The marquee of the Tennessee Theater announced the Knoxville Symphony’s recent concert.
In Saturday’s (2/25) Arts Knoxville, Alan Sherrod writes, “There are some concert program combinations that are simply too intriguing to pass up … Maestro Aram Demirjian and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra unlocked one of those combinations this past weekend, cutting an enjoyable swath through music history from early Romanticism through turn-of-the-century Impressionism, then finally introducing a compelling new work by a living American composer…. The very new was Sarah Gibson’s ‘to make this mountain taller,’ which opened the second half of the program. The 9-minute work was commissioned in 2023 by the League of American Orchestras with the support of the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation—a process that also granted the KSO one of the first performances. With Gibson present at the performance, she noted the inspiration for the work … The work uses an expanded orchestra with extra woodwinds and extensive percussion and altered instrumental/vocal effects. Non-programmatic, the work has an infectious shifting tonality of sliding pitches, guttural punctuations from low brass, rhythmic motifs from trumpets and horns, abstractions and melodies from the strings, and an energy that seems to emerge from all corners of the orchestra.” Also on the program were the Beethoven Violin Concerto with soloist Geneva Lewis and Debussy’s La Mer.
