Next Season, Part 2

As we did in 2010, we will be collaborating with UT’s Clarence Brown Theatre, this time on Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd. I’m sure you are familiar with the subject matter of this production. Written in 1979, Sweeney Todd couldn’t help but inspire the 1982 film Eating Raul, and Fannie Flagg’s 1987 novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (which became a movie in 1991). Quite a cannibalistic decade, that. Opening August 30, and continuing through early September at CBT, featuring Knoxville’s own Dale Dickey.

I know you’ve been waiting for part 2 of part 2. For a composer, it’s easy to get a hold of your audience’s attention by being able to have songs or works with titles, like Claire de Lune or Stairway to Heaven or even Starships. I believe chamber music fails to properly grab hold in Knoxville because so many of the great works are entitled simply  “Sonata,” or “Quartet,” or the like. This town, heck, any town can always use a chamber music infusion, and Concertmaster Gabe Lefkowitz has launched an invigorating recital series at Remedy Coffee in the Old City. On three nights scattered throughout the season  will be Sonatas by Prokofiev and Ysaÿe and other violin classics, paired with the likes of Dvořák’s Piano Quintet, Brahms’ B-Major Trio, and Mendelssohn’s Octet. The first of these shows will be Wed. October 3rd at 7:00. That Brahms trio I mentioned is his best by a wide margin, and it will close the program.

I hope you appreciate all the trouble I went to in finding the diacritical marks above. I am not a natural typist, I type only by ear.