Review: A Powerful Mozart Requiem from Knoxville Symphony and Knoxville Choral Society – Arts Knoxville artsknoxville.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from artsknoxville.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The tenth Big Ears Music Festival would have been a landmark for 21st century music even with a lineup half as large, even without some of its biggest-drawing stars of jazz and indie folk. That an event this radically eclectic and this demanding in its curation could survive and thrive over more than a decade suggests something encouraging about our highly distracted and fractured 2020s culture. In Episode 242 of The String, I take a field trip to Knoxville, TN to share the story of the Big Ears idea, my impressions of some outstanding performances, and the voices of important creators who span the roots/jazz bridge – bassist and broadcaster Christian McBride, banjo innovator Béla Fleck, throwback country singer Sierra Ferrell, folk song collector and interpreter Jake Xerxes Fussell, and ambient jazz bandleader Rich Ruth.
This weekend, the combined forces of the Burlington Choral Society and Montpelier's Onion River Chorus — 100 singers strong — will perform music in solidarity.