Brian Salesky
Brian Salesky, executive director and conductor of the Knoxville Opera, will be the featured speaker at an AAUW meeting on Monday.
The luncheon meeting of the AAUW, Oak Ridge Branch, starts at 11:30 a.m. Monday at First Presbyterian Church, Room 102.
Salesky’s presentation is titled “Knoxville Opera: Serving Knoxville with Passion for 36 Years!” [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge Senior Center will be offering free guitar lessons for senior citizens age 50 and older on Fridays beginning Jan. 10.
Beginners will start at 9 a.m., and more advanced students will follow. The only requirement is to bring your own guitar.
Seniors of all skill levels are encouraged to come out and join in the fun.
The Oak Ridge Senior Center will also be holding a meeting to find out about community interest in banjo lessons. The lessons will be provided free of charge to seniors age 50 and over. All that is needed is a banjo and a willingness to learn. [Read more…]
A coffeehouse at First Presbyterian Church on Friday will benefit the Emory Valley Center, which has been raising money for a new building on Emory Valley Road.
A coffeehouse at First Presbyterian Church on Friday will raise money for the Emory Valley Center.
The coffeehouse “promises to be fun-filled and very musical,” and it will feature 11 acts and 19 performers, a press release said. The performances will include folksy guitar plucking, women’s a capella, and modern dance.
The night will help the Emory Valley Center launch its final year of fundraising for a new building on Emory Valley Road, the release said.
The coffeehouses are operated by college students, and they are designed to provide an enjoyable musical venue while also raising funds for worthy causes in Oak Ridge. [Read more…]
Ellen Bast will perform modern dance at tonight’s Christmas Coffeehouse. (Submitted photo)
College students who are home for the holidays are hosting a coffeehouse fundraiser with live music on tonight (Friday night) from 7 to 10 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Free Medical Clinic of Oak Ridge.
The young adults hope to generate enough proceeds tonight to give a “very merry” Christmas to the clinic. The coffeehouses have become a reliable and persistent funding source for the clinic. The students have donated more than $12,000 since 2011 from the coffeehouse.
“We give them 100 percent of what we bring in, ” said Sumner Byrne, George Washington University student and event organizer. “It feels great to be making a difference.”
Byrne said many students who participate attend different colleges.
“This is a great place to get together, enjoy old friends, and make some new ones,” Byrne said. “The coffeehouse music provided by local musicians is always superb, and we raise money for a good cause. How much better can it get?” [Read more…]
The Sound Company Children’s Performing Choir of Oak Ridge is pictured above singing in an earlier concert. (File photo)
The Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra will join Sound Company and the Oak Ridge Chorus to “ring in” the holiday season during a concert on Sunday.
The concert starts at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Oak Ridge High School Performing Arts Center.
The holiday concert is presented by the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association.
The orchestra, under the direction of Dan Allcott, will open the concert with the “Hanukah Festival Overture,” composed by Knoxville’s own Lucas Richman. Music from “Mass of the Children,” and “Colors of Christmas,” will feature the children and the civic choruses. The performance will be dedicated to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Connecticut last year. [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge High School Madrigal Singers will perform at the Public Library at noon Friday.
“These students sing routinely in many languages and perform music from many time periods, Renaissance to modern,” a press release said. “Several participate in All East and All State choirs, and many receive college scholarships to help them pursue their music studies.”
Choir director Amanda Ragan is a graduate of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and has a bachelor’s degree in music education, and she has her master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. She has been teaching at ORHS for the past 15 years, and her choirs are well-known and consistently earn superior ratings at local, state, and national competitions, the press release said. [Read more…]
The Oak Ridge Community Band performs at the Dec. 6 Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony at the Civic Center. (Submitted photo)
The Oak Ridge Community Band and Wind Ensemble has a Christmas sing-along concert on Sunday.
The free concert is at 7 p.m. Sunday at the First Baptist Church at 1101 Oak Ridge Turnpike.
The concert will be held in the church sanctuary, dress is casual, and song books will be handed to the audience members to sing familiar Christmas carols along with the band, a press release said.
Another highlight of the concert will be several selections performed by the band including Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Ride,” Johann Bach’s “If Thou Be Near,” Gustav Holst’s “Christmas Day” featuring a medley of carols, and “The Little Drummer Boy” arranged by former Oak Ridge Community Band director Steve “Doc” Combs and former band member Glenn Bigelow. [Read more…]
The bass and viola sections of the Oak Ridge Community Orchestra are pictured above. (Photos courtesy of Travis Witherington)
In its free concert at 2 p.m. Saturday, the Oak Ridge Community Orchestra will play well-known music associated with traditional celebrations in December.
“Everyone will immediately recognize the dashing ‘Sleigh Ride’ by Leroy Anderson, and the Christmas carols captured by William Burkhart in his special arrangement, ‘While in the Fields,'” a press release said. “You can savor the traditional Russian flavor with ‘Polonaise’ from the ‘Christmas Eve Suite’ by Rimsky-Korsakov, and ‘Russian Christmas Music’ by Alfred Reed. Moreover, you will enjoy the lilting style of traditional Jewish music in ‘Festive Sounds of Hanukah’ by Bill Holcombe.”
This eclectic mix of celebratory seasonal music will be performed at 2 pm. Saturday in the sanctuary of the First Baptist Church of Oak Ridge, on the corner of the Oak Ridge Turnpike and LaFayette Drive. Admission is free. But, modest donations at the door to support the orchestra’s routine operating expenses will be appreciated. [Read more…]
Trumpet teacher Warren Clark, left, and student Michael Johnston, a junior at Oak Ridge High School, practice at Music Arts’ new studio space at Robertsville Baptist Church.
Music Arts, a longtime Oak Ridge music school, has moved across town to a larger space at Robertsville Baptist Church.
Its two dozen professional instructors continue to offer top-quality instruction at competitive prices. They offer private lessons on all instruments and also teach voice lessons, jazz improvisation, and music theory and composition.
Music Arts moved to Robertsville Baptist Church in October. The school had been at Oak Ridge Alliance Church. Lessons are offered Monday through Saturday.
“We offer instruction in a wide variety of instruments,” Music Arts says. “Our faculty have been educated at such schools as the University of Tennessee, Peabody, Indiana University, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Hartt School of Music.” [Read more…]
Come in out of the cold and enjoy talented musicians at the Oak Ridge Public Library.
On Dec. 19, from 7:30-8:15 p.m., Shephard’s Pipes will perform Renaissance carols in the Oak Ridge Public Library auditorium.
A recorder consort, Shepard’s Pipes was started in the 1980s by Phyllis Shepard, a music teacher and early music enthusiast in Oak Ridge, a press release said. When she returned to her home state of Vermont in 2001, the then-current members decided to continue on their own. They meet weekly to play the music that they love and they specialize in early music, usually defined as from medieval times through the Renaissance and into the Baroque, a period when much music was composed specifically for recorders. [Read more…]
Varying Degrees is pictured above during Christmas 2011. From left are Marsha Howard, Betsy Abernathy, Judy DiGregorio, Kathy Gillenwaters, Amy Souleyrette. (Submitted photo)
Varying Degrees—a vocal group composed of Amy Souleyrette, Betsy Abernathy, Judy DiGregorio, Kathy Gillenwaters, and pianist Marsha Howard—will perform their final concert on Tuesday, Dec. 17, from 7-7:30 p.m. at the Oak Ridge Public Library.
The group has sung together for six years and has appeared on WBIR-TV, “Rock to Bach,” the Tennessee Mountain Writers’ Conference, Holiday Lights at Methodist Medical Center, and numerous area churches and civic groups. The group thanks the public for their past support and invites everyone to come hear their Christmas concert, which is free of charge.
The Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church is having its annual “Messiah” sing-along on Sunday, Dec. 8.
Under the direction of Sandy Wells, the sing-along will begin at 5 p.m. Dec. 8 in the church sanctuary, and it will last about one hour, a press release said. The concert will be presented by 30 area singers accompanied by a 20-piece orchestra.
Everyone is welcome, and music will be provided for early-arriving audience members. Admission is free. [Read more…]
