When I first saw the programming lineup for the University of Tennessee Symphony Orchestra fall season, I sensed right away that something big and significant must be afoot.

I admit I never asked whether the joint occurrence of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy and the opening concert last Sunday of the University of Tennessee Faculty Chamber Series was by design or by coincidence of the calendar. ...

After a Knoxville summer devoid of concerts and operatic performances, music lovers always seem to be anxious for the fall season with the giddy eagerness and optimism of a third-grader armed with fresh school supplies. The fall of 2011 has ...

“School’s Out” was a big hit for Alice Cooper in 1972, and has since become an iconic statement of euphoria for a summer with little to offer except a few mindless pleasures. Unfortunately, though, the song’s anthemic refrain—“School’s out for ...

Given recent sad events and important personnel changes, I wasn’t necessarily expecting the final Masterworks concerts of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s 2010-11 season to be an exhilarating and euphoric experience, but that’s exactly what happened last weekend.

Making sense of the Baroque period of music today is no small task, for probably no other period of music has suffered as much at the hands of both history and contemporary marketers.

Performances of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 today have unfailingly been presented and accepted as big events.

It is an inescapable fact that opera-goers are not likely to confuse Vincenzo Bellini’s 'I Puritani' for one of the repertoire’s great dramatic operas. Improbable plot points and a shaky view of English history, however, cannot diminish its status as ...

When I first sat down to chat with soprano Rachele Gilmore in January of 2010, she had just arrived in Knoxville for rehearsals of last season’s Knoxville Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor, in which she was singing her debut ...

Even more so than his contemporaries Rossini and Donizetti, Bellini was known as a major proponent of the bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style of opera. Beyond mere vocal fireworks, Bellini’s bel canto is exemplified by long, exquisite melodies punctuated by ...

A moral crisis triggered by the inability to find a virginal maiden sounds like just the thing for a mythological tale or a Baroque opera. But that idea and its necessary aftermath are, more or less, the crux of Albert ...

Kirk Trevor ended his 18 seasons as music director and conductor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in 2003, but many Knoxville concertgoers still remember his tenure with the KSO for producing exquisitely detailed, emotional, energetic performances with a distinct stylistic ...

As the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s 75th anniversary season winds down, we’ve had reminders of how the orchestra began its life in 1935 as well as numerous solid examples of the status the orchestra holds today. This week, Knoxville audiences will ...

The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra made a substantial pre-Rossini Festival operatic statement last weekend with its concert at the Bijou Theatre titled “Opera Highlights,” the bulk of which was an intelligently constructed grouping of overtures and arias from operas inspired by ...

For someone who dedicated his musical life to writing for the piano, it has always seemed a little odd that Frédéric Chopin, who at the age of 19 was not really adept at writing for an orchestra, should boldly begin ...