Excuses, Excuses

This is crunch time. I am looking at the stack of music that lay before me and trying to remember a time when I had so much to process. Really, since January things have been thick with notes. My bandmates have written me off as some sort of “classical defector,” and for the first time in my life I have had to turn gigs with them down even though I am technically free. (JK!! They are some of the most understanding folk I have never known, and champion friends to boot). Then there are students. 22 of them. I am reminded of when I was a kid and had a paper route, each customer (student) had a different way they wanted their paper delivered, and received their papers on different days. I still have dreams about this; I wake up from them thinking I have forgotten a customer. There are also birthdays this week; my wife Helen's is the day after our son Richard's (17th) on the 21st. As if I didn't have enough to do, I am auditioning for a summer festival after the Planets concerts. So if these posts are merely informational, rather than scholarly and literary, I promise to try to return to my old form when some of the smoke has cleared in a couple weeks.

What’s on the docket right now? Planets. Or more specifically, Gustav Holst’s The Planets. I’ll never forget the first time I played it, with Kirk Trevor conducting. My only previous experience with Holst’s music (and there isn’t much more of it) was the St. Paul Suite, a lovely, harmless little suite of dances composed for a girl’s school in London. (Whether it’s the same school about which Paul McCartney wrote the song Girl’s School, I don’t know). The Planets, however, is a “whole ‘nother thing,” as they say in Texas.

We welcome back to the podium Daniel Meyer, who left us just as Maestro Richman was arriving here. They sort of just traded places; Dan Meyer became an assistant conductor with the Pittsburgh Symphony, which was Lucas’ previous post. Dan won us all over with his personable style, as witness this photo from some time earlier this century, taken at a reception after a Chamber Orchestra concert in Tellico Village.

Standing, left to right: former principal flute Teri Forscher, yours truly, violinist Julie Cook, violist Jen Bloch, cellist Ihsan Kartal, violinist Karen Kartal, cellist Bruce Wilhite. Kneeling, left to right: Maestro Daniel Meyer, violist Eunsoon Corliss, former principal second violinist Eric Kline.

Right Here Waiting for Richard Marx

Richard Marx will be in town this weekend for a rare Friday night version of Saturday Night Pops. I missed the Marx revolution in the late ‘80's and ‘90's, but I am apparently just weird, I guess. One YouTube video has received 17 MILLION hits; odds are that several of those “hitters” will be in attendance. After watching a couple vids, it’s also clear that I am SO going to get some wardrobe ideas from this show. I have heard some of his songs, but I don’t think this is going to be like the Neil Sedaka concert we played here back in the 90's (today is Sedaka’s birthday).

Looking back, we can laugh about it now, but the KSO Pops series has seen some pretty scary times. In the 90's, it seemed that Knoxville had a Pops curse that rendered guest artists unable to perform their second night’s show. (Pops artists performed pairs of shows then, Friday and Saturday nights). Dionne Warwick was hospitalized after her Friday night show with pneumonia; Mr. Sedaka had a mild stroke after his. It was a stroke of luck that jazz singer Nancy D’Andrea, mother of KSO flutist Cynthia D’Andrea, was in the audience. She teamed up with our second bassoonist at the time, Mike Benjamin, who also happens to be one of Knoxville’s premiere jazz pianists, to save the night on both occasions. Trumpeter Doc Severinsen also had a last-minute cancellation, but we were left with enough time to find a suitable replacement. In the late 80's, singer Judy Collins became ill at the last minute and Helen Reddy was secured as a replacement. And then there was the year that most of the Clayton Holiday concerts had to be cancelled due to a flood at the Civic Auditorium. I’m probably missing a couple; it was a virtual epidemic for a while, but I think now we can safely assume that the Pops jinx has been retired. Nevertheless, I am going to keep my fingers slightly crossed through Friday.

Plenty Going on This Weekend!

It’s the time of the season for concerto competition winners! Both the UT orchestra and the Knoxville Choral Society will be presenting programs this weekend that will feature collegiate (UT) and High School (KCS) soloists.

Saturday night at 8 at the Knoxville Convention Center, The Knoxville Choral Society under the direction of Eric Thorson will present choral works of Handel, Donna Gartman Schultz, and Emma Lou Diemer. These works will be sandwiched around appearances by three young soloists; soprano Meghan Mayes, clarinetist Luke Norton and pianist Albert Xue.

The next afternoon at 4, the UT Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro James Fellenbaum will present four contest winners in a wide range of styles, along with the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. Violinist Thomas Lovett, who will perform Ravel’s Tzigane; is a frequent player with the KSO. Soprano Theresa Dunigan, who has been seen in recent Knoxville Opera productions, will sing the Vier Letzte Lieder of Richard Strauss. Jolivet’s Flute Concerto, with flutist Kathryne Salo, and the first movement of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 performed by Shinyoung Kim round out the program.

Another event that involves KSO members will take place Sunday, March 11, at 5:00 p.m. at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension, 800 Northshore Drive. As part of that church's Friends of Music and the Arts concert series, and in conjunction with Westminster Presbyterian Church’s choir, Mozart's Mass in c, K. 427 will be performed. This mass is often referred to as the "Great" and its scale is just that-monumental and grand. The solo work is virtuosic and the choruses mammoth, including movements scored for eight voice parts (double chorus). Due to its difficulty and scope, the work is not often heard. There is no charge for admission.

"Saturday Night Pipes" or, "Blame It on the Glocca Morra"

The storms have passed, it’s a beautiful day, and the sounds of Celtic brilliance await you at the Civic Auditorium tonight at 8.

My lineage is Scots-Irish. I, however, do not own a kilt– I am not that hardcore. I am more likely to associate myself with the Boston Celtics than the actual ethnic group. (Q: why don’t we say “Boston Keltics” with a hard “c” sound)? And while Celtic music is not something in which I am well-versed, composers such as Hamilton Harty, Leroy Anderson, Percy Grainger and others have made it easy to appreciate the verve and beauty of this genre. Celtic Celebration features a cast of dancers, singers and musicians well-grounded in highlands music.

Spearheading this cast is pipe-master Christopher Layer, an internationally respected Celtic music interpreter, and tenor Benjamin Brecher, who my colleagues agree is the quintessential Danny Boy tenor. Music from the films Braveheart, Brigadoon, and Finian’s Rainbow are included in this collection of Irish and Scottish favorites.

Although it hardly seems a concern at this point, word has it that the Civic Auditorium/Coliseum complex is a pretty safe haven from tornadoes. I hope everyone was spared last night and can attend either the Saturday Night Pops tonight or the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra's "A Soldier's Tale" concert tomorrow. Preferably both!

Leap Day Anniversary Remembered

I am pausing here somehow to pay a memorial tribute to great friends of Helen and mine, Bill and Lyn Mason. As fellow members of Westminster Presbyterian Church, the Masons came to know us as adopted children. Since my parents live in New Hampshire, and Helen’s in Minnesota, the Masons’ presence in our life amounted to a third set of parents– and grandparents for our two boys. It was today in 1944 that they were married; and although that was 68 years ago, it being a leap year we can say with tongue in cheek that it would really be their seventeenth anniversary.

Bill had been Assistant State’s Attorney for the state of Illinois, and Lyn and he retired to Knoxville to be near their sons Tom and Bill, Jr., and their families in the 80's. They were major KSO supporters, being active in a Westminster Church KSO-attending group, and had many musician friends both here and in Chicago. In the early 90's, when our youngest son Thomas was a toddler, it was they who would trek out to Johnson City with Helen to care for him while she played as concertmaster. Another trip they made was from Sawyer to Indianola, Iowa, to visit us while I played with the Des Moines Metro Opera orchestra in 1991. As soon as each of our children could speak, the words “Grampa Bill” and “Gramma Lyn” became part of their vernacular. When our oldest son Thomas was 2 or 3, he actually called KSO violist Bill Pierce “Grampa Bill Pierce,” so naturally was he acquainted with the term.

The Masons had a summer home in Sawyer, Michigan, about as far up the eastern shore of Lake Michigan as Chicago is up the west coast. This was a frequent stopping place of ours between Knoxville and Minnesota on visits to Helen’s parents, being the point just about half-way. It was there that I met very good friends of theirs who happened to be world-class musicians. Jazz trombonist Ray Anderson and Chicago Symphony Principal Trumpeter Bud Herseth both had summer places in the same community as them. I will never forget the mornings on the beach, the two of them locked in a game of dueling long-tones for their morning warm-ups.

When either Helen’s or my actual parents visited us, the Masons and they got along famously, with many “Greatest Generation” tales to share. Their own grandchildren got along well with our kids, and Lyn’s Game Nights (featuring “Pass the Shoe” and “Spoons)” were a total riot. Although they have both passed, (Lyn in 2004 and Bill in 2005, I think), I will always remember them on February 29th of any year as majorly important people in our lives.

So.... Happy Anniversary, Bill and Lyn!! We miss you.

A Different Side of Hollywood

I didn’t watch the Oscars, so don’t ask me about them. While Maestro Richman did not win one, the Hollywood Connection concert for him this year is Stravinsky’s Concerto in D, which was actually written in Hollywood in 1946 and is often called the “Basle” Concerto for the city whose orchestra commissioned it. (Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Sunday at 2:30 at the Bijou).

Upon first hearing, the musical language of the Concerto is strangely exciting and excitingly strange. This is a product that has inspired everyone from John Williams to Frank Zappa to Shostakovich. The Arioso second movement sports thick, juicy slabs of major/minor string tonality reminiscent of Britten. The outer movements are edge-of-your-seat carnival rides through previously-unexplored tonal and rhythmic territory, and I don’t mean the merry-go-round. Thank God for the hyphen.

Another foray into the ears of an eventual Hollywood resident is the Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) of Arnold Schoenberg. Although sometimes flagged (or flogged) for his abandonment of traditional tonality in favor of a more mathematically derived 12-tone system of composing, this is his op. 4, written just before he tore the roof off of diatonic sound as we know it. The poem by the same name which inspired this work was written by Richard Dehmel, whose poetry also was set to music by the likes of Kurt Weill, Richard Strauss and Max Reger. The rich, stirring harmonies will make you wonder why you didn’t play a recording of it on Valentine’s Day for your sweety.

I’d love to say something about the other Stravinsky work on the program, A Soldier’s Tale or (Please! Call it by this name!) L’histoire du Soldat, not to mention Saturday night’s thrilling Celtic Celebration Pops, but frankly these other pieces are wicked hard and even though it’s 2:20 in the morning, I am going to shed a little more wood before calling it a night.

Here's Why You Should Go See Mahler's 2nd...

If you like Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, but don’t think it has enough brass...

If you enjoy the Tennessee Theatre’s Mighty Wurlitzer...

If you are in need of spiritually uplifting words and don’t mind hearing them sung in German by a very large, very good chorus...

If you want to have your face melted by at least 300 very dedicated musicians...

If you want to hear how an orchestra sounds when it is firing on all 100 cylinders...

If you don’t know much about classical music but you know what you like...

If you don’t have anything better to do (you don’t)...

....then you should come and see Mahler’s 9th Symphony tonight at the Tennessee Theatre at 8:00.