BY ALAN SHERROD A sip of cold champagne, a trumpet fanfare, and an energetic welcome from Maestro Aram Demirjian greeted audience arrivals at the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s opening Masterworks concerts this past weekend. While similar to previous versions of…
Review: KSO Opens Chamber Classics Series with Variego, Smyth, and Mozart
BY ALAN SHERROD It would be nice if we could pretend that the past weekend was a normal one for classical music in Knoxville. The fact is, there was nothing normal about it. Knoxville was treated to an unusual…
Big Week for Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — 2023-24 Season Openings in Two Series
It rarely happens this way, but thanks to the whims of the calendar, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will be opening the 2023-24 season for two of its major series within a few days of each other. The KSO’s always-intriguing Chamber…
KSO’s 2023-24 Season: A Q&A with Maestro Aram Demirjian
BY ALAN SHERROD With the sales of single tickets having begun for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s 2023-24 season of concerts, Knoxville music lovers are now confronted with the reality of picking and choosing from the five series and the…
One Great Reason to Get Your KSO Tickets: Violinist Stefan Jackiw
BY DIANA SALESKY Single tickets for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra (KSO) season went on sale yesterday. There are many great reasons to purchase tickets sooner rather than later – Mahler’s Symphony #4, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Handel’s Messiah,…
Review: KSO Wraps Season With Visceral Stravinsky and Emotional Beethoven
BY ALAN SHERROD Going big in a season finale symphony concert is, most assuredly, a valid approach, one that the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and conductor Aram Demirjian embraced this weekend to finish up the 2022-23 concert season. In this…
KSO This Week: “Beethoven and The Rite of Spring”
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra — “Beethoven and The Rite of Spring” Conductor: Aram Demirjian • Lili Boulanger: Of A Spring Morning • Tan Dun: Passacaglia: Secret Of Wind And Birds • Ludwig Van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4 —…
Review: KSO Wraps 2022-23 Chamber Classics With Double Oboe Concertos and a Fabulous Beethoven Eighth
BY ALAN SHERROD Is it possible that the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra saved the best for its last Chamber Classics Series concert of the 2022-23 season? Clearly, Sunday afternoon’s musical outing was one that not only looked intriguing on paper,…
Review: A Powerful Mozart ‘Requiem’ from Knoxville Symphony and Knoxville Choral Society
BY ALAN SHERROD Any discussion of past or present requiems inevitably begins with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1791 Requiem, a work that has found itself the subject of myth and speculation, largely due to the fact that the composer died…
Preview: KSO This Week – Mozart’s Mystery and the Maestro’s Musings
BY DIANA SALESKY Clouded in myth and speculation, Mozart’s Requiem remains a veritable mystery to this day. The work was incomplete when Mozart died in 1791 and thus begat the centuries of confusion and controversy that were to follow.…