kudos for the Ogle

Andrew Adler in the C-J with some clever kudos for the IUS Ogle Center...

As I listened to last Sunday's exceptionally fine concert by the Kentucky Center Chamber Players, there were moments in which the "who" didn't matter as much as the "where" — at the Ogle Center on the campus of New Albany's Indiana University Southeast.

More specifically, I was sitting inside the Ogle's Stem Concert Hall. Stem is a superb place to hear music, with the kind of exemplary acoustics that balance detail and resonance, but it doesn't get nearly the recognition it deserves.

This reality comes from another unhappy truth: Southern Indiana tends to fall off the radar screen for many Louisvillians, to whom New Albany might just was well be New Jersey. Never mind that a quick jaunt across the Ohio River to IUS on Grant Line Road, particularly on a Sunday afternoon when traffic is light, holds no freeway terrors. Silly attitudes are hard to break.

The Paul W. Ogle Cultural and Community Center opened in 1996, providing IUS with a facility that, in its modest way, was an appropriate counterpart to the Kentucky Center. Besides the 500-seat Stem, the Ogle boasts a smaller recital hall, a thrust theater and an art gallery. These spaces are all worthy...

What will it take to raise Stem's place in Louisville listeners' consciousness? Hard for me to say. Perhaps I should suggest a post-concert brew at Rich O's Public House nearby, or a sundae-shake (with extra Foo-Foo dust) from Mom & Pop's Cone Corner — two of New Albany's undeniable culinary treasures. After all, you deserve an extra reward for driving all that way to exotic Indiana.