BY ALAN SHERROD Last year—2020—will forever bear an asterisk in the history books to indicate that we had foregone normal life for reasons of safety and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Arts Knoxville’s own yearly “Most Memorable” list of…
Tuesday Arts Miscellany: December Happenings
Big Ears — Julian Lage Squint, we are told, is Julian Lage‘s debut album for Blue Note Records, “…a striking new album that weds incisive, expressive songwriting with the profound interplay Lage has honed over the past few years…” Presented…
Knoxville Opera Announces Big Changes To Its Artistic Management Team
BY ALAN SHERROD In what promises to be a significant change to one of Knoxville’s most important arts organizations, Knoxville Opera has announced that current Artistic Director Brian Salesky will be stepping down when his current contract concludes in…
Thanksgiving Week Arts Miscellany: KSO’s ‘Classical Christmas’ and More
Knoxville Symphony Orchestra – “A Classical Christmas” For the last six years—with the exception of the 2020 Covid-19 performance hiatus—the Knoxville Symphony has offered a late November/early December of winter solstice-period music that is generally classic, if not always classical.…
Review: KSO Journeys Through Color and Emotions in Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, and McKay
BY ALAN SHERROD The fall Masterworks season for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra has been an exploration of the colors of emotion in its various forms. Elgar’s Enigma Variations from the September concert described characters and toyed with our heartstrings,…
Friday Arts Miscellany: Money, Murals, and Music
Arts & Culture Alliance of Greater Knoxville to Receive $150,000 NEA Grant Paris Woodhull Begins Work on New Strong Alley Mural Sunday: UT Symphony Chamber Orchestra Concert Sunday: UT Music, Piano Trios by Bulgarian Composers • • • …
Fresh Faces in the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra – 2021 Edition
Symphony orchestra rosters are generally very stable, but it is inevitable that both professional ambitions and personal needs produce some turnover of player personnel. Amazingly, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra survived the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown and an uncomfortable labor dispute mostly…
Review: The Magic Returns – UT Opera Theatre Delights With Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’
BY ALAN SHERROD Imagine being a young singer with operatic ambitions, ready to make the most of an undergraduate or graduate opera program to provide a springboard into the professional world, when rather suddenly … everything comes to a…
Review: Flying Anvil Theatre’s ‘The Thanksgiving Play’
BY ALAN SHERROD If there is anything worse than the blind acceptance of false mythology as fact, it probably has to be the self-congratulatory, approval-seeking social performance that comes from publicly rejecting that mythology. At least, that’s the idea…