Alan Sherrod
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Drawing from a career background in music, motion pictures, and theatre, Alan Sherrod has been writing about Knoxville's diverse art and music scene since 2007 — first as the classical/new music writer for the alternative weekly Metro Pulse, then later in the same capacity for the Knoxville Mercury. After the closure of Metro Pulse in 2014 by its parent company, Sherrod created ARTS KNOXVILLE to provide a home for Knoxville arts journalism. In August, 2017, he expanded ARTS KNOXVILLE into the site it is today — a site dedicated to continuing the arts journalism legacy of those alternative weeklies. In addition to covering Knoxville's arts scene, he has also contributed music content to the Nashville Scene and other arts and entertainment publications around the U.S, including the website, Classical Journal. Mr. Sherrod was a recipient of a 2010 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts — the Arts Journalism Institute in Classical Music and Opera — under the auspices of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2019, Sherrod was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame.

Review: Amadeus Concert Ensemble Wraps 2025-26 Season With Gems of Russian Music

BY ALAN SHERROD   Wrapping up its 2025-26 season of concerts in the Cathedral Concert Series this past Sunday afternoon, the Amadeus Concert Ensemble continued its exploration of the important nooks and charming crannies of music history, this time with…

Review: Marble City Opera Starts A Busy Month With ‘Josephine’

BY ALAN SHERROD   Late spring has always been a busy time for Marble City Opera and this year is no exception. Last Saturday evening found them in Oak Ridge at the Grove Theatre in a performance of Tom Cipullo’s…

On Sunday: Amadeus Concert Ensemble Takes Journey Through Russian Composers

We often find ourselves talking about the special place in Knoxville history occupied by Russian composer and pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. On February 17, 1943, he performed his last recital as a pianist on the University of Tennessee campus, dying six…

Review: Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Closes 2025-26 Season With Help From Knoxville Jazz Orchestra

BY ALAN SHERROD   Sometimes, if we’re lucky, there is more to a concert than just a collection of music, more than just sounds in the air and notes on a page. That was the case for the Knoxville Symphony…

Review: Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’ National Tour

BY ALAN SHERROD   Almost a year into its fifth National Tour, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The Musical is making an eight-performance stop in Knoxville as part of Broadway at the Tennessee Theatre. Based on the 1991 animated film…

Review: Knoxville Opera’s ‘Gianni Schicchi’ — An Ensemble Masterpiece

BY ALAN SHERROD   Composer Giacomo Puccini was reportedly adamant that the three one-act operas—Il tabarro, Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi—comprising his triptych Il Trittico be performed together. Clearly, music history had other ideas. While the works premiered as a…

Review: KSO Wraps 2025-26 Chamber Series With Sublime Ives and Copland

BY ALAN SHERROD   As it turns out, one doesn’t necessarily need one of Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance marches to feel the nostalgia at end-of-the-season concerts. Last Sunday, Maestro Aram Demirjian and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra beautifully accomplished the…

Review: ‘The Outsiders’ National Tour

BY ALAN SHERROD   Strangely, time has a way of both marching on and standing still. In a sense, that is the case with The Outsiders, the 1967 best-selling novella by S. E. Hinton about teenage gangs in Tulsa, Oklahoma.…

Review: Eccentricity Abounds, Hilarity Ensues in CBT’s ‘You Can’t Take It With You’

BY ALAN SHERROD   From Shakespeare to TV sitcoms, the trials and travails of eccentric families are a common theme of comic and tragic literature. One would be hard pressed, though, to find a more perfect example in the theatre…

This Week: UT Opera Theatre Presents Janacek’s ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’

For its spring production, the University of Tennessee Opera Theatre will present  The Cunning Little Vixen, a three act opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. UTOT will offer four performances with double casting, Friday thru Sunday, April 24–26, at…

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