best.

And I doubt that, that Gilbert would have thought that, that this was his best wit, but the combination is probably the best.

Oh, it's annoying.

Fun.

One thing we, I think can boast is that we have a lot of, of couples who do this together and it's a great family thing to do together.

And we have a number of couples who've done it with us for years.

The production promises to have an impressive Mercado Monarch of Japan.

Without the hat, John Reinhardt stands six feet eight.

We're probably the only company with a seven foot mecado.

Mark Hudgens, who otherwise works in television, is the romantic lead Nankepoo in The Mercado.

I think it's a wonderful combination of some excellent music some high comedy and, and some, some really good theatrical pathos.

And what you have to do is to recognize which is which and play each one for all you can get.

All right.

Now we'll do act two.

You've been to the Mercados court.

You're a lot more elegant.

Even the villainous in the Mercado wears an elegant kimono.

Fay Putnam is a professional singer and voice teacher.

The cast, we have a 12 men, 18 women chorus and some six, seven principals.

And the orchestra is the Virginia Beach Community Orchestra.

And they, they will play for us in, in the pit with David Kunkle as the director.

And of course he's also the musical director for the Savoyards.

The Mercado plays July 26th, 27 and 28 in the Norfolk Center Theater.

In order to handle a 72-foot sailing catch, you need to know a lot about math and science.

At least that's the premise behind a superb program for children that we at WHRO air on Tuesday afternoons.

The program is called The Voyage of the Mimi and its aim is to open up math and science for children from the ages of eight to 12.

The crew of the Mimi sails after humpback whales and explores archeological sites off Mexico.

Last week, the Mimi and its captain, Peter Marston, docked at Waterside in downtown Norfolk and Holly O'Neill along with about 6,000 youngsters went aboard.

It up again.

Oh, can you see the radio tag, Misa?

Yeah, there it is.

That's it.

That's our whale, all right?

The lower of the sea, of adventure, of exploration.

An enticing call to young minds.

And that's what the Voyage of the Mimi, a unique instructional television series is counting on.

The mission of the program viewed by about 15,000 Hampton Road students from the fourth through the eighth grades is to intermingle knowledge of math and science along with basic social development.

The premise of the show is that if you know that the math and science you're learning can help you to say, for example, sail, then it may make those subjects more appealing.

Faster than that.

But at five knots, that's another 10 hours.

A knot is a measurement of speed, CT.

One knot is one nautical mile per hour.

The show strives to impress the means, the knowledge that it takes to meet challenges in an entertaining manner.

It shows children real science being done in real life situations.

It's really a multidisciplinary program.

So it makes all the connections between not only the math and science, but what its purpose is, what the research process is extends the framework of reference for children who are studying these things.

It really works.

It works terrifically well.

It really engages the kids.

Peter Marston, also known as Captain Granville in the series, is the real life owner of the 72-foot Catch the Mimi.

He's been sailing since he was eight and as a top energy research engineer and professor at MIT, Marston says combining those elements of his life came naturally.

I bought Mimi to do educational work.

At the time I was running a little school in Gloucester, a small private school.

And I bought Mimi to use for educational work using maritime history and folklore and folk music and that sort of thing as a hook for kids.

What hooks the kids' interest is the storylines.

While concentrating on teaching basic social and academic skills of math and science, the show takes viewers to far away places.

The storm scene was actually kind of fun, even though it was a real storm and quite a bad storm.

In that storm, however, I go overboard and get hypothermia.

In the second series, the scientific theme was archeology and the mysteries of the Maya.

So the second series we did in the Yucatan.

And in that we start out doing underwater archeology and we find a clue to a lost city in that process.

We find that some evil archeologist has already found that lost city and is looting it.

So we bring him to justice as part of this story.

So this one is sort of Indiana Granville.

Yet those distant places can act as an extension of the classroom for educators.

Sixth grade teacher Helen Odom says her students have recently completed a study on marine science, which was incorporated across the curriculum.

The Mimi gives the children, I think, a new appreciation of what the sea is about.

It's, it's not only from the viewpoint of the, the marine life, but from people who care about the sea.

And we live right here in the ocean and yet we take our, our water resources for granted.

I think the main thing is doing something to, to make them aware of the value of the sea to their lives.

Norfolk's Mimi Fest brought an estimated 6,000 students across the deck of the Mimi.

Area Museum's surroundings of hands-on demonstrations, illuminated marine and maritime life.

Everything involved served to bring a real life relevance to the experience of learning.

It was made out of scratch old canvas with blowdown sales.

The voyage of the Mimi is now planning its third series set to take place along the Mississippi River.

We hope you'll join us next week for Our Place Our Time when the Virginia Symphony will announce its choice for its new music director.

No other choice an orchestra can make is as important as who will lead it.

The new conductor will define the identity of the orchestra and embody for all of us the spirit of music.

First on our program next week, we'll review the profiles of the six candidates and then in a live presentation the orchestra will announce its choice and we'll have a chance to talk with the new maestro.

I certainly hope you'll join us next time for Our Place Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

Partial funding for Our Place, Our Times, made possible by grants from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Virginia Beach and Chesapeake from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Newport News, Norfolk, Hampton and Williamsburg.