BY DIANA SALESKY Clouded in myth and speculation, Mozart’s Requiem remains a veritable mystery to this day. The work was incomplete when Mozart died in 1791 and thus begat the centuries of confusion and controversy that were to follow.…
Review: William Shaub and Friends Make Sense of Beethoven’s Final String Quartet
BY ALAN SHERROD The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s Concertmaster Series with William Shaub has one more performance of “The Late Genius: Beethoven’s Final Days”, Thursday evening, April 6, at 7:00, at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Tickets and Information …
Review: Big Ears Magic-Shara Nova and the Knoxville Symphony in ‘The Blue Hour’
BY ALAN SHERROD As the 2023 Big Ears Festival was winding down on Sunday evening, a couple of performances by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra remained: violinist Tessa Lark performing Michael Schachter’s Violin Concerto: Cycle of Life, followed by vocalist…
Preview: KSO’s Concertmaster Series – Beethoven’s Final String Quartet: The Answered Question
BY DIANA SALESKY Most of us who study the violin dream of one day playing the late Beethoven string quartets. Most of us never will. Why? They are excruciatingly difficult. Due to the incredible technical requirements, as well as…
Review: Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Journeys Through Higdon, Copland, Sibelius
BY ALAN SHERROD If you sat back, closed your eyes, and indulged your imagination for just a bit, it was entirely possible that the evening’s music could conjure up a vision of the blue hazy mountains of the Appalachians…
Knoxville Symphony This Week: Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Copland, Jean Sibelius
BY DIANA SALESKY Composer Jennifer Higdon: A Tennessee Treasure Comes Home Composer Jennifer Higdon once remarked that she grew up “a stone’s throw as the crow flies” from Cold Mountain, the setting of her twice Grammy-nominated opera based on…
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Announces 2023-2024 Season
The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, led by Music Director Aram Demirjian, has announced the program lineups and dates for the 2023-24 season for each of its five main series. • The eight Masterworks concert pairs at the Tennessee Theatre feature the…
Classical Kids – Sparking the Love of Music in the Next Generation
BY DIANA SALESKY Creating the next generation of attentive, informed, sympathetic classical music listeners is a big job—one that most performing arts organizations grapple with (at a minimum) or take on as a cause (at best). While the obvious…
Review: KSO and Violinist Blake Pouliot Take Mendelssohn Concerto To An Electric Finale
BY ALAN SHERROD If art thrives on turmoil and risk-taking—which is often the case—it should come as no surprise that the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, last week faced with the turmoil of a last-minute soloist cancellation, would find an exciting…
Tuesday Arts Miscellany: February 21 – 26
Go! Contemporary Dance Works: Cleopatra, the Last Pharoah “Deviating from Hollywood’s traditional portrayal of Cleopatra, GO! will explore the mysteries of this young woman and her political battles for dominance over the Ptolemaic Throne… Intertwining Egyptian rituals, mysticism and traditions,…