Alan Sherrod

With a flourish and a grand gesture of au revoir, the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra finished its 2011-12 Masterworks season last weekend with its usual pair of concerts: “A Touch of France,” covering four works by French composers. As usual, time ...

Knoxville Opera’s superlative Rossini Festival production of Otello last weekend fused the brilliance and solidity of seasoned operatic performers with a solid cast of younger singers possessing major, and truly exciting, vocal talents.

With just a glance, even without a note of music being heard, one knows instantly why tenor Michael Austin is known in opera houses of the world for his portrayal of the title role in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello—he looks exactly ...

This was not the Verdi of Rigoletto or La Traviata, but a Verdi who had possibly been influenced, subconsciously of course, by his musical nemesis, Wagner. The work had musical continuity and complex orchestration—the first that one might call truly ...

Due to its familiarity with audiences, a work such as Gustav Holst’s early 20th-century suite The Planets, the headliner on last weekend’s concerts, burdens a conductor with the weight of numerous comparisons.

With the benefit of historic distance, it seems only natural that the music of Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg belongs together on the same program, as it did with Sunday afternoon’s Knoxville Symphony Orchestra’s Chamber Classics Concert.

One need look no further than last weekend’s Knoxville Opera production of Charles Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette to see what has changed in Knoxville over the last five years or so. In contradiction to the tired stereotype of opera-goers, the ...

With over 400 years of music in our western repertoire, modern concerts devoted to just one composer often run the risk of appearing overly focused, fussy, and academic, even for listeners with more than a casual interest. The Knoxville Symphony ...

The reasons for La Traviata's popularity are clear—Giuseppe Verdi’s score is tuneful, lush, and addictively evocative; the libretto has a seemingly perfect balance of character complexity, stage simplicity, and literary intrigue. The challenge, of course, is to embrace the popularity ...

It was an evening of exploration—and perhaps even discovery—as the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra trod familiar trails and also ventured into some new territory with its concerts last weekend.

Of huge importance to the theme of “American” music on the program is the presence of the world premiere of Theodore Wiprud’s Violin Concerto (Katrina).

The orchestra was back, and in ways that were phenomenally impressive in both form and spirit.

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. ...

“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 ...

Two events last weekend were great examples of the musical diversity that’s available in Knoxville—and great examples of music-making that we should be hearing more of on a regular basis.

Knoxville Opera music director Brian Salesky and stage director Keturah Stickann filled their Manon cast last weekend with singers capable of illuminating characters through their portrayals, not just through their voices.

“I’d rather be lucky than good” is not an expression you are likely to hear from Jeremy Wilson, the 29-year old trombonist and University of Tennessee alumnus who is now in his fourth season as the second trombonist with the ...

As any regular concertgoer can tell you, the Tennessee Theatre is a miracle of acoustics, with a rich, warm, natural resonance and an almost uncanny ability to project sonic details to every seat in the house. However, the appearance of ...

Legacies come in all sorts of symbolic shapes and sizes, some exaggerated by history, others understated in humility. The legacy of pianist and teacher Evelyn Miller, though, is one that has such fundamental value to Knoxville’s music history that its ...

Chamber music, by its very definition, should be a personal and up-close experience, both for audiences and musicians. With that goal in mind, the University of Tennessee Faculty Chamber Series returns to its new temporary digs, the intimate performance space ...

The Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions for the Middle/East Tennessee District were held on Saturday, Jan. 8, in the James R. Cox Auditorium on the University of Tennessee campus. From a field of 37 singers, five winners were chosen.

In contrast to the fine individual instrumental playing, the performance was missing the warmth, emotional color, and life that characterizes Beethoven.

At this time last year, I boldly predicted that 2010 would prove to be a very exciting and intriguing year for classical music in Knoxville. As it turned out, that would be every bit of an understatement. It was a ...

Keeping the recipe interesting year after year is no small feat when the audiences consist of both regular concertgoers and those who venture out only on special occasions. In this year’s production, the KSO’s performance partners were the Knoxville Choral ...

At this time of year, some among us may be having visions of Sugarplums, while others are, perhaps, dreaming of a white Christmas. As for me, I’ve been wishing for a holiday season in Knoxville filled with lots of interesting ...

Suddenly, it seems, Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker is being talked about everywhere. Alastair Macaulay, the senior dance critic for The New York Times, believing that the phenomenon of the ubiquitous American Nutcracker says as much about arts in the U.S. ...

KSO is one Knoxville organization that, after 75 years, is still achieving its goals of making music for the city, and inspiring and educating new generations of musicians to do the same.

Amid the giggly, guileless, and light-hearted charm of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore, staged by the University of Tennessee Opera Theatre last weekend, it would almost be possible to forget for an instant that the university’s school of music and its ...

As the audience arrived at the Bijou Theatre for Sunday’s performance by the Knoxville Symphony Chamber Orchestra, there was a noticeable lack of the usual concert tension in the air. Despite the auspicious occasion—a concert featuring the same works found ...

In the case of this Sunday’s concert, something old will definitely be new again. As part of the celebration of the orchestra’s 75th anniversary season, Maestro Lucas Richman has programmed a recreation of the works found on the very first ...

Even in his short lifetime, Gershwin had a profound effect, not just on other American composers and on musical theater, but also on European composers such as Maurice Ravel. But left with only wistful speculation, we have to settle and ...

The faculty members of the University of Tennessee School of Music may be feeling a bit like homeless waifs these days, while awaiting the new Natalie L. Haslam Music Center. But the show must go on. The first of three ...

Vocally and musically, this Butterfly soared. Theatrically, though, it was—despite good intentions—a confused jumble of ill-conceived staging, design incongruities, and visual metaphors gone awry.

It was an evening of symbols last weekend for the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra as it began its 2010-11 concert season.

The Clarence Brown Theatre and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, in their current joint production of Amadeus, have found a way to transform a well-known play into something quite fresh—a tight and focused, multi-faceted gem that combines music and theatre in ...

Knoxville audiences, whether seasoned or new, will be able to immerse themselves in Peter Shaffer’s somewhat controversial take on the Mozart legend as the Clarence Brown Theatre joins with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra in a unique production of Amadeus featuring ...

When the last concert in May rolls around, Knoxville Symphony Orchestra audiences have already sadly resigned themselves to the fact that without any sort of summer series in Knoxville, it will be three long months until they see the orchestra ...

The word “change” is thrown about a lot these days—both optimistically and cynically. Proof that “change” is really just inevitable “continuation” was made poignantly apparent to those who attended the season’s final Knoxville Symphony Orchestra Chamber Classics series concert last ...