The Female Factor
Women Are Mostly in the Spotlight for This Year’s Community Arts Program Concerts
For nearly 40 years, the Community Arts Program (CAP) has provided a cultural musical outlet during the slower summer months at Coral Gables Congregational Church.
At the helm of the program since 2002 is CAP Executive and Artistic Director Mark Hart, who proudly boasts that this year’s Summer Concert Series is made up predominantly of women performers. That was his goal in planning the series, which runs every other Thursday from June 13 through Aug. 22. “I wanted to include more women in performance and as the planning went along, everyone I booked or was interested in booking were women, so it happened organically,” says Hart.
CAP has a rich history that began in 1985 with the formation of the Summer Concert Series at the historic Coral Gables Congregational Church. It was created by the Reverend Dr. Gary Miller and University of Miami administrator Dr. Paul Blaney. The series grew to feature renowned jazz musicians like Milt Jackson, Shirley Horn, and Ernestine Anderson.
“It was quite the task to follow,” says Hart. “I remember taking the reins as a consultant in 2001, bringing [on] the likes of jazz trumpeter Randy Brecker, vocalist Kurt Elling, classical pianist Leon Fleisher, and the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, among others. I [thought], ‘This is a cool playground to work in.’”
The 2024 lineup is all female except for two performances, with “a wide genre of music,” Hart says. For the June 27 concert, the first with a female performer, Hart was looking for something unique, so he reached out to New World Symphony percussion fellow Jennifer Marasti and came up with a program that took “both a visual and audio approach to classical music.” Marasti jumped at the opportunity.
“This is the first time I’ve been offered to do something like this,” she says. “They usually do piano and violin, but it was so nice [that Hart] wanted to do something different and special in that way.” It was the first time she’d performed solo, with eight pieces, most of them adapted to marimba. She also treated her audience to a transcription of The Beatles’ 1968 hit “Blackbird,” as well as other ragtime music from the 1920s.
Korean guitarist Bokyung Byun, meanwhile, takes the stage on July 25. The Texas native is the first female winner of the JoAnn Falletta International Guitar Concerto Competition and tours the country as a soloist and masterclass instructor. She’s performed with orchestras and at festivals throughout the United States and Canada, with a repertoire that ranges from 18th-century classicism to 20th-century works.
Clarinetist Doreen Ketchens is the first featured artist the following month, performing on August 8. Hart saw her recent feature on “CBS Sunday Morning,” an interview with legendary journalist Ted Koppel, and immediately knew he had to reach out. “I dug a little bit deeper and realized that she’s everywhere, so I was really happy to get her for this series, especially since it’s her first time in Miami,” he says.
Ketchens will be performing a concert of original Dixieland music with her daughter accompanying her on drums. Even with four decades of experience as a musician and performer, she stays humble, considering her extensive and successful career “a miracle” and performing alongside her husband and daughter “a true blessing.” Keenly aware since her junior year of high school that her path would be playing clarinet in an orchestra, she forged ahead with her dream despite her high school guidance counselor’s objections.
She and her husband attended the same college in Connecticut and, despite both having to depart early to care for their mothers in New Orleans, the two quickly became a fixture as a talented duo playing on the streets. Ketchens says playing in public can prove even more difficult than playing to a captive audience in a venue. “When you’re talented [and] playing on the street, people will form opinions. People look down on you…. The better you sound, the worse they think,” she says.
Decades later, Ketchens and her husband Lawrence are still living the dream, performing both in venues and on the street to maintain their endurance and continue practicing. Ketchens says rehearsals and performances don’t measure up to even one day of street performing, which keeps her in better shape as a player. “That’s our mother that bore us. It created us,” she says.
During their performance for CAP, attendees can expect a few surprises, Ketchens says. Their philosophy is to get to know their audience as they play, and then improvise the program a bit to fit the listeners. “Our performance is a cultural experience. We always start spiritual and I may introduce some of the songs before we perform, [but then] we always open it up to requests,” she says.
The duo will be sticking around and teaching a masterclass the day after their performance on the history of the New Orleans sound, providing a historical reference to their music and showcasing the scope of the words.
Finally, closing out the series on August 22 is vocalist Lucy Yeghiazaryan, one of the finalists in the Sarah Vaughn International Jazz Vocal competition. “Lucy brings a unique voice and character to the genre of jazz,” says Hart. Yeghiazaryan, who is Armenian American, will perform from the Great American Songbook. With the spotlight on so many female performers for this year’s series.