There is only one thing surprising about Bang On A Can founders Julia Wolfe, David Lang, and Michael Gordon being composers-in-residence at the 2018 Big Ears Festival. The surprise is that it hasn’t happened before now. It is simply impossible…
Review: CBT’s ‘the strangers’
As way of preface, the strangers was commissioned by the Clarence Brown Theatre from playwright Christopher Oscar Peña for performance by eight of the UT Department of Theatre MFA acting candidates. The work was developed over a two year period…
Review: Spectacle Abounds in Knoxville Opera’s ‘Turandot’
It was inevitable that Knoxville Opera would eventually come around again to Giacomo Puccini’s final opera Turandot. Last produced by the company in October 2003, the work virtually cries out for lavish spectacle, given its exotic setting of the Imperial…
Big Ears 2018 – Additions to the ‘Immersive’ Experience Feature the Intersection of Music and Film
Anyone who has attended one of the previous Big Ears Festivals will vouch for the thought-altering qualities of the “immersive” experience. What does that even mean, you ask? There is something quite indescribable that takes place when one is drawn…
Othalie Graham and Jonathan Burton Together Again for Knoxville Opera’s ‘Turandot’
It is a fact that opera need not be produced at the highest and loftiest levels of expense in order to be artistically interesting and successful. This claim has certainly been validated by opera companies like Knoxville Opera and others that operate in the environment of medium-size cities or regional entities.
Review: Pianist Tanya Gabrielian and KSO Uncover Russian Passion
Given the current revelations of the past week, I couldn’t help feeling that Maestro Aram Demirjian and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra may have wished they had titled the week’s Masterworks concerts something other than “Russian Passion.” On the other hand,…
Sunday in the Concert Hall: UT Symphony and Young Pianist Series
The University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra finds itself downtown this weekend at the Tennessee Theatre for its Sunday afternoon concert—“Viva l’Italia! II”—a sequel of sorts to its September 2017 concert. UTSO music director and conductor James Fellenbaum follows up that…
Self-Centered: Tubist/Composer Jim Self in Weeklong Residency with UT Music
I can virtually guarantee that everyone reading this has heard the work of tubist Jim Self, even if they didn’t realize it. Since 1974, Self has been a freelance musician in Hollywood, performing in orchestras for over 1500 motion pictures and…
Sergei Rachmaninoff, We Hardly Knew Ye
BY ALAN SHERROD This week—specifically Saturday, February 17—marks a rather ironic claim to fame for Knoxville. In Knoxville on that date in 1943, 75 years ago, the Russian composer and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff, gave the last public performance of…
Review: KSO Brings Ecstasy and Enlightenment with Bach and Shostakovich
After Sunday afternoon’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Chamber Classics concert, several things should now be readily apparent to the KSO’s audience.
