BY ALAN SHERROD Browsing the obituaries of notable citizens in the New York Times in September 1875, readers may have come across an obit for “Mme. Jean Louise Farrenc…a musician and composer of considerable distinction in the generation immediately…
Review: “The Music of John Williams” – Fellenbaum and the KSO Summon the Force
By Alan Sherrod It is said that everyone has at least one awakening moment in their life when music and culture collide at a particular time and place. For those in their pre-teen years, such a music/culture moment is…
Review: KSO Chamber Orchestra Goes for a French Connection
By Alan Sherrod You didn’t have to be a music history nerd to enjoy yesterday’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Chamber Classics concert “A Touch of France”. But if you did self-identify that way, you were probably in a state of…
Review: KSO’s Concertmaster Series Explores the Power of String Duos
In a way, it feels like eons have passed since October 2012 when the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra launched its Concertmaster Series of solo and small ensemble music events under then-Concertmaster Gabriel Lefkowitz. During those five seasons, much has changed: the…
Friends of Music and the Arts Announces 2016-17 Concerts
The Friends of Music and the Arts (FOMA), a program of Knoxville’s Episcopal Church of the Ascension, has announced its schedule of concerts for 2016-17. An obvious highlight of the season is a special ticketed event this month, a concert…
Sunday at the Bijou: The Principal Quartet Explores Schubert, Prokofiev, and Brahms
While the growth of Knoxville’s classical music scene has been quietly satisfying for audiences, the growth of chamber music within that scene in the last five or six years has been nothing short of phenomenal. Providing the original foundation for…
Wed/Thurs: KSO Concertmaster Series Features Dvorák Quintet in G
The last KSO Concertmaster Series concert of the season comes this week to the Knoxville Museum of Art in a program featuring the Dvorák String Quintet in G major, Op. 77 as well as a slew of short virtuosic violin pieces…
Review: KSO Concertmaster Series Shows Off Its New Friends
This week’s installment of the KSO’s Concertmaster Series of chamber music—Gabriel Lefkowitz and Friends—showed off just how important friends are, both onstage and in the audience. One of the works programmed offered the largest ensemble yet for the series—the “Winter” concerto…
Balthus and Beethoven’s Late Quartets
Earlier this fall on the occasion of a performance of Michael Torke’s Bright Blue Music, I wrote a little about synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation in one sensory area leads to an involuntary sensory experience in another area. In…