Perhaps it’s the warm weather, or perhaps it’s the seasonal idea of commencement—an ending that’s also a beginning. Whatever the impetus, the final concerts of the season for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra each May always seem to evoke a mix of heart-tugging nostalgia and optimism for what the future may bring. On those final May concerts this past weekend, however, those usual emotions were joined by something new, a curious, but restrained sense of excitement and anticipation similar to what one feels when embarking on an adventure.
Music
“If you don’t know what to do, there’s actually a chance of doing something new.”
― Philip Glass, Words Without Music: A Memoir
KSO This Week: A Feast of American Composers to End the Season
I have to admit that prior to February 2017 my knowledge of Florence Price and her music was that of her name on a list of American women composers. In my shaky defense to never having heard a live performance of her music until then, or even a recording, I can say that I wasn’t totally alone even among those who write about the subject.
Review: Marble City Opera Examines Our Personal Baggage in ‘Postcard From Morocco’
This weekend found Marble City Opera’s final staged production of the year, Dominick Argento’s one-act work from 1971, ‘Postcard From Morocco’, in the event end of Jackson Terminal. The placement of a piece like Argento’s opera (libretto by John Donahue) in a space like the Terminal felt strangely natural—seven people find themselves waiting in a train station, all the while examining their existences in terms of their personal “baggage” in a surrealist dramatic environment. Dare I say it? It’s a bit like “Waiting For Godot in a Train Station.” And I mean that in the nicest—and most enticing—possible way.
Friday: Inner Voices String Quartet at Modern Studio
Inner Voices String Quartet returns this Friday evening with a new and different program: III.
Review: Knoxville Opera Wraps Its 40th Season With A Superb ‘Aida’
By Alan Sherrod It was probably inevitable that Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida would be Knoxville…
Preview: ‘Postcard From Morocco’ On Its Way From Marble City Opera
Guessing in which intriguing, non-theatrical location Marble City Opera will stage their next chamber opera…
Previewing Knoxville Opera’s ‘Aida’: Soprano Michelle Johnson
In almost every decade, it seems, music writers love to dig up an age-old question: “where are the great Verdi sopranos?”
Review: UT Opera Theatre Makes Gender Equality a Compelling Subject in ‘Middlemarch in Spring’
It was probably just coincidence that the University of Tennessee Opera Theatre chose the 2015…
Review: Pianist Fei-Fei Dong and Conductor Edwin Outwater Join KSO for a Splendid Mozart Piano Concerto No. 20
With Maestro Aram Demirjian away for the week in Boston conducting the New England Conservatory Symphony, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra found itself once again with the Mozart concerto on the bill—and a guest conductor on the podium. This week’s Masterworks conducting duties fell to guest maestro Edwin Outwater in a program that also included Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 and contemporary composer Missy Mazzoli’s ‘Violent, Violent Sea’.
Saturday: Knoxville Opera’s Rossini Festival
Time flies, it seems. That’s the only reasonable explanation for the fact that Knoxville Opera’s…
