Lucinda Breeding

The past year was chock full of highlights on the Denton arts scene. As we’re still in the first week of the new year, I’d like to document my personal favorites from Denton’s arts circles in 2007.

Best Local Album of 2007

Both Brave Combo and Bubba Hernandez and Alex Meixner scored Grammy nominations for their polka contributions. Brave Combo released Polka’s Revenge and Her­nan­dez released the stellar Polka Freakout.

Even so, my personal favorite local album is On Promenade by Doug Burr, a rising star in the Am­er­i­cana music scene.

To steal from my in­stallment on the Denton Record-Chronicle music blog, No Fold ( www.nofold.beloblog.com ): Burr is in person as he is in his music — entirely without bombast and quietly literate and thoughtful.

I became a fan of Burr with his debut solo album, The Sickle & the Sheaves, a musing about sin, salvation and re­demp­tion. On Promenade picks up where Burr left off and goes way, way deeper.

I said it on our blog and I’ll say it here. Bear witness to the sparse, shining poetry of “Ain’t Got No Chains” from Sickle — it somehow double-dips in the spiritual and early blues genres without once being derivative. Now, skip on over to On Prom­enade’s second track, “Come to My Senses” and you get the sense of Burr’s deepening. It’s a Southern Gothic baroque if ever there was one.

Best Visual Art of 2007

Self Portrait I, by Ingrid Winther Scobie, came as a shock in the 2007 Visual Arts Society of Texas Members Ex­hibition because Scobie’s primarily a painter.

This piece, which earned the Voert­man’s Art De­part­ment Award, is a sculpture in metal. Her self-portrait is a woven metal box, with personal effects and trinkets inside. Clear plastic tubes line the outside of the basket, each one containing a piece of paper about the size of a fortune-cookie message. The strips of paper each bear a word.

So how does Scobie see herself? Is she a basket case, lined with a spiky personal history? Or is she strong and structured, full of memories that aren’t that easy to get to?

Some of the words I understand immediately: equality, prepared, recovery. Others are revelatory: self, stillborn, ab­sorbed, cancer. There are photos, postcards, a slide and a turquoise heart inside the basket. They appear to be free to be rifled through.

The piece was revelatory because it shows Scobie has a broad range of ability and talent, artistically. And this is after a career in academia.

Best Original Composition of 2007

John Priddy, the minister of music at First United Method­ist Church, surprised and delighted audiences when he joined Donna Trammell in Passion: Seven Lasting Words.

The piece, performed on Palm Sunday at Priddy’s church, surprised for several reasons. First, it showed the contemplative side of Trammell, known for her send-up spoofs that have raised more than $1 million for Texas nonprofit agencies. Secondly, it showed Priddy’s expansive composition chops. Priddy comes from the professional theater world in Europe. His composition skills are solid, but it’s perhaps his innate talent for theater that made Passion a musical performance that will get a second performance this year, with the Denton Bach Society.

Passion uses traditional text settings from the Latin Vulgate, and presents each of Jesus’ final words followed by brief reflections offered by various contemporaries of Christ — Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, Pilate and Mary, the mother of Christ. Each word becomes a sort of a modern devotional

Priddy has a gift for painting sonic pictures. The piece was written expressly for particular soloists, but Priddy filled in the biblical back-story with harp, string bass, percussion, horns and strings. The soloists were the stars, but Priddy wrote some beautiful — and sinister — passages for the choir as well.

Best Performance of 2007

This year it’s a tie between Denton actor Dennis Welch and Dallas resident Melba Spears.

Welch played Ticky Wargrave in Denton Community Theatre’s staging of The Nerd. Wargrave is a tycoon with plenty of influence and no sense of humor. He comes to Willum’s place to schmooze the architect as he works on his hotel. Picture it: Actors Sean Frith, Johnny Bryant, Amber Bryant and Dena Bruton-Claus are blazing through scenes with zeal. Welch was pitch-perfect as Walgrave. He was matched by a cast of pros, but he kicked it up a notch by soaking in the scenes as if he, too, were meeting the nerd for the first time. When we saw Welch, it was our own horror we read on his sourpuss face.

Melba Spears was Mother Shaw in Denton Community Theatre’s staging of Crowns. The Regina Taylor musical was probably one of the best shows — professional or nonprofit — in the region last year, and it couldn’t have happened without Spears’ blues-gospel belting and spirited performance. The musical, which one the national championship at the American Asso­cia­tion of Community Theatre one-act festival and then went on to an international event in Germany, was an ensemble piece, to be sure. Spears was the backbone in a show brimming with talent and artistic heft.

And a runner-up: Buster Maloney was hilarious as Lumiere in the joint production of Beauty and the Beast. Maloney is a master of comic timing, and there’s no risk too scary for him.

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com .