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Las Cruces maestro Lonnie Klein leading the orchestra as one of the world’s largest marble sculptures is unveiled during a gala fundraiser in northeast Ohio in August.
“This type of event needs an inspired, motivated, energetic conductor and that’s what Lonnie is,” said event musical director Mariano Longo of Las Vegas, Nev. “Lonnie is not just regional, he’s national, he’s global,” said Longo, who collaborated with Klein on recent live shows in Las Cruces featuring the Buckinghams and the music of Earth, Wind and Fire.
The unveiling of the 29-foot statue, representing Lady Kindness and carved in Carrara marble weighing nearly 80 tons, promises to be “the most spectacular party ever,” in the words of Dr. Farid Naffah, a physician and founder of the Avamar Foundation. Billed as “An Evening Under the Stars,” the fundraiser benefits the foundation.
Naffah, 68, immigrated to the United States from Beirut at age 20 and built a medical practice.
“I’m a representative of the American dream,” he said. “I came here with very little. I was able to make a life that was beautiful and successful. My passion has always been the arts and culture.”
Naffah created the Avamar Foundation about 20 years ago “to help the needy elderly in our community pay for prescription medication,” he said, and began the annual gala, "An Evening Under the Stars," at his estate to support the foundation’s efforts.
Naffah said he chose Klein to lead the 50-piece orchestra because the Las Cruces conductor “saw this project for what it was and wanted to be part of it and wanted to help.”
The unveiling will cap the 16th annual gala on Saturday, Aug. 17. Tickets to the event cost $300.
Klein retired in 2021 after more than 20 years as director of the Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra. He maintains a busy schedule guest-conducting orchestras in New Mexico and in other states and countries.
“It’s tailor-made for me,” he said about the unveiling. “It’s been my focus all summer, getting the music ready, setting the score.”
The unveiling will be a mix of classical and pop music performed by “a hand-picked orchestra from all the orchestras in the area,” Longo said, including Cleveland, Pittsburg, Youngstown and Akron, along with two vocalists from Las Vegas.
The orchestra will open with “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,” by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and the sculpture will be unveiled during the finale. The concert will also feature pop songs from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.
“I have a really fine orchestra, a beautiful setting,” Klein said. “It’s going to be a celebration.”
The Lady Kindness statute is described as “the largest ever robotically carved marble sculpture” on a website dedicated to the monument, LadyKindness.com. It stands on a small island in a pond on Naffah’s 168-acre estate in Bazetta, Ohio, southwest of Cleveland. Naffah said the model and face were sculpted locally while an Italian company created the statute using robotic stone-carving technology.
“Amid strife and division in our country and in the world … kindness is boundless and powerful,” the website states. “Lady Kindness offers a rose, symbol of love, to each and every one, but especially to the neglected, the abandoned, the forgotten.”
“The statue will be unveiled from darkness with the music crescendoing to a climax,” Longo said. “It will be quite an event.”
More information about the foundation is available at AvamarFoundation.org.
