The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra will find itself in lofty company in 2020. The orchestra was one of four orchestras selected to perform a concert during the third SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, performances that will take place at the Kennedy Center and other locations around Washington, DC, from March 23–29, 2020. The three other orchestras selected are the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra (NY).
The SHIFT festival provides the structure for selected orchestras to share a sampling of work that exemplifies each orchestra’s history, geographic legacy, and artistic vision. The League of American Orchestras will partner with SHIFT to facilitate engagements on Capitol Hill and conversations about the impact and value that arts and orchestras can provide to their communities.
For its Kennedy Center concert, the KSO, under Maestro Aram Demirjian, will reprise a Knoxville-centric program from last fall. That concert combined music with a narrative of excerpts by Pulitzer Prize-winning Knoxville native James Agee spotlighting two works inspired by Agee texts: Samuel Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and Aaron Copland’s Suite from The Tender Land, inspired in part by “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” The concert will also include Michael Schachter’s Overture to Knoxville, commissioned by the KSO in 2017. Included, too, will be a work by Sergei Rachmaninoff, his Symphonic Dances. That connection comes about quite ironically—Knoxville is home to a statue of Rachmaninoff, who gave his last public performance at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on February 17, 1943, three weeks before his death.
About The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is America’s living memorial to President Kennedy. Under the leadership of Chairman David M. Rubenstein and President Deborah F. Rutter, the nine theaters and stages of the nation’s busiest performing arts facility attract audiences and visitors totaling 3 million people annually; Center-related touring productions, television, and radio broadcasts welcome 40 million more. Opening its doors on September 8, 1971, the Center presents the greatest performances of music, dance, and theater; supports artists in the creation of new work; and serves the nation as a leader in arts education. With its artistic affiliates, the National Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera, the Center’s achievements as a commissioner, producer, and nurturer of developing artists have resulted in more than 300 theatrical productions and dozens of new ballets, operas, and musical works. As part of the Kennedy Center’s Performing Arts for Everyone outreach program, the Center stages more than 400 free performances of music, dance, and theater by artists from throughout the world each year on the Center’s main stages, and every evening at 6 p.m. on the Millennium Stage. The Rubenstein Arts Access Program expands the Center’s efforts to make the arts accessible to children, young adults, and to people who have little or limited ability to attend and enjoy the performing arts, enabling audiences to engage in more ways, at more times, and in more places than ever before.
