Riding the Wave of Christmas Spirit

What a Christmas it's been!  I feel sorry for all the “snowbirds” who made plans to go south from Knoxville to escape what is usually a pretty cold (but hardly ever snowy) place during the holidays.  I am seriously thinking of going swimming somewhere, but the rivers and lakes are probably mud-infused from all this rain-- three inches in two days!  I'm recalling a folkloric Yankee weather index called the IFTWA index-- If twa' snow, it would have been about three feet!

I still feel the “buzz” from last week's Clayton Holiday Concerts.  It was very fitting that the orchestra combine its classical forces with those of the bluegrass milieu.  The late Norris Dryer always referred to Knoxville as “the Premiere City of Appalachia,” so to wed these two very different types of music together for our holiday concert was a natural for this town.  Bluegrass master Paul Brewster and his classy act brought a demographic into the audience that wouldn't normally be into symphonic music. Kudos go to Maestro James Fellenbaum for tying the many forces together as if with a ribbon. Here's a shot of those "many forces."

If you attended one of these concerts, you saw the final performance of our horn section as it has been for the past few years.  Second horn player Jennifer Crake Roche has decided to bow out of the orchestra to focus more on her family and her realty career.  She has been a positive force in the orchestra from the get-go, and a vital part of our horn section.  Her solid playing and level-headed attitude will be sorely missed.  There was a get-together after the final Clayton concert last Sunday at the home of third horn Mark Harrell, and here is a farewell portrait of our horn section as such.

L-R: Jeffery Whaley, Jen Crake Roche, Sean Donovan, Mark Harrell.  Also in photo: LOTS of food.

Holiday Doings

Sorry for the reticence, folks. It’s the end of a semester, it’s Christmas, and I’m a musician.  It feels like December 1st was just one long day that ended Saturday at the end of the Nutcracker at Maryville’s Clayton Center for the Arts.  I have somehow managed to not schedule anything for a full 24 hours, and I’ll take a look back at what we can now call “early December,” but first let me say that the week ahead promises four Clayton Holiday Concerts!  Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 3, at the Civic Auditorium.  This 29th annual offering will showcase music of Appalachia with special guest Paul Brewster, the guitar-playin’ “high lonesome” tenor in Ricky Skaggs legendary Kentucky Thunder, headlining.  Also contributing will be the Knoxville Choral Society, GO! Contemporary Dance Works and the Knoxville Banjo Orchestra (and well, duhh, Santa Claus!!) under the direction of Maestro James Fellenbaum.

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Our Nutcracker ballet alliance with the Appalachian Ballet Company continued its 42-year tradition with performances Friday night and Saturday afternoon at the Clayton Center at Maryville College, and last weekend at the Civic Auditorium.  It represented a turning point for the ABC, as dancer Mika Yoshida gave her farewell after a 32-year dancing career, this time as the Dew Drop Fairy in Waltz of the Flowers.  It was also announced that KSO bass trombonist Brad MacDougall (whose MacDougall Brothers Construction Co. is a supporter of the Ballet), finally took in a performance of the Nutcracker after twenty years of playing it in the orchestra pit!  It is amazing how close to the action we are in the pit, and yet how far.

There were some “runouts” in the past couple of weeks.  According to Johanna Fiedler, her father Arthur coined the term when the Boston Pops would literally “run out” to Worcester, Manchester, Portland, etc.  Our running took us to Lincoln Memorial University, Dandridge, and Athens, with Concertmaster Gabe Lefkowitz leading the orchestra and Associate Concertmaster Gordon Tsai soloing with Vivaldi’s Winter from The Four Seasons.  In Athens we performed in the afternoon for middle-schoolers on a day as warm as any day in April, then performed holiday music at the Athens City Middle School with renowned local guests Rusty Paterson, Mike Simmons and Tim Frazier, aka the Three Tenors of Athens.  There was some good R&R in the area during our down time, and the food offerings have shown steady improvement through the years of our travels there.

Speaking of food, the Q Series continues to bring in a capacity crowd at the Square Room on Market Square.  It is always gratifying when, as musicians, we compete with beautiful weather and win!  Outdoor tables all along Market square were full Tuesday.  It seems the past 8 or 9 days have been balmy, even during the Three Days of Rain.  The Principal String Quartet played a preview of our upcoming (January 10, 2:30) Chamber Classics concert of works by Schubert, Prokofiev and Brahms, and the Principal Woodwind Quintet performed a beautiful work by Paquito D’Rivera entitled  Aires Tropicales.  The next Q Series offering will be January 27.

Chamber Orchestra and Chorale

Thanksgiving’s feeding frenzy has slowed to a crawl, the traffic at the mall is speeding up to a crawl, and now it’s time to concentrate on the music of the season. The KSO’s November edition of the Chamber Classics series has the Knoxville Chamber Chorale joining the Chamber Orchestra for a program of light Christmas favorites. The KSO’s use of the Bijou for a concert of seasonal music is the first of its kind, and the response has been such that I must say, both proudly and regretfully, that the show is sold out!

The first half of the show boasts some essential chamber orchestra works, including Mozart’s German Dance No. 3 (the “Sleighride” portion is translated from the German “Schlittenfahrt”), Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Greensleeves, Corelli’s timeless “Christmas” Concerto, and Les Patineurs, “The Skaters’ Waltz,” by Emil Waldteufel. Of these, only the Vaughan Williams has any obvious melodic link to a present-day Christmas melody (What Child Is This?), but the rest of the works have attained elite status through their titles and their utter charm. Corelli’s Concerto VIII, Fatto per la notte di natale is a Baroque concerto grosso masterpiece on a par with Bach’s Brandenburgs. It’s not a “concerto” in the sense of having in-your-face virtuosity, it’s just that in the Baroque period, a multi-movement work was apt to be called a concerto if an orchestra was involved. Among Corelli’s strengths are his beautifully clean melodies and his use of “suspensions:” the alternately dissonant and consonant hanging violin weave that is so deliciously suspenseful. It is also remarkable how he makes minor-key music sound so joyful.

The Chorale will join us on the second half, with some beautiful John Rutter carol arrangements, Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, and Handel’s For Unto Us a Child Is Born. The Chorale will shine a cappella with the zany Jingle Bells Fantasy and an arrangement of Away in a Manger that is sure to melt your face. Hope to see you there, 2:30 at the Bijou, Sunday, November 29. (TODAY!)

Present and Future

A week when there are scheduled both KSO Youth Orchestra and Masterworks concerts is a great opportunity to witness Classical Music's present and its future.  This week has given us the future first, with Youth Orchestra concerts having taken place at the Tennessee Theatre on Monday, Nov. 16, and the Masterworks at the same venue on Thursday (tomorrow) and Friday at 7:30.

The all-Russian Masterworks concerts this week feature Rodion Schchedrin's “Naughty Limericks” (Concerto No. 1 for Orchestra), Tchaikovsky's timeless Piano Concerto in B♭, and Rachmaninov’s rarely heard Symphony No. 3.  Schchedrin, whose consonant-rich name is pronounced “Shed-rin,” has given us a zany whizbang of a work which musically depicts the type of folk poems called chastushki that were the underground poetry critical of the Bolshevik Revolution.  No type of sound was out-of-bounds for Schchedrin, including string players tapping bows on their stands, horn players spanking their mouthpieces, and all manner of prepared piano techniques.  Listen for the contrabassoon’s highly amusing part during a vamp, you won’t be able to keep from chuckling.

Pianist Stewart Goodyear will follow with an up-tempo performance of the Tchaikovsky Concerto. This and the Rachmaninov symphony that follow intermission are just brimmimng with Russian romantic content, and Music Director guest candidate Shizuo Kuwahara (who goes by “Z”) will bring it all together in style.  In the Rachmaninov, the second theme of the first movement and the solo violin melody that opens the second movement are tunes you may have heard on a record entitled "The World's 100 Most Beautiful Melodies," but a new beautiful tune is just around the corner in both works.

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On a night when Donald Trump was causing a stir inside the Convention Center and protesters were stirring a cause outside of it, the KSYO kids were making music at the Tennessee.  The five ensembles got to play on the big stage, and in so doing captivated their audience.  What a wonderful room in which to hear music...

A proud moment for KSO bassist Dan Thompson, who helps out in the Youth Orchestras.  He got to sit right behind his son, Nicolas.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

The conductors of the five KSYO ensembles; l to r, Kathy Hart, James Fellenbaum, Nina Missildine Mikos, Gabe Lefkowitz and Erin Tipton Archer.

KSO Principal Horn Jefferey Whaley works weekly with the brass section of the Youth Orchestra proper.  Bravo, guys!

Let's Do the Q!

This Wednesday at noon, it will be time to make a date with the KSO's Q Series. Knoxville's newest classical venue, The Square Room, will be alive with music for the string and woodwind families. A box lunch is included in the $15 advanced purchase admission. Same-day tickets, if any, will be $20 at the door. This is a majorly affordable opportunity to see world-class chamber music come to life. Attendees should please be aware that there will be a Veterans Day parade on Gay St., which will go from 10:45 a.m. until almost showtime.

The Principal Woodwind Quintet will start the show with Anton Reicha's Quintet for Winds, Op. 88, No. 2. Reicha (pronounced to rhyme with “like a”) was a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven, and well-known for his teaching and his treatises on composition. Among his composition students were Franck, Liszt, and Berlioz. Some of the concepts in his treatises were way ahead of their time, forecasting techniques that would not be widely used until the 20th century, such as polytonality and the use of quarter-tones. (Imagine notes existing BETWEEN the piano keys, which are ordered by half-tones or half-steps). While his theoretical work was so advanced as to be considered heretical in its time, he had the sense not to employ these techniques in his own compositions. Reicha was to the woodwind quintet repertoire what Haydn and Mozart were to the string quartet repertoire.

The Principal String Quartet will conclude the concert with Mozart's String Quartet in B♭, K. 458, “The Hunt.” The third of six quartets dedicated to his friend Franz Josef Haydn, “The Hunt” is full of jolly, equestrian swagger, excepting the Adagio third movement, which is lush and tender. Note that the subtitle of the work did not originate with Mozart, but was assigned by a group of quartet-playing hunters after they decided that the tempo of the 6/8 first movement perfectly matched their horses’ canter. (I don’t know if this is true, but hey, it sounds reasonable).

Come on out and see us!

Classical Cornucopia

That cool, rainy weather seems to always come when we are playing our Young People's Concerts, and here it is again!  Yea, though skies may be gray, the music will be very colorful as the KSO presents “Picture This” Wednesday through Friday at 9:30 AM at the Civic Auditorium.  There will also be 10:45 AM shows Wednesday and Thursday.  These concerts, under the direction of James Fellenbaum, will feature the Go! Contemporary Dance Works, cartoonist Charlie Daniel, and a singalong called The Color of Music. Selections will include Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, and Mussorgsky/Ravel's Pictures at an Exhibition.  They will be accompanied by slides of artwork related to the music by students from area elementary schools.  Please note that the 9:30 Wednesday and Thursday shows are SOLD OUT.

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People celebrate Halloween in many different ways and to many different degrees.  Or not!  I haven't decided what to "be" for Halloween, sometimes I get inspired at the last minute.  But for every person who wins the Best Costume prize or gets the most candy, there's someone else who gets their house papered or breaks up at a party.  As for the people who'll be out papering, and that hose beast ex, the 2:30 start of Sunday afternoon's Chamber Classics concert at the Bijou will likely come too early in the morning for them, EVEN WITH THE TIME CHANGE.  It is their loss, as they will miss falling back with Wagner's exquisite Siegfried Idyll, and three of Mozart's finest instrumental works: the String Serenade Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, the C-minor Wind Octet aka Serenade K. 388 (384a), and Symphony No. 35, the “Haffner.”  There is no way to mask the fact that this concert, again under the direction of Maestro Fellenbaum, will be one beautiful afternoon.

Eine Kleine is as monumental a work as there is, yet it will serve to prelude the touching Idyll which Wagner first had performed for his wife's birthday (coincidentally Christmas morning), in 1870.  It's as small a dose of Wagner as one can take to feel the genius and strength in his music.  The second half will start with the Wind Serenade, throughout which Mozart creates an organ-like texture.  In the wings, the string players will be champing at the bit to play the “Haffner” Symphony, excerpts from which are a frequent sight on audition lists.  Especially for the cello.  Especially the Presto last movement. 

Colorful Europa!!

It's time to put the finishing touches on the music for Thursday and Friday night's KSO Masterworks concerts at the Tennessee Theatre, at 7:30. “A Tour of Europe” could be a name for the musical journey on which guest maestro Marcelo Lehninger will be taking all of us. There will be stops in Leningrad, Capri, Bucharest, and Rome. All in all, this will be a vivid and vivacious KSO concert to launch our Music Director candidate search.

The show is so jam-packed with content that we will be opening it with a piece which is almost always programmed as a concert's finale. Shostakovich was merely 19 when he wrote his first symphony in 1924-25, but the work is a concise, punchy masterpiece; Dmitri at his cutest. In an unusual twist, there is a very prominent piano part, recalling Stravinsky's Petrouchka ballet from a decade earlier. The writing for solo wind instruments is astoundingly adept, and many of the solos are found on repertoire lists for orchestra auditions.

Continuing on to Romania (via France), concertmaster Gabe Lefkowitz will then solo in Ravel's Tzigane, yet another in Gabe's seemingly bottomless bin of solo works. (Tzigane is pronounced to sort of rhyme with the Southern pronunciation of the word “pecan,” and is translated as the adjective “gypsy”). There are no actual roma melodies in the score, rather, the title refers to the general exoticism and virtuosity of the romani musical style.

After a brief intermission, during which Gabe will be handing out autographed tennis balls, (JUST KIDDING!) our journey continues to the Mediterranean Sea. There will be stops in Capri and Andalusia, which will be “seen” filtered through the aqua-colored glasses of Claude Debussy. These two piano Preludes, (La puerto del vino and Les collines d'Anacapri) were orchestrated by Colin Matthews just 9 years ago. Written in 1910, (the only works on the concert not written in 1924), they are prime examples of Debussy's iconic Impressionism. 

The concert closes with Respighi's Pines of Rome, four short vignettes which are long on picturesque orchestral colors. I tried to find pictures of the locations depicted by the titles of each of the works, to give you a feel for what to expect, but found that any more, most of the trees there are not pines! Plus it was impossible to find a picture of children playing in the Villa Borghese; it seems they no longer allow kids in there! So hopefully I have visually captured the general mood of each of the movements. The outer movements of this piece promise some of the loudest playing I have ever heard from an orchestra.

I. The Pines of the Villa Borghese

II. Pines Near a Catacomb

III. The Pines at Gianicolo

IV. The Pines of the Appian Way

The Extremes of October

The middle of October for the KSO brings repertoire that highlights the extremes in scope of musical performance.  Opening tomorrow, (October 9th at 8:00; Sunday, October 11th at 2:30, Tennessee Theatre) the Knoxville Opera Company's first production of the year will be Arrigo Boito's crowning achievement, Mefistofele.  Unless you are an opera aficionado, you've probably never heard of Boito.  His musical output amounts to this opera, another opera entitled Nerone which, in spite of 38 years of work, remained unfinished, and an unpublished symphony in A minor.  This meager oeuvre is augmented by his valuable contributions as a librettist, having written libretti for Ponchielli's La gioconda (under the anagrammatic pseudonym “Tobia Gorrio”), and Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, Otello, and Falstaff.  Boito's collaboration with Verdi led to a very close friendship between the two; Boito was at Verdi's bedside when he died.  Mefistofele is, of course, based on Goethe's Faust, and out of the many operas to be derived from that work, Boito's is considered to be the most faithful to the spirit of the play.

Such dramatic subject matter deserves a sumptuous production.  While the pit is usually the orchestra's domain, scenery will be rising therefrom instead, and the orchestra will be onstage behind a scrim.  The orchestra is not confined solely to the stage, though; brass will be stationed backstage and even in the balcony.  Highlights often excerpted from Mefistofele are the Prologue, the Epilogue, and two tenor arias.  Although the KOC website states correctly that the opera was premiered in 1868, the premiere was considered a failure, owing to dislike of its avant-garde (for its time) musical style, its sprawling length, and the cast's inability to bring off the many complexities of the score.  Revisions over the next dozen years slimmed down the production by one third, and largely due to Wagner's success, the opera-going public had grown to tolerate Boito's quirky musical language.  The final version produced in Milan in 1881 has remained popular to this day, but note that the KOC's performance is a Tennessee premiere!  Check out this YouTube“video,” from the Victrola era, of legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin singing the aria Ave Signore!

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On the other end of the spectrum of musical dimension, the Gabe Lefkowitz and Friends series will have its opener at the Knoxville Museum of Art next Wednesday and Thursday at 7:00.  This series has really blossomed in its new, more spacious home at the KMA, and while it is now easier to snare tickets for these, they are going fast.  Pianist Kevin Class and I will join Gabe for the Mendelssohn Piano Trio in D Minor.  Violin giant Fritz Kreisler's Variations on a Theme by Corelli starts the concert, and Beethoven's legendary Kreutzer Sonata closes it.  Although Leo Tolstoy's novella of the same name is morbid and somewhat ribald, (the Russian government censored the novella just days after its publication, and Theodore Roosevelt called Tolstoy a “sexual moral pervert”), Beethoven's 9th violin sonata is nothing but chamber music joy, pure and intimate.  And speaking of pure, intimate joy, here is a vintage recording, an actual video from the 40's, of Jascha Heifetz, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and pianist Anton Rubinstein performing the first movement of the Mendelssohn trio.


Kreutzer and Kreisler might understandably be confused for one another, so here is a little explanation.  Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831, pronounced “Kroy-tser”) is one of the “Big 3” founders of the French school of violin playing.  His 42 Etudes is considered to be one of the most important violin pedagogy books ever written. (Jack Benny could often be heard playing Etude #1 in some of his comedy routines).  In spite of the dedication of the sonata to Kreutzer, he never performed it, claiming it was unplayable and incomprehensible.  Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962, pronounced like “Chrysler”) was also a giant of the violin world, although his compositional legacy is a multitude of short, tasteful encore pieces for violin.  Liebeslied (Love's Sorrow) and Liebesfreud (Love's Joy) are a matched pair of such pieces often performed together.  So remember, Kreisler may have been alive during your lifetime, but Kreutzer definitely was not.

It's Time to Get Funky...

It's time to get funky with the KSO. Our first Pops concert of the season is Classical Night Fever, with, you guessed it, we'll be "Stayin' Alive," as we head to the "Car Wash" and end at the "Y.M.C.A." We will groove back into the 1970's with classic TV medleys and more. The concert begins at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, October 2 at the Tennessee Theatre.

The Orchestra, conducted by James Fellenbaum, will be joined by Motor Booty Affair, a 4-piece funk band who came to groove.

They welcome you to come dressed in the style of the hip and groovy 1970's with bell bottom jeans and platform shoes. Get your photo made with John Travolta from the Saturday Night Fever era. Classical Night Fever, indeed!

Tickets can be purchased on www.knoxvillesymphony.com or at the door and range from $20 - $60. What a funktastic way to get our KSO Pops Season off to a groovy start!

Chamber Classics Kick-off

On Sunday September 27th, the Chamber Classics series will open at the Bijou with guest clarinet soloist Victor Chavez and Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum.  The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra is currently celebrating its 80th season, but a more intimate branch of the organization, the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra, will be starting its 34th season.  The embryonic stage of the group and its founder, Zoltan Rosznyai is detailed on the KSO website's history page.  Since it is rather hard to find, I've excerpted a paragraph…

In summer 1979 Mr. Rozsnyai almost single-handedly pulled together the Knoxville Chamber Orchestra, later called the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra, by convincing a number of KSO musicians and a few others (including David Van Vactor recruited as a flutist) – 34 in all – to perform without compensation a concert from the chamber orchestra repertoire on July 21, 1979 at First Christian Church on Fifth Avenue at which no admission was charged. It was a revelation.  The performance was acoustically stunning and, at last, a Knoxville audience was able to hear just how good the KSO’s musicians had really become.   With the 16-member professional core added in 1981, the orchestra’s five-concert Chamber Classics series was inaugurated by the Society for the 1981-82 season at the acoustically superior Tennessee Theatre, and then moved in 1983-84 to the more intimate Bijou Theatre where it remains today. The ready-made solution of an acoustically suitable venue for the KSO was now obvious; however, it was not until the 1985-86 season, following Mr. Rozsnyai’s tenure, that the orchestra was able to effect a move of its Masterworks series to the Tennessee Theatre. Anticipating this advancement to the slightly smaller-capacity venue, the orchestra began presenting its Masterworks subscription series in pairs for the 1983-84 season and continues to do so to the present day.

Those were the days!  First Christian Church is a beautiful venue for music; in fact, the KSO used to hold its auditions there.  I did a recital there about ten years ago, and it all went very smoothly until the sun went down, and we realized the piano keyboard was in total darkness!  A pianist's nightmare. All of the rehearsals had occurred during the day.  It was one of those “note to self” moments.

Mr. Chavez will be performing Carl Maria von Weber's pristine Clarinet Concerto No. 2 on Sunday. These days the multi-movement solo clarinet concerto genre has only works by Mozart and Stamitz (who wrote 11!) substantially representing it before Weber wrote his pair, but a life cut short at 39 by tuberculosis kept the world from knowing the untold riches that would surely have followed these works.

Two other works by composers who left us way too soon flank the Weber.  Mendelssohn's rich Hebrides Overture opens the show, and Schubert's youthful Symphony No 2 closes it.  These three works, all composed in a period of 20 years in the early 19th century, came from the pens of composers who were 21, 25, and 17 (in program order).  The Bijou Theatre will be resounding with the (early) Romantic ideal this Sunday at 2:30.

A Slight Interruption of Service

Let's take a glance back at some of the things we saw in the KSO's September Masterworks concerts. There was a violin section playing their instruments like guitars in the bluesy slow movement of Gershwin's Concerto in F, most of the orchestra snapping their fingers on offbeats and shouting “Mambo!” in Bernstein's West Side Story Suite, and if you went Friday night…. you may have seen me in the audience.  I feel I should explain why.

About a month ago I was working in my garden, staking a tomato cage that had fallen under the weight of the tomatoes it was supporting.  A glancing blow from a hammer struck my left index finger and caused a small, simple fracture that has pretty much healed by now.  Luckily no knuckles were involved and no surgery was necessary.  I am now able to play some things without pain, but not with abandon.  My return is most likely be the Symphony Night Fever Disco Pops concert on October 2^nd.  All the while I have been thinking about how many close calls there have been over the years, what can be done and what shouldn't be done.  True, gardening isn't the sort of activity that should break fingers, but hey; a Notre Dame football player blew out his ACL while celebrating after breaking up a touchdown pass.  And don't even get me started about how composer Ernest Chausson died.

I'd like to thank Dr. Robert Ivy and his staff at Knoxville Orthopedic Clinic for the very fine care I have received in this “manual crisis,” and to Kimberly at Ortho Tennessee for the physical therapy. The challenge now that the bone has healed is to restore the tendons in the knuckle, which sort of froze up when the cast was holding it still.

So I attended a Knoxville Symphony concert last week, for the first time in 27 years.  People were surprised to see me, to say the least.  I was so proud of the job “we” did on four American classics! And the Champagne toast before the start was superb. I can hardly wait to get back into the swing of things, the fingers are back on the strings.  There's a fresh batch of music to learn.  And a fresh batch of tomatoes to pick.

Goodbyes and a Hello

The comings and goings of orchestra personnel sometimes proceed at a dizzying pace, as happened three or four years ago with several violin and woodwind positions turning over. I haven't gotten dizzy yet, but I hate to see anyone go. Violinist Ani Bermudez and her husband, violist Louis Diez are moving to the Washington, DC area, where Louis has accepted an Assistant Director of Development position at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.  We are sure their buoyant personalities will be a huge hit in their new town, and that their toddler, Thomas will prove to be a fine social asset as well. BEST WISHES, GUYS!!!!

photo courtesy Meade Armstrong

Best as we know, violist Nina Missildine isn't going anywhere per se, but on August 8, she and her husband Matt Mikos welcomed their second child, Henri Arthur Mikos into the world!  Nina has a golden touch with the kids in her KSO Youth Orchestra ensemble and in the Maryville Public Schools, and as a violist, she is everything you could want.  Look, Henri even has a violist's left hand! Congratulations!!!  

Our second trumpeter, DJ Creech, added a lot to our sound, if only for a brief spell. Presently he is off to Japan, to participate in the renowned Hyogo Performing Arts Center Orchestra. Hyogo is one of just a handful of orchestras worldwide that have tenure and age limits; I hesitate to use the term "training orchestra" because it makes it sound like it's "minor league," but no one would call the Chicago Civic Orchestra or the New World Symphony in Miami minor league, either. Best wishes to you, mate!

For many years, I would come into a rehearsal or concert, take my seat and listen for the "A" that we orchestra musicians tune to.  Almost without exception, that "A" would be played by Phyllis Secrist. I knew Phyllis before I came to Knoxville; we had played in the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds in 1985. Her teaching studio at UT has been the center of Knoxville's oboe realm since 1981, and her students regularly play with the KSO, and continue to advance in the classical world.  Phyllis, her husband, Joe Grubb, and their lovely daughter Rachel have all contributed their talents with the orchestra.  Well, after playing Principal Oboe for over 40 seasons, Phyllis has decided to retire from the orchestra.  Her many years of beautiful leadership will be recognized at this Thursday and Friday's Masterworks concerts. 

Counting Down to Opening Night

The countdown is on - Just a week and a half until the opening concerts of the KSO's 80th Anniversary Season!  With all cylinders firing, the KSO will kick off the 2015-16 at the Tennessee Theatre, featuring the music of four true American Masters: Gershwin, Bernstein, Barber and Chadwick.

The orchestra, conducted by Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum, will perform Chadwick's Jubilee from Symphonic Sketches and Barber's heavenly Adagio for Strings, and will be joined by 26 year-old pianist Sean Chen for Gershwin's Concerto in F.  The program concludes with Bernstein's iconic Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

Performers like us feed off an energetic audience, and  we're counting on a youthful energy in the audience on September 17 & 18 at 7:30. The average age of this season's Music Director candidate guests is in the 30s. Gershwin was 27 when he wrote his Concerto,  and Barber 26 when he wrote the String Quartet from whence the Adagio is drawn. This only serves to reinforce my conviction that this season's repertoire in general and the September Masterworks concerts in particular are perfectly suited to Knoxville's burgeoning twenty- and thirty-something demographic looking for a classy night on the town. Be a part of Knoxville's Arts scene with tickets that start at just $15. Drastic savings can be had with season tickets as well.

Back to School with KSYO

335 students to play in Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra this year

A new school year kicks off of the 42nd season of Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra. The Association, which includes 5 youth orchestras, consists of students ages 6 - 18 of all skill levels. We had RECORD-BREAKING numbers of kids audition this year, and 335 were accepted into the KSYO! 

82% of these students reside in Knox County, and will get to work with professional musicians and coaches as they practice their instrument. Students will rehearse weekly throughout the school year and perform 4 concerts, free to attend. Did you know we had this overwhelming number of talented young musicians in Knoxville?

Many thanks to all the judges and wranglers of the audition process - and a huge shoutout to all the students and parents who ensured many hours of practice over the summer! Have a great year.

Here are some students at their auditions, held in August.

 

    

Here are some snapshots from a 2014 KSYO concert.

This post authored by Rachel Dellinger, KSO Director of Communications.

Tickets, Youth Orchestras, and Ageeana

The time has finally arrived, and the KSO's season and tickets are on sale now! While Monday was the launch date, handling fees will be waived on phone orders until this Friday the 21^st. A cavalcade of guest conductors will be appearing throughout the year. It will be an eventful season as we seek a new director to pilot us through the unfamiliar yet beautiful waters ahead. Don't forget that Penny4Arts is still around. Under this plan a child can attend a KSO concert (or events presented by a host of other arts groups in town) for a penny, when accompanied by a paying adult. Kids fly free!

It's perhaps on the late side if your child wants to audition, but the Knoxville Symphony Youth Orchestra will be holding auditions this coming weekend. The KSYO braintrust is preparing for the group's 42^nd year of performances, which will be November 16, February 14 and 15, and May 2. Information and repertoire can be found on the website or by clicking here.

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Only someone living in a math-deprived world would fail to notice that this is the figurative 100^th anniversary of Knoxville's musical badge, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, written by Samuel Barber in 1947 and excerpting James Agee's prologue to A Death in the Family. I've been surfing for information on where James Agee's life began-- and also where his father's ended. It is interesting to think on these places when listening to the work. Two tremendous sources of knowledge than on these matters are the blogger commonly known as Knoxville Urban Guy, and Knoxville historian and writer Jack Neely.

A few years ago, KUG posted something about the site of Agee'schildhood home, which is now called James Agee Park in the Fort Sanders neighborhood, at Clinch Ave. From time to time, events are held here in celebration of the flag-bearer of Knoxville's literary heritage. While that particular block of the Fort has been given over to student housing over the past century, a block more evocative of that era might be the 1600 block of Forest Ave. Perhaps Agee's childhood friends resided there.

As for the accident that took Hugh James Agee's life in 1916 and inspired his son's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family, the location is not particularly glamorous, but certainly storied. Jack Neely is arguably Knoxville's most well-versed person in Ageeana, by dint of research for his Secret History columns in the Knoxville Mercury and its predecessor, the MetroPulse. The intersection of Clinton Highway and Emory Rd. is as close as modern configuration can determine the accident site. For years, Jack and others would congregate at the Checker Flag Sports Bar and toast the tragic event-- he has even spoken to someone who remembered the accident. Here is a MetroPulse  article (amazingly still available), mourning the closing of the Checker Flag four years ago.

Rap on Clapping

Concert-goers new to the classical scene are always asking, “when can I clap?” In pondering an answer to this question, I came across some interesting facts and trends on various websites of symphony orchestras and record companies, and even some discrepancies as to the basis for the tradition. One source claims that the idea of saving applause for after the final movement of a piece is actually a pretty recent (only the last 50 years or so) phenomenon, while another says that the protocol is firmly rooted in the German tradition, dating back to Mozart's time.

How you might react at a concert should not be something to stress over. It's not your fault that composers wrote works in such a way as to “fake you out,” with false endings only a third of the way through a work. The tendency worldwide is to favor between-movement applause, especially after big endings where it is hard not to applaud, but not as an obligation after every single movement, regardless of its level of finality. After a movement that ends quietly, it is preferred that there be no applause, as the silence between movements here serves as a tension builder. When an entire work ends quietly, it is extremely jarring when one or maybe two attendees clap before the final note has even faded away. When this happens, the applauders, or shouters of “Bravo,” become performers, proving to all that they know when the work is over. (Or perhaps that they are following along in a score to the work). There are no awards for being the first person to clap; if there is any doubt, it's ok to be a follower and not a leader; the conductor will put down his baton and turn around and bow. I feel safe in quoting Billy Joel here; “Leave a tender moment alone.” Like most musicians, I cherish that span of silence that lay between the final placid note and the first pair of clapping hands. In any case, if someone's applause bothers you at a concert, it is NOT ok to express your dismay by giving them the hairy eyeball.

Let's look at some other questions that surface from time to time. I have used the terms “movement,” “piece,” and “work” above, but never the word “song.” To hear iTunes tell the story, everything that has sound is a “song,” whether it is a 5-hour Wagner Opera, a Bach cantata, or one of those little 20-second snippets of song on the Beatles' Let It Be album (like Dig It). Sure, iTunes, whatever. The concert hall reality is that classical composers write works (think “work of art”) or pieces, which may have several sections or movements. They may write song cycles, literally an album of songs, but that album as a body is referred to as a piece or a work.

Confusion happens when there are differing styles and tempi within an individual movement. Prokofiev did this a lot. It can also happen when two movements are linked together. (Musicians call this practice attacca, Italian for “attached”). In my first season here, maestro Kirk Trevor conducted Brahms 4^th Symphony with the final two movements linked very seamlessly, and when the Thursday night performance was over, (thinking the third movement was actually 16 minutes long), no one clapped! He had to step off of the podium and bow to convince the audience that there was not another movement forthcoming. The Friday night show utilized a somewhat longer pause between the third and fourth movements.

I think we can all agree that, applause or not, there is no worse interrupter of a classical concert than a cell phone going off. We depend on the audience to be sticklers for silencing their phones, and for not answering them (but silencing them discreetly) if they do ring. I refer you to a scene in the 2000 Woody Allen film, Small Time Crooks, wherein Tracey Ullman answers a cellphone call in the middle of a cello recital. It's a ridiculously funny social commentary, brought off as only Woody can.

My words here are by no means the gospel on this subject. Here are a couple webpages whose content I found useful. NeoClassical is a blog by Holly Mulcahy, concertmaster of the Chattanooga Symphony. I especially liked that she had advice for experienced concert-goers and newbies alike, with some special guidelines for conductors. And this Colorado Public Radio story gives some historical background to the differing customs regarding this issue.

Apprentices and Assistants: An Overview

Since my arrival here in 1986, the KSO has had a succession of apprentice and assistant conductors who have brought new approaches and twists to the podium while learning the tricks of the trade.  I thought it would be interesting to dig a little bit to see the achievements these folks have made.  I can't tell you how much easier the internet makes this task.

Sergio Bernal was the apprentice conductor during my second season with the KSO, 1987-88.  His easy-going manner and Latin charm won over the musicians, who claimed him as “one of us.” He has been busy ever since- from 1997-2001, he was employed by the National System of Orchestras in Venezuela (aka El Sistema), of which our Principal Second Violinist Edward Pulgar is a product.  Since 2001, he has been the Music Director of the Utah State University Symphony Orchestra in Logan, UT.

Sergio Bernal before... (center, with shades, at a bad taste party in 1989)

and today.

Russell Vinick was the first musician I met in Knoxville who came from the same central Connecticut primordial soup as me.  It was such a relief to finally be able to go get a grinder (known as a “sub” or a “hoagie” most everywhere else) with someone and reminisce about the 1978 Hartford Civic Center roof collapse.  Today, Russ lives in Chicago and is the Music Director of (among other things) the Chicago Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, “Chicago's original community orchestra.”

Russ Vinick

Up until the mid-90s, the presence of an apprentice conductor was solely at the discretion of Maestro Trevor, but starting in 1995 (I THINK), the KSO instituted an official apprentice conductor position.  Tuba player Sande MacMorran was the official assistant conductor, whose job was to conduct rehearsals in the Maestro's absence, or to take to the podium so that the Maestro could hear orchestra balance from out in the house to check balance.  This situation was inherently awkward, since an orchestra member's part would then be missing from the mix- and the tuba is an important element in that mix.  I am a little sketchy on the exact dates the apprentices were in town, but I'm petty sure they are as follows.

A native of Dawson Creek, BC, Charles Demuynck is currently a composer and conductor heard throughout Canada and the US.  My stand partner at the time (1995-96), Carey Cheney, was also a Canuck, and the two of them were always reminiscing about good times in the “old country.”  Charles is now Music Director of the Oakville (ON) Chamber Orchestra, and is in heavy demand in the Toronto area.

Charles Demuynck

Conductor-violinist Navroj “Nuvi” Mehta came to Knoxville for the 1996-97 season.  Nuvi had the distinction of having the longest arms I have ever seen on a conductor (rivaling Leif Seigerstam), and his performance of David Diamonds Rounds for String Orchestra was an exciting experience.  He has been the Director of Educational Outreach for the San Diego Chamber Orchestra since 1999, and continues to be involved with the San Diego Symphony.   He can be seen here in a podcast interview for a performance of Beethoven's 5^th by the SDSO.

Nuvi Mehta

Tara Simoncic was here for the 1997-98 season, another apprentice who the musicians could relate to and bond with.  Her current activities take her all over the world, but she is probably most well-known as the long-time conductor for the Louisville Ballet's annual Nutcracker performances.

Tara Simoncic

Our apprentice conductor for 1998-99 was Rufus Jones, Jr.  Rufus was a studious conductor with a passion for the music of African-American composers such as William Grant Still and Samuel Coleridge Taylor.  After his stint with the KSO, he went on to guest conduct near and far, including the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Musical May) in Florence, Italy, but his major focus has been on research in the area of African-American conductors and composers.  You may have seen him on PBS's Tavis Smiley just a couple weeks ago, on which he plugged his new book entitled Dean Dixon: Negro at Home, Maestro Abroad.  The book explores the fascinating yet tragic life and career of Dean Dixon, the first African-American conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic. Here is that interview.

Rufus Jones, Jr.

Daniel Meyer was enlisted as the KSO's apprentice conductor for the 1999-2000 season.  The orchestra's strong financial condition fostered the creation of a new Assistant Conductor position, with former Assistant Sande MacMorran now Associate Conductor.  Dan's confidence and ability on the podium were such that he was hired in that capacity.  I will always remember his performances of the Young People's Concerts, in which I played The Swan from Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals.  When Maestro Lucas Richman was selected as Music Director of the KSO in 2003, he essentially traded places with Dan, who assumed the Assistant Conductor position with the Pittsburgh Symphony which Maestro Richman had vacated to come here.  Currently the Music Director of both the Erie Philharmonic and the Asheville Symphony, Dan somehow found the time in March of 2011 to return to Knoxville to conduct the KSO in Holst's The Planets.

Daniel Meyer

Swiss native Cornelia Laemmli Orth brought a refined European style, an effervescent sense of humor, and an unflagging, sincere smile to the podium in 2002.  Her tenure here tided the orchestra over during the transition between Maestro Trevor's and Maestro Richman's Music Directorships.  In the years since her appointment, Cornelia has been Music Director of the Oak Ridge Symphony and the Symphony of the Mountains (formerly the Kingsport Symphony) in upper East Tennessee.  Since the apprentice conductor post was discontinued during Maestro Richman's tenure, her proximity to Knoxville has fortunately resulted in repeat engagements with the KSO on Pops concerts and run-outs.

Cornelia Laemmli Orth

Pops, Pops and More Pops! (corrected)

While the KSO Masterworks Series has a lot to offer with its all-star repertoire and its parade of guest maestros, the Pops Series packs a wallop, too, with six concerts that run the gamut of popular culture and music.

Starting with a bang is the “Classical Night Fever,” a 70s disco revue that will whisk you away to the days of dance floor derring-do, platform shoes and disco balls. Our guest ensemble, Motor Booty Affair, keeps a busy schedule around their Maine home base, but they will board their flying funk machine to the Tennessee Theatre on FRIDAY, Oct 2nd at 8:00. (Please note that except for this one, all of the subsequent Pops concerts will be Saturday nights, and will start at 8:00 at the Knoxville Civic  Auditorium).

1940 was a great year for movies, with The Great Dictator, The Grapes of Wrath, The Philadelphia Story and Foreign Correspondent all capturing the imagination of adult viewers, and Pinocchio  and The Blue Bird  charming the kids. One movie was released, however, that won over movie-goers of all ages, and that was Fantasia,  celebrating its 75^th anniversary this year.  On January 16^th, 2016, the KSO will be providing music to scenes from Fantasia, including Mickey Mouse's ever-popular Sorcerer Scene. IMDb has a lotto say about this wonderful film, and also provides some interesting trivia.

As a prelude to Valentine's Day, the KSO will present songs of Rodgers and Hammerstein on February 13^th. Wouldn't It Be Loverly if you took your sweetie to the Civic to hear love songs and songs you love? (Say yes). Tunes by other Rodgers collaborators, such as Lorenz Hart and Jerome Kern, will also be performed, adding up to what will surely be Some Enchanted Evening.

The Fifth Dimension will grace us with a return engagement on March 12, 20 years after their first appearance with us in May of 1995. Their 60s and 70s hits are baby-boomer anthems, hearkening back to a pre-Auto-Tune era when what you heard was what you got.

In 1975, I bought my first stereo, and was thus indoctrinated into the world of record collecting. My first purchases were Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, by Elton John, and Led Zeppelin IV. I wore out that Led Zep album, trying to unlock the secrets of Jimmy Page's guitar playing, while my parents wondered when I would unlock my cello case. On April 9, Windborne (who brought us The Music of Queen this past April) will be back, this time with a program of Led Zeppelin's music. This very first of Windborne's productions is now in its 20^th year, and features gritty Classic Rock hymns such as Kashmir, Black Dog, Stairway to Heaven, and Good Times, Bad Times. I don't need to add that this will be a GOOD time.

For the grand finale of the News-Sentinel Pops Series, we will be hosting none other than Kenny G! OMG!   If songs like Yakety Sax and Junior Walker's Shotgun helped put the saxophone on the pop map, Kenny G built an entire empire based upon the sax. Songs like The Moment, Songbird and Forever in Love are staples in a genre that really only includes him.  This smooth jazz feast will take place on May 7^th.

Summer Reading List, Part 2

Where were we, I guess it was January! Personally, the bulk of next season's uncharted (by me) territory will be trod by the end of January. After that, the repertoire tends to be more familiar and includes some more of my all-time favorites. On the 21^st and 22^nd at the Tennessee Theatre, our guest conductor, Aram Demirjian, will lead the orchestra in an eclectic program that begins with music of John Adams and Gyorgy Ligeti. My favorite violin concerto, the Bruch, will follow, spotlighting violinist Philippe Quint, and what better way to get you over the January blues than Beethoven's radiant 7^th Symphony? The 2^nd movement Allegretto is as perfect a piece of music as has ever been written; if you have seen The Fall, Mr. Holland's Opus, The Darjeeling Limited, or The King's Speech, then you've heard it and know what I am talking about. There are probably three dozen movies all told that have sampled it.

Another eclectic Masterworks concert comes along on February, 18^th and 19^th, this time with guest conductor Eckart Preu. The repertoire comes from Spain-via-Weimar (Strauss' Don Juan), Verona-via-Moscow (Prokofiev's Suite from the Romeo and Juliet ballet), and..... Seymour!? Yessiree, Heritage High graduate Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral is the most-performed orchestral work written in the last 25 years. In the classical realm people say “Higdon” as they would “Strauss” or “Mozart,” especially now that she has won a Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto. Anyway, the wingspan of this repertoire will have us burning the midnight oil, for sure.

Mention the words “Brahms Sextet,” around string players, and they will coo. Both of his sextets are lush and captivating earlier works of his that set the bar out of reach for their genre. Gabe Lefkowitz and Friends performed the B-flat sextet in March of 2014, and will complete the cycle on April 6^th and 7^th at the Knoxville Museum of Art with the G Major Sextet. Coooo.... Gabe will return to the spotlight on the April 24^th Chamber Classics concert, soloing on the Mozart G Major concerto. This concert, directed by Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum, will conclude with Dvorak's Serenade for Strings. As radiant as the Beethoven 7^th but on a smaller scale, you can practically smell the kolaches during the 2^nd movement Tempo di Valse.

By May, we will mostly likely have chosen a new Music Director.  Many things will be learned and revealed about the candidates, and I am really looking forward to the process.  The final Masterworks concert on May 12^th and 13^th will again be led by James Fellenbaum, and will feature Beethoven's longest (and IMHO, best) overture, the Leonore No. 3, with its cockamamie violin outburst and offstage trumpet call.  The concert (and the season) will end with a suite from Wagner's monumental Ring Cycle, music which always pushes the envelope on orchestral achievement.  It's fitting that maestro Fellenbaum gets the last word in on this season, a reward for his tireless, quality work piloting the orchestra between Music Directors, and for his capable and tactful handling of every duty with which the KSO has entrusted him in during his tenure here. We look forward to his continuing presence on the podium and in the community. Way to go, Jim!

COME FORTH ON THE FOURTH!

It's just a few days away, the biggest Independence Day celebration and concert since... last year! Saturday night at 8:00 the KSO will take the stage on the Performance Lawn (formerly the South Lawn, apparently) of World's Fair Park to commemorate the USA's 239^th birthday. There will be something for everyone at this party, starting at 4:00 pm with the Regal Cinemas' Kids Zone, and music from bands Handsome and the Humbles, Bantum Rooster and Misty River. As usual, there will be an impressive array of food vendors, a flyover at the start of the concert, and of course, those fabulous fireworks will pack a charge! Here is an official link to Festival on the 4^th with more details, as well as a Go Knoxville article with many other attractions

The KSO itself has some goodies up their sleeve. Anyone who tweets to @knoxsymphony, or uses the hashtag #KSOJuly4, will automatically be entered to win a pair of tickets to a KSO Masterworks performance of his/her choice. Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum will lead the orchestra in a program of festive favorites like Sousa's El Capitan and Stars and Stripes Forever, an Armed Forces Salute arranged by Bob Lowden, The Pledge of Allegiance, and John Williams' suite of music from The Patriot. Other great tunes you won't want to miss are Let It Go from Frozen, Ashokan Farewell, Selections from The Sound of Music, and a suite from Williams' landmark score to Star Wars.

Our guest will be soprano Katy Wolfe, who will sing the Pledge and Gershwin's Summertime.

Anyone who has attended the KSO's Very Young People's Concerts (where she is Picardy Penguin's charming sidekick), the Sound Company show choir (which she leads), or one of scads of productions involving her at the Clarence Brown Theatre, is acquainted with Katy's talents.

The concert will be rain or shine, and free parking will be available at several area garages- although the 11^th street lot, which is closest to the venue, has had some legendary post-concert traffic snarls. Garages on Locust Street, Walnut Street, State Street & Market Square are just a few blocks walk from the show, and there will be ADA Parking at the Fort Kid Parking Lot. Hope to see you there with bells on!

Summer Reading List Part 1

Ok, enough lollygagging. It's time to peruse the repertoire for next season for new and challenging (to me) works. I am not including every work from every concert, just the most prickly ones, so refer to the calendar and you won't miss a thing.

I first played the Mendelssohn Overture to the Hebrides (September 27^th Chamber Classics) as a freshman in high school. I found it super difficult then, but very rewarding to finally get it right. The BSO used it as background music to Tanglewood's advertisements on TV back then, showing a car (I guess) driving up the twisty, conifer-lined road leading to the Tanglewood Center. The transcendence of this piece compelled me to mention Mendelssohn in my high school Yearbook write-up. Only once since then have I performed it, in February of 1990 with the KSO. I'd say it's about time, and maestro Jim Fellenbaum thought so, too.

October has a trio of new works for me to Starting with the Concertmaster Series shows on the 14^th and 15^th, it's Mendelssohn again! And it's a trio. This time, the D Minor piano Trio. How I have missed this gem so long escapes me. I have actually performed the slow movement a couple times, but never the whole thing. Shostakovich's brilliant 1^st Symphony, with guest conductor Marcelo Lehninger, comes the very next week, bringing with it a monster cello solo that takes some “living with.” This concert concludes with Resphigi's Pines of Rome, which is no, umm, walk in the park.

On the first of November, “October 32^nd,” it's the Haffner Symphony. Every string player's audition nightmare. Mozart's most challenging symphony caps off a lush Chamber Classics concert that also features Mozart's timeless Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Wagner's tender Sigfried Idyll. The other end of November brings guest conductor Shizuo Kuwahara, with two works that I doubt many of our current corps of players have performed; Rachmaninoff's 3^rd Symphony and Rodion Shchedrin's 1963 Concerto for Orchestra No. 1 (aka “Naughty Limericks”). Run, do not walk to youTube (here, let your fingers do the running) and check this work out, it's a hum-dinger in the best sense of the word and probably some of the jazziest Russian music ever. These two works will be sandwiched around Tchaikovsky's immortal Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring pianist Stewart Goodyear.

After Christmas, chamber music will be my mantra for a couple weeks in January. While last year's Principal Quartet concert came five months earlier than it had the year before, just after Halloween, this coming season's show rides into town hot on Santa's heels. Three new-to-me (but loved-by-me) works will appear on the January 10^th program: Schubert's Quartettsatz “(Quartet Movement),” Prokofieff's 2^nd Quartet, and Brahm's 3^rd Quartet. Three amazing works whose dry, unassuming titles sadly give no clue to the brilliance that lay within. A scant four days later, Gabe Lefkowitz and Friends (pianist Kevin Class, violist Katy Gawne and I) will collaborate on Dvorak's rollicking Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat. This is a late work of Dvorak that I have been waiting a long time to play. The time has come to break it out of hiding, because that cello part is a BEAR.

You know what else is a bear? Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Our Independence Day Concert is fast approaching and I know that camera is gonna be on me... So I'll finish out the season in a future post. Goodnight!

Celebrate July 4 with a BANG!

This Independence Day, a thirty-year tradition continues as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra performs patriotic music with a spectacular fireworks display on Saturday, July 4 at World's Fair Park.

This concert is free to attend; no tickets are required. View program here.

The Festival on the Fourth, presented by the City of Knoxville, begins at 4:00 p.m. with food vendors, entertainment, and family-friendly activities. As dusk draws near, the Knoxville Symphony members will take the stage for the KSO 31^st Annual FREE Pilot Flying J Independence Day Concert at 8:00 p.m.

During the Armed Forces Salute, audience members stand when the song of their Military branch is played; a moving moment every year.

KSO Resident Conductor James Fellenbaum conducts the Orchestra

in the Star Spangled Banner, Armed Forces Salute and more recognizable tunes including "Rocky Top," "76 Trombones," and music from Disney's Frozen and classics from the Sound of Music.

Talented soprano Katy Wolfe will solo for these classics. Katy is a well-known local singer who is no stranger to sharing the stage with the KSO. She has performed in holiday concerts and has held a leading role in the Very Young People’s Concerts, a symphony orchestra performance designed for students in Kindergarten through second grades.

Blankets and lawn chairs are encouraged for this free, family-friendly event. Should you choose to enjoy the concert from your couch, the performance will be live broadcasted on WBIR-TV Channel 10 at 8:00 p.m. EST. Don't forget the fireworks!

This post authored Rachel Dellinger, KSO Director of Communications