Happy (and busy) New Year!!

We sometimes take off during the holidays. Last year’s trip to Florida is still on my mind. I mean, a year ago today I was swimming in the ocean! Previous years’ visits with in-laws in Minneapolis and my parents in New Hampshire were also fun and toughened me up for these nebbishy Tennessee winters. This year is a different story. I’ve got a stack of really sublime music to learn, and the music itself is the trip. With Chamber Orchestra, Concertmaster Series, Pops, Martin Luther King Concert and Tchaikovsky IV all in the space of three weeks, January is going to be a many-splendored thing.

On the second Sunday in January (the 11th at 2:30, Bijou Theatre), things get going with a bang, (and some tooting, too) as the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra will present music of Mozart, Stamitz, and Richard Strauss. The Mozart is the Bassoon Concerto and the Stamitz is the Trumpet Concerto. In the Mozart, principal bassoonist Aaron Apaza will be doing the tooting, and in the Stamitz, principal trumpeter Chase Hawkins. (Actually, Stamitz may or may not be the composer of this work, but whoever wrote it knew what they were doing. They really gave a toot. Another possible candidate for authorship of this work is a Bavarian composer named Holzbogen. Shades of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author). ANYway... The show will close with Strauss’ passionate, quirky masterpiece for chamber orchestra, the Suite from Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Composed in 1918 to accompany an adaptation of Molière’s 1670 play of the same name, it is "Music for The Theatre," but not a “Theatre Piece.” Substantiating the title of this concert as “Orchestral Soloists,” this work presents a staggering array of solos itself with essentially no two people playing the same part. The final movement has a ginormous cello solo in it, and the polonaise-like 4th movement is all Gabe.

Speaking of Gabe, just a few days later it will be time for the concertmaster series January installment at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Violinist Gordon Tsai, violists Katy Gawne and Eunsoon Corliss, and cellists Ihsan kartal and I will join Gabe Lefkowitz to close the concert with Tchaikovsky's string sextet, Souvenir de Florence. This exciting work has some really neat compositional devices, and there are so many beautiful tunes I just don't know what to do with myself. Actually I do know, I suppose I should go and learn them. The first half of the concert also involves the five of us along with principal bassist Steve Benne playing on Vivaldi's Winter Concerto from the Four Seasons, and then Gabe will perform five movements from Prokofiev's Cinderella Ballet with pianist Kevin Class. This is all music that will make you leap to your feet at the end. Wednesday and Thursday, January 7 and 8, 2015 at 7:00 pm.

Stay tuned for the rest of January...