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Tag Archives: Nashville Symphony Archives 2014-2019
Side By Side 2016
The Nashville Symphony and Curb Youth Symphony perform the annual Side By Side concert, May 19, 2016, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville
Last night, Thursday, May 19, the Nashville Symphony hosted the annual Side By Side concert with Curb Youth Symphony. With some 150 musicians on stage, I believe this was the largest orchestra I have ever heard on the stage of Laura Turner Hall. Curb Youth Symphony is directed by Carol Nies, and the annual Side By Side event was conducted by Nashville Symphony Associate Conductor Vinay Parameswaran. It included an afternoon and evening of rehearsals on Wednesday – including the traditional pizza party in the break – and Thursday night’s concert.
2016 Bruno Walter National Conductor Preview
Next Wednesday, May 11 at 7 pm, the Nashville Symphony and the League of American Orchestras will host the most prestigious event of its kind in North America – right here in Nashville, at Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
This is a FREE concert and is open to the public.
Should Arts Programming Be Free?
Students arrive at Schermerhorn Symphony Center to attend a Nashville Symphony Young People’s Concert. January 26, 2016
We are nearing the end of the concert season and the end of the school year. For many of us, this is the time of year to review our expense budget for the past year and make plans for next year. In looking back over our accomplishments here at the Nashville Symphony over the past year — and the considerable investment of time and resources required to accomplish them — one recent incident has me concerned about how effectively we can continue to serve the community with free programming offered at no cost to students, teachers and schools.
2016 Jazz OnStage: Birth of the Cool
Last night I had the great fortune to be a part of a fine ensemble of musicians performing our very first Jazz OnStage: part of the OnStage series of free chamber music concerts at the Nashville Symphony.
The OnStage series has been a part of the Nashville Symphony’s community engagement programming for many years now, and I’ve written about these programs in a number of previous posts here on Off The Podium. The concept of the program is simple: on selected weeknights throughout the season, Nashville Symphony musicians present an early evening chamber music concert in which the audience is seated on the stage with the musicians, and the program includes the opportunity for dialogue between the musicians and the audience.
Curb Concerto Competition Finalists 2016
2016 Curb Concerto Competition Finalists: (l to r) Jocelyn Hartley, Clara Warford, Maggie Kasinger, Shawn Zheng, Kazuki Takizawa. March 6, 2016, Schermerhorn Symphony Center, Nashville
I’m very pleased to share the news here that this year’s Curb Concerto Competition was a great success, and featured a high level of playing on the parts of the participants. Students ages 14 to 18 competed for thousands of dollars in prize money and the chance to perform with the Nashville Symphony in our annual competition, held this year on March 5 & 6 here at Schermerhorn Symphony Center. All told, this year’s competition included 16 string, brass, and piano students, each of whom performed their auditions on the stage of Laura Turner Hall.
Understanding Accelerando: FAQ
Our very first auditions for Accelerando are around the corner: applications and all supporting materials are due by Friday, March 4, and auditions will be held at W.O. Smith Music School on Saturday, March 12.
For the last two months, our Education & Community Engagement Department here at the Nashville Symphony has held information sessions out in the community and fielded many questions by email and phone as we seek to find the right students to begin this groundbreaking program this year.
Accelerando is a unique music education initiative distinct in many ways from other music education programs in Middle Tennessee. In order to foster greater understanding of the goals of Accelerando, what the program entails, and who is eligible to participate, I have compiled here a list of some of the most frequently asked questions we have received about Accelerando – together with some responses.
Pictures at an Exhibition
Viktor Hartmann: Plan for a City Gate in Kiev, watercolor, 1869
Modest Mussorgsky (1839 – 1881) was a Russian composer best known today for a few celebrated works, including Night on Bald Mountain – a musical depiction of a “witches sabbath” most often played on Halloween programs and other programs depicting musical grotesqueries – and Boris Gudunov, an opera based on a drama by Pushkin: the butt of one of the first classical music jokes music majors learn in undergraduate school:
Q: Why did Mussorgsky only write one opera?
A: Because one Boris Gudunov.
His most beloved composition today is Pictures at an Exhibition, which was originally written as a large suite for solo piano but is best known to the listening public as a large-scale symphonic work in its orchestration by the French composer Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937).
2016 SphinxCon: Ignite to Action
Earlier this month I traveled to Detroit to attend SphinxCon – the 4th annual conference on diversity in the arts presented by The Sphinx Organization. This was my first experience attending this conference, and it was a good experience, and particularly relevant to the work my department has been intensely engaged in: we are now in the midst of launching the Nashville Symphony’s new diversity program Accelerando. Our very first auditions for Accelerando will be held on March 12.
I returned to Nashville a week ago for a schedule turned upside down due to snowstorms, but many of my impressions from the weekend in Detroit have stayed with me, and I’ve tried to write down some of them here before the march of time goes on much longer and they recede into the background.
Mellon Foundation Awards $959,000 to Accelerando
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $959,000 grant to provide major funding for the Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando music education initiative over the next six years.
2015: What Kind of Blog Is This?
2015 Off the Podium Reflections, Statistics, and Top Ten Posts
Disclosure: self-indulgent meta-post follows
It’s the last week of 2015, and looking back I decided to review my experience writing Off the Podium this year and share some statistics, what I have learned, and in a way give an overview of what exactly this blog is about.
Writing has been something I have wanted to do for years now, and I began to write in secret some time ago, but it was last year’s career transition that found me leaving the classroom to work at the symphony that finally enabled me to begin writing in earnest. I just couldn’t put it off any more!
Walter Bitner 