If Juston McKinney stayed in New York or Los Angeles to nurture his comedy career, rather than moving back to New Hampshire, he’d have no jokes about New England winters and the futility of keeping a picnic table that gets so little use.

He also might never have developed his bit about how seriously his state takes its “Live Free or Die” motto: “New Hampshire’s got fireworks, no seat belts, no sales tax,” he says, ticking off the list of state freedoms that differ from its New England neighbors. “It’s like Mexico. People come running across the border.” And he wouldn’t have bothered to riff on the Patriots’ multiple Super Bowl titles with his fake public service campaign to help New England families pay for the cost of championship gear.

McKinney performs regularly at the Lebanon Opera House, The Palace Theatre in Manchester, Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord and The Music Hall in Portsmouth, where he does a year-end show that usually sells out. His latest show, titled Parentally Challenged, comes to The Colonial Theatre in Keene on Oct. 21.

McKinney has honed his wide-eyed, seemingly bewildered, often bellowing rendition of life in New Hampshire to significant acclaim. Comedy Central has aired his one-hour and half-hour specials. This summer, he joined a stand-up showcase hosted by Patriots player Rob Gronkowski and taped for Showtime.

Born in Portsmouth, McKinney worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Kittery, Maine, and got the performance bug while doing DARE program anti-drug presentations for kids. In the late 1990s, he secured an agent and booking offers from managers and moved to New York. Later, he shifted to L.A. with his wife, another New Hampshire native who wanted to raise their kids back home.

In big cities, comedians work the clubs night after night, try out and refine material, gather a following and elbow-rub with the likes of Amy Schumer or Louis C.K. “It’s about networking and contacts,” McKinney says. In New Hampshire, “It’s out of sight, out of mind.”

Still, he managed to pick up a charity gig with Schumer this summer after running into her at the revered New York club Carolines on Broadway. His connections with the team behind Kevin James’ movies led to an appearance in Here Comes the Boom.

And while he can’t pop to the next town to get up on a club stage, he finds a way to put in his time. One recent night, he drove to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a 10 p.m. open-mic show to do 10 minutes of new material. “I got back at 1 in the morning, and I gotta get up at 6 with my kids.”

Often, he tests out jokes for the first time during his big New Hampshire theater shows—a risky prospect. Starting small, he’ll build them if they get a good reaction. When they bomb but he knows he has a unique idea, he considers it a worthy challenge to keep working on it. “Those are the gems,” he says.

Juston McKinney–comedian
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
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The post Living Free and Funny appeared first on Take Magazine.

Kevin Rhodes may be known in Massachusetts as the maestro of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra in Boston, but his baton reaches far beyond the state’s borders. Rhodes also conducts the Traverse Symphony Orchestra in Michigan and regularly flies across the pond where he’s well known for his conducting in Norway, Paris, and beyond.

Rhodes has conducted in the major musical capitals of Europe for over two decades, leading major productions at the Paris Opera, Vienna State Opera, Berlin State Opera, Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, Dutch National Ballet, Verona Ballet, and Stuttgart Ballet. Last season, he made his Norwegian National Ballet debut conducting Don Quixote, after conducting an all-Balanchine program, an homage to the late New York City Ballet dancer Violette Verdy at The Paris Opera, and Nureyev’s production of Raymonda in Vienna. Rhodes added a Romeo and Juliet in Stuttgart to the mix, alongside his annual appearance as conductor for the Rudolf Nureyev Gala at Vienna State Opera Ballet. The upcoming season is equally frenetic with a return to Raymonda and a mixed-bill in Vienna and Swan Lake in Stuttgart, as well as plans to conduct the Nureyev Gala on what would have been the late dancer’s 80th birthday.

All that world travel aside, New England remains culturally exciting to Rhodes. “The close proximity of so many instrumental artists, which allow us to have this wonderful orchestra in Springfield of a quality completely out of proportion to our region’s population size, is a gift from which we all benefit,” he says. “While it’s part of the cultural life per se, the incredible beauty of New England certainly adds dramatically to the joy of creating art here.”

KevinRhodes after Stuttgart performance of Romeo and Juliet. Photo courtesy of Kevin Rhodes.

For the Indiana-born conductor, who began his professional conducting career at the age of 16 in his hometown, the road to New England took a transatlantic detour. After receiving his bachelor of music in piano performance from Michigan State University, he subsequently earned his master of music in orchestra conducting from the University of Illinois. He moved to Switzerland to become a house conductor at Basel’s Stadttheater, before moving to the larger Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf, where he led hundreds of performances of the operatic repertoire, from Die Zauberflöte to Der Rosenkavalier, while simultaneously serving as the principal ballet conductor at the Vienna State Opera. During his time in Europe, Rhodes led repertoire ranging from the operas of Strauss, Verdi, Puccini, Massenet, Mozart, and Smetana to the major ballets of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky.

It’s not all classical music for Rhodes. In 2015, he conducted the Springfield Symphony Orchestra at the nationally-televised season opener of the New England Patriots at Gillette Stadium with rapper T-Pain. He’ll take on the Star Wars and Star Trek Sci-Fi Spectacular for a Springfield Symphony Pops.

Photo by John RobertWilliams

Rhodes is excited about his performances in Springfield this year. “Our season grand finale with legendary pianist Misha Dichter in an all-Rachmaninoff program is, for sure, among those I can’t wait to perform, as well as combining our choruses with the University of Massachusetts choruses for the Verdi Requiem. There’s a super cool concerto for trombone and orchestra by Japanese composer Yoshimatsu, played by our own principal trombone Brian Diehl;  a new cello concerto by American composer Lowell Liebermann played by star cellist Julian Schwartz, and well, every concert has something I’m really looking forward to, as it turns out.”

Kevin Rhodes–conductor, Springfield Symphony Orchestra
Westfield, Massachusetts
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Top image: Kevin Rhodes. Photo by Anne Deniau

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