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PEOPLE The Desi Arnaz Orchestra Lives On Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill breathes new life into her legendary family tree with LATIN ROOTS Words by Marla E. Schwartz • Photo credit: Augustus Butera Florida audiences are familiar with Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill as she has been performing in the area for years now. And there's no doubt that the upcoming production of her show LATIN ROOTS (at Festival Miami at the University of Miami presented in collaboration with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) will electrify you. An accomplished stage, film and television artist, her current show is a love-letter to her father Desi Arnaz. (Her father passed away in 1986 and her mother, Lucille Ball in 1989. She and her brother Desi Arnaz, Jr., oversee their parent's distinguished legacy by managing Desilu, too, LLC.) "LATIN ROOTS is based on some of the music I did on the LATIN ROOTS CD, but it's also the one-woman version of the BABALU show that we did in Miami last July. It celebrates the music of the Desi Arnaz Orchestra, which was truly what inspired me toward having a career in concerts," Lucie explained. "What we'll be doing is a nice shuffling of many of the songs from my dad's arrangements, plus some of the music I did on my CD." LATIN ROOTS gives people a rare opportunity to hear Lucie and the UM band perform many of her father's famous hits. You can feel Desi's presence when you listen to this music. "I only dreamed I'd do a concert entitled exactly this - LATIN ROOTS," Lucie said. It was a long road with lots of hard work done to make it happen. "After my father passed away, I started listening to his music because I found this treasure trove of cassettes, which were the original Desi Arnaz arrangements and subsequently, over a couple of years, archived it in proper boxes and catalogued it all," Lucie said. "In 2009 at the New York 92nd Street Y, famous for its Lyric & Lyricist Series, I was talking about what happens to arrangements after the people that use them are no longer with us. The Artistic Director asked, 'Whatever happened to your dad's arrangements from the orchestra?' I told him and he responded, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could a do an evening celebrating the Latin Music craze in this country and how it started, seen specifically through the music of the Desi Arnaz Orchestra?' I thought, This has totally come full circle for me. I met this great arranger, conductor Ron Abel, twenty-three years ago, who is still my musical director, and he suggested we get the CD out in January in time for this concert." recordings that had never been published before. It meant a lot to me getting to know that music. I had 200 original arrangements in 20 boxes in my garage. What do you do with these boxes of great Desi Arnaz Orchestra arrangements?" She contacted Michael Feinstein, (who will also be appearing at Festival Miami) a singer, pianist and archivist who was contacted by Ira Gershwin to catalogue his extensive collection. He was the perfect person to ask advice. "Michael said, 'You must give these to the Library of Congress, they have a whole music division and they preserve paper.' I called them up and asked them if they'd be interested in having this and they were thrilled and came to get it all. And "I'm excited about being able to do it at UM because my daughter Katie is a graduate of the Musical Theatre department and I'm hoping she'll be coming with me," Lucie said. "I love those guys over there and Shelly Berg {Dean/Frost School of Music} is a genius – he's crazy good and smart. And Michael Kerker, Director of Musical Theatre for ASCAP, has been a friend of mine for many years, asked me if I'd be the entertainment on Nov. 3rd, and then we'll do a little talk- back with him at the end. I'm really looking forward to it." There's one particular song on the CD called, "THE MUSIC IN YOUR HEART," where you can feel Desi's musical gift reverberating through the generations. "My son Joe wrote it. I think it turned out so well. I asked him to send me something and a MIAMILIVING 71