Arts and Humanities

The most frequent statement made to me, after I introduce myself as someone who works in classical radio is, “I don’t know anything about classical music, but...”This statement is typically followed by an expression of love for classical music, a short story about playing clarinet in band during middle school, or how a parent or grandparent always had classical radio on in the background at home. All three are valid experiences that have nothing to do with actually knowing something about music.

Thirty-nine years ago, as a very young Courier-Journal reporter, I traveled south by train to Montgomery, Ala., to connect with the world that novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, knew in the early part of the 20th Century. The “peg” for the feature stories I planned to write was the opening that spring of what was then the latest screen version of “The Great Gatsby,” a multi-million dollar adaptation starring Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, Sam Waterston and Bruce Dern.

F. Scott Fitzgerald spent his scant month in Louisville in the cold, punishing days of March and early April, when spring's promise still feels quite remote to those left weary by the winter. But his sumptuous descriptions of Jay Gatsby's glittering parties in West Egg remind us of something ... a certain handful of nights in early May, when the city knots its bowties tighter and grips its champagne and bourbon cocktails with a fierce determination to wring the very life out of Derby week: