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 twenty-eight scheduled offerings. Realizing that the bewildering array of choices can be daunting, KSO Maestro Aram Demirjian took the time to answer in depth some questions about the season’s major concerts, the artists, and the often amazing connections that ticket buyers may want to consider. The 2023-24 Concert Calendar is here.
• • • • • • • • • •
And It Begins…September Masterworks
Alan Sherrod: You are opening the Masterworks season with one of the most popular concert hall pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition. Maurice Ravel was not the first to orchestrate Mussorgsky’s suite of piano pieces, but his version has served as a starting point for efforts by conductors and other arrangers and has proved the most popular with audiences for the satisfying richness of its instrumental colors. How did you go about selecting works by Alexander Arutiunian and Adam Schoenberg to share the bill with it on the opening concert?
Aram Demirjian:
Mussorgsky’s Pictures was the jumping-off point for the rest of this program, to be sure. Not only is it a much-beloved work for our audience, but we will also be on the figurative eve of the 150th anniversary of the composition of piano suite on which this orchestration is based.Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Studies is a piece that was conceived as a 21st-century Pictures at an Exhibition. Like Mussorgsky’s work, it is in 10 movements, inspired by works of art and the experience of walking through a gallery. Unlike the Mussorgsky, these works are not all paintings nor are they by the same artist. What unites them is the museum they all reside in: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. You may have already guessed by the point of origin that this is a piece to which I have close, personal ties: Adam is a good friend, and I worked on the premiere and Grammy-nominated recording of the piece while I was associate conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. There is as much Ravel in this orchestration of Pictures as there is Mussorgsky, and through our friendship, I know that Ravel is one of Adam’s favorite composers. I always find it interesting to pair living composers works with those from whom they draw inspiration. And for those unfamiliar with the Nelson collection, images of the paintings, photographs and sculptures that inspired the music will be projected during the performance of the piece.
Regarding the Arutiunian Trumpet Concerto—I first heard William Leathers a little bit less than a year ago when I was conducting the Nashville Symphony, and it didn’t take long to realize that here is a special musician. His star is already starting to soar, and I just wanted to get him to Knoxville while he is still close to home. The Arutiunian is a staple of the trumpet repertoire, and it seemed to pair well with the Mussorgsky, both pieces having the Russian romantic sound in their DNA (even though they were composed 73 years apart). It is also particularly meaningful for me to program the work of an Armenian composer on the Masterworks Series – unbelievably, this is the first time we have done so during my time in Knoxville!
Mussorgsky’s Pictures was the jumping-off point for the rest of this program, to be sure. Not only is it a much-beloved work for our audience, but we will also be on the figurative eve of the 150th anniversary of the composition of piano suite on which this orchestration is based.Adam Schoenberg’s Picture Studies is a piece that was conceived as a 21st-century Pictures at an Exhibition. Like Mussorgsky’s work, it is in 10 movements, inspired by works of art and the experience of walking through a gallery. Unlike the Mussorgsky, these works are not all paintings nor are they by the same artist. What unites them is the museum they all reside in: the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. You may have already guessed by the point of origin that this is a piece to which I have close, personal ties: Adam is a good friend, and I worked on the premiere and Grammy-nominated recording of the piece while I was associate conductor of the Kansas City Symphony. There is as much Ravel in this orchestration of Pictures as there is Mussorgsky, and through our friendship, I know that Ravel is one of Adam’s favorite composers. I always find it interesting to pair living composers works with those from whom they draw inspiration. And for those unfamiliar with the Nelson collection, images of the paintings, photographs and sculptures that inspired the music will be projected during the performance of the piece.
Regarding the Arutiunian Trumpet Concerto—I first heard William Leathers a little bit less than a year ago when I was conducting the Nashville Symphony, and it didn’t take long to realize that here is a special musician. His star is already starting to soar, and I just wanted to get him to Knoxville while he is still close to home. The Arutiunian is a staple of the trumpet repertoire, and it seemed to pair well with the Mussorgsky, both pieces having the Russian romantic sound in their DNA (even though they were composed 73 years apart). It is also particularly meaningful for me to program the work of an Armenian composer on the Masterworks Series – unbelievably, this is the first time we have done so during my time in Knoxville!
William Shaub and the Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5
Alan Sherrod: As a function of the calendar, the first KSO concert of the season actually comes a few days before Pictures as a part of the Chamber Classics series in its Sunday afternoon home in the Bijou Theatre. Concertmaster William Shaub will don his soloist garb for Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5. How did you two settle on this work?
Aram Demirjian:
Knoxville knows by now what a superb concertmaster we have in Will Shaub, and we are so excited to put the spotlight on his magnificent solo playing to start the season. The relationship between the concertmaster and the music director is one of the key fulcrums of any orchestra, and Will and I have had an ongoing dialogue about countless musical topics since he started here, including which concertos he craved performing. I have known for a few years now that Mozart 5 was high on Will’s list, and the opportunity presented itself this season to program it. I think he has an ideal sound for this piece, and I’m really looking forward to hearing his interpretation!
Knoxville knows by now what a superb concertmaster we have in Will Shaub, and we are so excited to put the spotlight on his magnificent solo playing to start the season. The relationship between the concertmaster and the music director is one of the key fulcrums of any orchestra, and Will and I have had an ongoing dialogue about countless musical topics since he started here, including which concertos he craved performing. I have known for a few years now that Mozart 5 was high on Will’s list, and the opportunity presented itself this season to program it. I think he has an ideal sound for this piece, and I’m really looking forward to hearing his interpretation!
October Masterworks: Beethoven and Bruch
Alan Sherrod: It’s been a while since we’ve heard Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony in Knoxville, but you’ve paired it with Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy performed by a young violinist we’re anxious to hear, Stefan Jackiw.
Aram Demirjian:
Stefan and I go way back. I mean waaaaaay back, to elementary school orchestra, when I had been playing cello for less than a year, and he had already shared the stage with Yo-Yo Ma! This will be the first time we will have performed together since college, but he is someone I have wanted to bring to Knoxville since I started as music director. He is one of the foremost virtuoso soloists of our time, with a crystalline brilliance to his playing that is rare.The Scottish-themed first half of this program came together before the Beethoven was added. I thought about Mendelssohn’s 3rd Symphony for the second half, but ultimately, I selected the Beethoven based on one criterion: I listened to the Bruch and thought, “what does my ear want to hear next?” The opening bars of Beethoven 6 rang in my head immediately after, and we had our program.
Stefan and I go way back. I mean waaaaaay back, to elementary school orchestra, when I had been playing cello for less than a year, and he had already shared the stage with Yo-Yo Ma! This will be the first time we will have performed together since college, but he is someone I have wanted to bring to Knoxville since I started as music director. He is one of the foremost virtuoso soloists of our time, with a crystalline brilliance to his playing that is rare.The Scottish-themed first half of this program came together before the Beethoven was added. I thought about Mendelssohn’s 3rd Symphony for the second half, but ultimately, I selected the Beethoven based on one criterion: I listened to the Bruch and thought, “what does my ear want to hear next?” The opening bars of Beethoven 6 rang in my head immediately after, and we had our program.
PIVOT by Anna Clyne
Alan Sherrod: Also on that October concert, you are opening with PIVOT by Anna Clyne. Programming works by women composers—past and contemporary—is something that you have been out front on, but American orchestras, in general, have been playing catch-up in this recognition. In addition to Clyne, this season you are also programming Jessie Montgomery, Sarah Gibson and Nokuthula Ngwenyama, as well as continuing to help audiences rediscover the works of Dame Ethel Smyth and Florence Price.
Aram Demirjian:
Any time I am programming a season, I have one thought at the front of my mind: what music inspires me, and how can I share that inspiration with the orchestra and the audience? And there’s an entire catalog of inspiring, thrilling music that historically has been overlooked or underrepresented on the concert stage that I feel strongly that our audiences will hear and love. Good music is good music, and we emphasize the music of women composers, living composers and composers of color for the same reasons we celebrate the music of Beethoven, Copland and Rachmaninoff: it’s going to create a rich, fulfilling listening experience for the people who come to hear us perform.
Any time I am programming a season, I have one thought at the front of my mind: what music inspires me, and how can I share that inspiration with the orchestra and the audience? And there’s an entire catalog of inspiring, thrilling music that historically has been overlooked or underrepresented on the concert stage that I feel strongly that our audiences will hear and love. Good music is good music, and we emphasize the music of women composers, living composers and composers of color for the same reasons we celebrate the music of Beethoven, Copland and Rachmaninoff: it’s going to create a rich, fulfilling listening experience for the people who come to hear us perform.
November: Rachmaninoff and Ives
Alan Sherrod: Knoxville concertgoers have a natural attraction to all things Rachmaninoff, so his Piano Concerto No. 3 with pianist Alessio Bax on the November Masterworks will obviously be a highlight of the season. You’re filling out the concert with works by Leonard Bernstein (Overture to Candide) and Charles Ives (Symphony No. 2). Isn’t there an intriguing connection with the two?
Aram Demirjian:
Rachmaninoff and Bernstein are likely the composers who will draw many of our audience members to the Tennessee Theatre, but Ives’ Second Symphony is the true anchor of this program! The Ives is a “bucket list” piece for me. I have been obsessed with it ever since I heard it for the first time as a graduate student, and I know Knoxville is going to love it. It’s loaded with familiar American tunes, majestic sentimentality and that unmistakable “Ives-ian” wit.
But Ives is always an intimidating proposition for audiences, even this early work, which more closely resembles Dvořák and Brahms than the more discordant sounds that made Ives famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask), so it’s important to present his work in the right context. People might be surprised to know that Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto and Ives’ Second Symphony were composed in the same year! While Rachmaninoff was touring the United States with his concerto in 1909, Ives the insurance salesman was completing the initial version of his symphony in Danbury, Connecticut. Like so many of his works, it would be many decades (and many revisions) later before he heard it performed, and in this case, that premiere performance occurred in 1951, conducted by none other than rising phenom Leonard Bernstein, with the New York Philharmonic.
Rachmaninoff and Bernstein are likely the composers who will draw many of our audience members to the Tennessee Theatre, but Ives’ Second Symphony is the true anchor of this program! The Ives is a “bucket list” piece for me. I have been obsessed with it ever since I heard it for the first time as a graduate student, and I know Knoxville is going to love it. It’s loaded with familiar American tunes, majestic sentimentality and that unmistakable “Ives-ian” wit.
But Ives is always an intimidating proposition for audiences, even this early work, which more closely resembles Dvořák and Brahms than the more discordant sounds that made Ives famous (or infamous, depending on whom you ask), so it’s important to present his work in the right context. People might be surprised to know that Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto and Ives’ Second Symphony were composed in the same year! While Rachmaninoff was touring the United States with his concerto in 1909, Ives the insurance salesman was completing the initial version of his symphony in Danbury, Connecticut. Like so many of his works, it would be many decades (and many revisions) later before he heard it performed, and in this case, that premiere performance occurred in 1951, conducted by none other than rising phenom Leonard Bernstein, with the New York Philharmonic.
January Masterworks: Mahler, Bizet, and Humperdinck
Alan Sherrod: For January 2024, you and the orchestra will take on the Mahler Symphony No. 4, notable for its soprano vocal movement and a lot of thematic color. The work was greeted with critical and audience hostility in its early years, but today feels charming and eminently accessible. The concert also showcases the KSO Youth Orchestra and Choir. How are they figuring into this concert that also contains operatic touches: Bizet’s Carmen Suite and selections from Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.
Aram Demirjian:
We are incredibly proud of the history, legacy and present-day excellence of the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season, and has created life-changing musical experiences for thousands of Knoxville’s talented young people in that time.
Concepts of youth come to the fore in two of the works on the program. The Hansel and Gretel excerpts, which come from a story about young children, will also feature the Knoxville Symphony Youth Choir in its second season, and will be conducted by KSO Resident Conductor and KSYO Music Director James Fellenbaum. And the Mahler is inspired by a child’s vision of heaven. Mahler, when he was alive, was better known as one of the preeminent conductors of his time, particularly of opera, and he conducted both of the operas whose highlights are featured on the first half. The short, energetic overture by Montgomery opens the program because, as anything about youth is inherently also about the present and the future, it was important to me that our KSYO musicians play the music of a living composer as part of this experience.
We are incredibly proud of the history, legacy and present-day excellence of the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this season, and has created life-changing musical experiences for thousands of Knoxville’s talented young people in that time.
Concepts of youth come to the fore in two of the works on the program. The Hansel and Gretel excerpts, which come from a story about young children, will also feature the Knoxville Symphony Youth Choir in its second season, and will be conducted by KSO Resident Conductor and KSYO Music Director James Fellenbaum. And the Mahler is inspired by a child’s vision of heaven. Mahler, when he was alive, was better known as one of the preeminent conductors of his time, particularly of opera, and he conducted both of the operas whose highlights are featured on the first half. The short, energetic overture by Montgomery opens the program because, as anything about youth is inherently also about the present and the future, it was important to me that our KSYO musicians play the music of a living composer as part of this experience.
February: Violinist Geneva Lewis in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto
Alan Sherrod: One of the more varied bills comes in February with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with New Zealand-born violinist Geneva Lewis. If that weren’t enough, the concert also has an impressionistic side: the Tennessee premiere of a work co-commissioned by the KSO as part of a consortium of American Orchestras: to make this mountain taller by contemporary composer Sarah Gibson. And, Debussy’s La Mer to wrap it up.
Aram Demirjian:
This program is really a tale of two halves. The Beethoven concerto and Knoxville’s introduction to the scintillating playing of Geneva Lewis comprises the first half, followed by a second half that encompasses the mountains and the sea, both literally and figuratively.
We are very proud to have been selected as part of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program through which new works by six women composers will receive premieres and repeat performances across the country. The title of Gibson’s piece is drawn from the text of a Rupi Kaur poem: “i stand / on the sacrifices / of one million women before me / thinking / what can I do / to make this mountain taller / so the women after me / can see farther.” I learned the title of Gibson’s piece last season during a week when I was conducting a piece by Ethel Smyth on the KSO’s Chamber Classics Series. As I was researching Smyth, I came across a quotation from her: “I feel I must fight for [my music] because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs, not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.” Though separated by a century, these quotations seemed to speak to each other, which is why we precede Gibson’s piece with Smyth’s sweeping On the Cliffs of Cornwall, a piece that flows naturally with Debussy’s La mer.
This program is really a tale of two halves. The Beethoven concerto and Knoxville’s introduction to the scintillating playing of Geneva Lewis comprises the first half, followed by a second half that encompasses the mountains and the sea, both literally and figuratively.
We are very proud to have been selected as part of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program through which new works by six women composers will receive premieres and repeat performances across the country. The title of Gibson’s piece is drawn from the text of a Rupi Kaur poem: “i stand / on the sacrifices / of one million women before me / thinking / what can I do / to make this mountain taller / so the women after me / can see farther.” I learned the title of Gibson’s piece last season during a week when I was conducting a piece by Ethel Smyth on the KSO’s Chamber Classics Series. As I was researching Smyth, I came across a quotation from her: “I feel I must fight for [my music] because I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs, not just to go on hugging the shore, afraid to put out to sea.” Though separated by a century, these quotations seemed to speak to each other, which is why we precede Gibson’s piece with Smyth’s sweeping On the Cliffs of Cornwall, a piece that flows naturally with Debussy’s La mer.
April: The Cosmos Festival/The Planets
Alan Sherrod: March’s Masterworks concerts (Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8) will be guest conducted by Vinay Parameswaran, but you’ll be back in April for Jonathan Leshnoff’s Piano Concerto, another co-commission by the KSO—and for the exceedingly popular Planets by Gustav Holst.
Aram Demirjian:
April’s Masterworks forms one of two strands of what we’re calling the Cosmos Festival, programs that examine how humans and artists relate to the broader physical and spiritual universe. This is a topic that has always fascinated me, and even more so after battling a serious illness. The Masterworks program examines spiritual perspectives on this idea. Leshnoff’s concerto is rooted in the concept from Jewish mysticism that everything in the universe has a soul. Holst, celebrating 150 years, himself, was a mystic. He based The Planets not on the physical qualities of the astronomical bodies represented or by the Roman gods from which they draw their names, as is often mistakenly thought to be the case, but by astronomy and theories of how the arrangements of the celestial bodies across the apron of the night sky affect our moods and spirits. Also on the program is another work by Ives, The Unanswered Question, which programmatically poses The Universal Question of Existence. In short: what are we doing here, and where are we going?
The Chamber Classics strand of this festival, which occurs earlier in the week, deals more with the physical universe, including music that is featured on the space probe Voyager 1’s Golden Record.
April’s Masterworks forms one of two strands of what we’re calling the Cosmos Festival, programs that examine how humans and artists relate to the broader physical and spiritual universe. This is a topic that has always fascinated me, and even more so after battling a serious illness. The Masterworks program examines spiritual perspectives on this idea. Leshnoff’s concerto is rooted in the concept from Jewish mysticism that everything in the universe has a soul. Holst, celebrating 150 years, himself, was a mystic. He based The Planets not on the physical qualities of the astronomical bodies represented or by the Roman gods from which they draw their names, as is often mistakenly thought to be the case, but by astronomy and theories of how the arrangements of the celestial bodies across the apron of the night sky affect our moods and spirits. Also on the program is another work by Ives, The Unanswered Question, which programmatically poses The Universal Question of Existence. In short: what are we doing here, and where are we going?
The Chamber Classics strand of this festival, which occurs earlier in the week, deals more with the physical universe, including music that is featured on the space probe Voyager 1’s Golden Record.
Verdi’s Requiem
Alan Sherrod: The season wraps in May with the monumental Verdi Requiem featuring some fantastic and familiar soloists: soprano Rochelle Bard, mezzo-soprano Renée Tatum, tenor Aaron Short and bass David Crawford. Plus the orchestra will be joined by the Knoxville Choral Society and the Knoxville Opera Chorus.
Aram Demirjian:
Words don’t do justice to the power of Verdi’s Requiem. It is … revelatory. These performances will be offered within a week of (yes, again!) the 150th anniversary of the Requiem’s premiere – and you probably won’t believe me, but we didn’t realize about any of these anniversaries when we planned the season. It’s just one of those eerie coincidences – kismet, maybe. I’m also proud that this program is essentially homegrown, with artists either from Knoxville, or who are so familiar to Knoxville that they are a part of the family.
Words don’t do justice to the power of Verdi’s Requiem. It is … revelatory. These performances will be offered within a week of (yes, again!) the 150th anniversary of the Requiem’s premiere – and you probably won’t believe me, but we didn’t realize about any of these anniversaries when we planned the season. It’s just one of those eerie coincidences – kismet, maybe. I’m also proud that this program is essentially homegrown, with artists either from Knoxville, or who are so familiar to Knoxville that they are a part of the family.
• • • • • • • • • •
