A few things to plan on this week— • The Carpetbag Theatre presents Ce Nitram Sacul at the Flying Anvil Theatre, Thursday – Saturday, September 13-15, at 7:30 PM; Sunday, September 16, at 4:00 PM Tickets and Information “…a play about…
Monday Arts Miscellany – September 3
The fall arts season has traditionally started with Labor Day, so here we are. This week, add in First Friday and you have a wide range of enlightenments and diversions. Here are a few highlights. THEATRE The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra…
Review: CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’ – The Best of Dazzling Possibilities
By Alan Sherrod For the last year or so, productions of Leonard Bernstein’s comic operetta Candide have been popping up all over the globe, from Europe to South America, thanks in large part to the encouragement and celebration surrounding…
Monday Arts Miscellany – August 27
One can feel September sneaking furtive glances at us as August stubbornly hangs on a few more days. All will be different next week—patches of urban concrete and suburban grass, accustomed to basking in the early morning sun, may find…
Preview: Collaboration Key To CBT/KSO’s ‘Candide’
By Alan Sherrod It’s a bit ironic that Voltaire’s Candide, a novella that satirizes the 18th Century philosophy of optimism and its inevitable disillusionment, has required plenty of optimism and perseverance from those that have sought to turn it…
KSO To Perform at Washington, DC, Kennedy Center During SHIFT Festival 2020
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…
James Fellenbaum Named Artistic Director/Conductor of Brevard Philharmonic
By Alan Sherrod One of Knoxville’s busiest musicians is about to get just a bit busier. James Fellenbaum, who holds multiple conductorships in the Knoxville classical music world, has recently been named Artistic Director/Conductor of the Brevard Philharmonic. Fellenbaum…
Review: KSO Ends 2017-18 Season With Some Excitement and Risk-Taking
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.
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: 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’.