The Knoxville Symphony Orchestra performed the second of the pair of concerts to open its 74th season Friday night at the Tennessee Theatre with music of Southern landscapes, Southern gatherings, and Southern home life before finishing up with a musical gallery tour in Maurice Ravel's orchestration of Modest Mussorgsky's emotional rendering of art, "Pictures at an Exhibition."

One could hear the lazy charm in the "Florida Night," opening section of William Grant Still's "The American Scene, Suite 2: The South," with which maestro Lucas Richman and the KSO began the concert. Southern manners and social graces, tinged with hints of soulful, native spirituals and blues inhabited "Levee Land" before the frolic of "A New Orleans Street" brought the suite to a joyful conclusion.

Then, to celebrate the centennial of the births of both Knoxville writer James Agee and composer Samuel Barber, soprano Jami Rogers joined Richman and the orchestra for a lovely performance of Barber's setting of Agee's essay "Knoxville, Summer 1915."

Although the music was gorgeously sung by Rogers and played by the orchestra, one would have liked to have more clearly heard the details of what transpired after people gathered on their front porches for an evening chatting with neighbors.

But then, there was no mistaking the adventures that took place in John Williams "Suite from 'The Reivers'," taken from his film score of the movie about the William Faulkner story. Narrated by Bill Williams, the telling of an 11-year-old boy's ride in the town's first automobile to the wilds of Memphis was vivid and dynamic.

Finally, to illustrate Richman's development of the orchestra as it approaches next year's 75th anniversary, the KSO presented an exhibition of its own with terrific ensemble playing and beautiful solos by principal trumpet Cathy Leach. Although "Pictures" was clearly not Southern music in either its subject matter or its psychological content, the Southern audience stood to its feet with thunderous applause and roars of approval when the final chime sounded.

Bravo!

Harold Duckett is a freelance contributor to the News Sentinel.

© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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