Bringing healing music to hospital patients' bedside

By the end of her 18 weeks of treatment, cancer survivor Lorie Matthews had spent 6-8 hours a day for a total of 84 hours in the chemotherapy center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. 

                              

Lorie said:

"I was so blessed by an amazingly supportive community that cheered for me along the way.  I received encouraging words, personal visits, thoughtful gifts, flowers…and music.  

Live music, a bedside visit from someone I had never met, an unexpected advocate with the transcendent power to quiet the ever-present hum of monitors and chemo pumps.  A musician who believed that he could make my day better and was willing to invest in my healing. That visit from a KSO musician came at the half-way point of my 18–week chemo journey and became a reminder that I could get through this and that a whole community was believing, not just in me, but in every survivor the music touched."

The KSO's nationally recognized Music & Wellness Program uplifts the spirit of the patients who experience live music in hospital rooms, lobbies, chemo bays, and has been shown to aid in recovery and healing. Click here to find out more and to support the Music & Wellness Program.

The KSO is eligible to win a grant of $25,000 from the Gannett Foundation. To be considered, the KSO must raise $6,000 from crowdsourcing by May 11th.

The minimum donation is $10, and all donations must go through this CrowdRise link to be eligible. Thank you for helping spread the word. 

This post authored by the KSO Communications Dept.

Time Flies...

How is it Monday already? I was going to write about the UnStaged performance, wasn't I? Well, I only missed that deadline by a week. Oy, it must be April.

Quite a variety of things happen between the monthly Masterworks concerts. Sunday, April 22 saw the Chamber Orchestra make its annual trip to Southwest Virginia Community College in Cedar Bluff, VA. SWVCC's yearly Festival of the Arts focused on the heritage of the region's residents, and our concert's repertoire ran a wide gamut of styles, from well-known names like Mozart, Copland and Dvorak, to rarely heard composers like Hamish McCunn and Charles Strouse. Fiddler Arvel Bird shared a unique collection of tunes on both fiddle and Native flute, reflective of his Native American-Celtic heritage. Cedar Bluff is a long way from here, but the ride is unforgettably beautiful and we are always welcomed very warmly there.

Immediately on the horizon is the final Q Series production of the season, Wednesday at noon at the Square Room downtown. The program will have more integration of winds and strings than on any previous “Q” show. On a concert where the Principal String Quartet and the Principal Woodwind Quintet are featured, no piece for either group's specific instrumentation will be played. Principal Oboist Claire Chenette will perform Arachne for solo oboe, by Helen Grime. Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No. 6 for Bassoon and Flute will follow, and a trio by Michael Haydn for Horn, Viola and Bass will take us up to the intermission. Concluding will be Carl Maria von Weber's effervescent Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, with Gary Sperl joining the Principal String Quartet. This is a tour de force for the clarinet, and the third movement Menuetto Cappriccio: Presto is guaranteed to bring a chuckle.

There are some Storytime concerts sprinkled in here and there, as well as performances at the Symphony League's Showhouse at the Tennessean Hotel downtown. Preparations are afoot for the Knoxville Opera Company's May 4 and 6 production of Aïda. Oh, and hey, don't let's forget about the Youth Orchestra Association's Spring concert coming up on April 29 at 7:00 at the Tennessee Theatre! We are everywhere.

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Last Sunday, “UnStaged: Flight” brought a kitchen sink of music both specifically and tangentially about flying. On a rainy night at Cirrus Aircraft (located in Alcoa, TN by McGee Tyson airport), 'shine from Old Forge distillery flowed freely and all present were wowed by the personal aircraft displayed by our host, Cirrus Aircraft.  

Now boarding.....

Our bass section, Yan Peng and Steve Benne

Unofficial KSO photographer Stacy Miller finally gets her OWN picture taken...

The finale was Michael Gandolfi's As Above. 

April Schumann

I sit here in an advanced state of readiness for the three concerts in four days (and their six rehearsals-- these concerts don't just magically happen!) that shall take place this coming weekend, sandwiched around the Knoxville Opera Company's Rossini Festival. What are we looking at?

April's Masterworks concerts will be conducted by guest maestro Edwin Outwater this Thursday and Friday. Guest soloist for the Mozart D Minor Piano Concerto will be Fei-fei Dong. Featured in the final scene and end credits of the film Amadeus, this is probably THE most popular Mozart piano concerto- come on out and see why! The Mozart will follow Violent, Violent Sea, composed in 2011 by Missy Mazzoli. The large orchestra version of the Mazzoli work was premiered by the Albany Symphony under David Alan Miller, who was a finalist for music director of the KSO when Lucas Richman was hired. Marimba and vibraphone figure prominently in this roiling, turbulent work. Maestro Outwater led his home orchestra, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, in VVS's Canadian premiere in January of 2013.

Closing the program will be Robert Schumann's  Symphony No. 2, from 1846. When you think of symphonists, perhaps Schumann (pronounced "shoo-mon") isn't the first composer to come to mind, what with music by these dudes named Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky around. Taken as a whole, though, Schumann's four symphonies establish him as a distinct voice in a crowded field, unlike Brahms, whose symphonies try just a little too hard to be the second coming of Beethoven. I guarantee you, right at this moment 22 KSO violinists are up to their noses in the notes that make up the exciting 2nd movement scherzo (pronounced “scared so”). I have heard many violinists play this at auditions and frankly, my heart goes out to them. This is music that would aptly accompany a kayak trip down Class IV (or higher) rapids. 

That's Thursday and Friday nights, 7:30 at the Tennessee Theatre. Tickets here. More about Sunday's "Unstaged" performance in a bit...