Over some 200 years of known history, millions of people have ventured into Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave to experience one of the great natural wonders of the world. On April 29, those cool, dark passages will host what’s being billed as an “immersive concert” featuring acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma in performance with members of the Louisville Orchestra and the Louisville Chamber Choir.
The concert kicks off the orchestra’s “In Harmony” tour, which will have musicians from the group performing at venues across the commonwealth over the next two years. Ma is also on a tour of sorts, taking his cello to various national parks and monuments to give impromptu performances in some of America’s wildest and most beautiful locales. The Mammoth Cave concert will feature music specially written for the event by Teddy Abrams, who is music director for the Louisville Orchestra.
“Teddy has been spending the last year immersing himself in the history and culture of the cave,” says Arricka Dunsford, who is project manager for the orchestra’s statewide tour. “It’s going to be spectacular.”
Because of space concerns within the cave, attendance for each of the two concerts is limited to about 400 people. But with demand for tickets so overwhelming, National Park Service officials at Mammoth Cave decided to hold a lottery for the tickets. Dunsford says more than 27,000 people registered for a chance to see one of the performances.
Unlike a traditional, seated concert, the experience will actually begin as visitors and musicians process into the cave. Once everyone arrives at the large underground room called Rafinesque Hall, performers will station themselves around the space and audience members will be free to walk around and experience different aspects of the performance.
“It’s one of the larger rooms within the cave and the hope there being that the acoustics will allow for some really incredible things to happen,” says Haley DeWitt, one of the Louisville Chamber Choir singers set to perform in the concert. The soprano is also a speech and language pathologist at the University of Kentucky College of Health Sciences.
In addition to the music, which conveys the history of Mammoth Cave and caving in Kentucky, the performances will feature dramatic lighting and movement designed by Zack Winokur, a co-founder the American Modern Opera Company in New York. DeWitt says Winokur’s designers and technicians have worked for weeks to prepare the production.
“They spent hours and hours down in that cave and they’ve really gotten to know all of the spaces intimately,” says Dewitt. “They’ve even sat in there and just taken it in in silence.”
Dylon Crain, another Louisville Chamber Choir singer selected for the concert, says rehearsals for the performance started in Louisville back in January as Abrams was still finishing his composition. It’s not until the Wednesday before the Saturday performances that all the musicians and technical crews will get to practice inside the cave itself.
“There’s some anxiety that goes with that, but... the experience of doing this in the cave overrides all that,” says Crain, who is a tenor and Alltech Vocal Scholar at the University of Kentucky College of Fine Arts.
Crain and DeWitt both say they jumped at the opportunity to perform with Ma and Abrams in such a unique environment, despite the unique challenges that will bring. The cave is a constant 54 degrees, which DeWitt says will require the performers to keep themselves and their instruments warm. That includes a range of unique percussion instruments that Abrams is using in his score. DeWitt says those are meant to mimic various sounds from nature including dripping water and thunder.
“It’s so creative, and it does really bring in some of those organic elements,” says DeWitt.
“It’s beautiful, lovely music, but beyond that it will be a such an experience for everyone there,” says Crain. “It’s stunning.”
