Nutcracker News and Artwork

As our Nutcracker run reaches the halfway mark for 2013, it bears mentioning that one of our players, 2nd trumpet Marc Simpson, has a daughter in the ballet! 13-year-old Julie Ann dances a soldier and a sugar-plum attendant in three different scenes, and has danced with Amy Morton Vaughan’s Appalachian Ballet Company for several years now. It is a source of great pride to create performing art with one’s child; it’s a pity, though, that the orchestra’s presence below the stage prevents seeing the action. Julie Ann’s eldest sister Valerie also danced in the Nutcracker in the late 90's. I am wracking my brain trying to remember if their have been other KSO players with children dancing the Nutcracker and have asked around; it may be that the Simpsons are unique in their participation. Anyone who knows otherwise should chime in, please!

In the pit for the Nutcracker this year there are several new players; bassoonists Aaron Apaza and Garrett McQueen, principal trumpet Chase Hawkins, and French horns Gray Ferris and Sean Donovan. Their assimilation into the sound of the orchestra has been quite seamless, and the new personalities within their individual sounds lend a new dimension to the characters to whom they link on stage. The remaining performances will be in Maryville at the Clayton Center for the Arts.

Another new feature of the Nutcracker this year is the presence of new parts to play from! If there were any bumps in the road to preparing the ballet this year, it was the correcting of some wrong notes, which inevitably get printed in a new edition, although the old edition was frighteningly inaccurate. I’ve been told that wrong notes in some editions are printed intentionally, so as to allow copyright extensions (I’m not totally clear on that). In any case, some of the old parts got recycled into parts to use on “run-outs” (like the one the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra is playing at the Athens City Middle School at 7:30 tomorrow night). I’ve included some artwork from these old parts. There have been some accomplished doodlers who have left their mark over the years during the inevitable downtime that occurs during rehearsals...

This rendition of former Concertmaster Marc Zelmanovich was done by a violist who has since left town...

My stand partner, a native of Turkey, explains the difference between the name for his homeland and what his family has just eaten for Thanksgiving...

I have often wondered if there were numbers to call for help with other works by Tchaikovsky...

This is the piccolo part from which Cynthia D'Andrea has been playing since who knows when. The drawing of Kilroy was done when she was hired (?) to play, at age 13, for a production done by WATE.