I know I’ve had a number of Facebook status updates over the past week or two plugging tomorrow night’s “Symphony at the Celebration” concert. But this concert is a passion for me.
I usually do an opinion column for the paper the week of the concert urging people to attend. Last week was so crazy I never got around to it. So please forgive me if I vent a little bit here and talk about the concert, my involvement with it, and why it’s so important to me and to our community.
… and here are the photos.
We had a wonderful crowd — estimated at about 800. Everyone had a terrific time, the kids from Community High School sounded terrific, the Nashville Symphony sounded terrific, the Motlow College Jazz Ensemble sounded terrific. We had the largest art show ever.
My only disappointment is that, when the concert started to run long, someone decided to skip the baby boomer sing-along, which would have included “Do Wah Diddy Diddy,” “Joy To The World” (the Three Dog Night song, not the Christmas carol), and “Sherry.”
Other than that, it was a perfect evening. And I am dead tired.
For those of you with Charter cable in Shelbyville, Tullahoma and surrounding areas, Dawn Holley and I will be on a local-access talk show tonight at 6:30, tomorrow at 9 a.m., Friday and Saturday at 6:30 p.m. on public access channel 6. We’re not the first guests; we’re on about 20 or 25 minutes into the program, following a segment with a chiropractor.
Dawn and I appeared to promote the Nashville Symphony concert in Shelbyville.
If you’re in Bedford or a surrounding county:
Download this, make copies and post them at your office, school, house of worship, speakeasy, or wherever.
And while you’re at it, visit and/or link to the web site for this event, which I host and which I have given a new WordPress theme in honor of this year’s concert.
In the nearly 20 years that I’ve been involved with the Nashville Symphony’s community concert in Shelbyville, I can’t recall that we’ve ever taken a field trip to any of the symphony’s other concerts. That oversight will be corrected tonight, as Dawn Holley and I check out the concert at Cumberland University in Lebanon.
Of course, most of the things we need to exchange information about aren’t related to the actual night of the concert — they’re things like promotion or publicity ideas. But it will still be fun to see how another community handles its concert.
It’s been a long day at work, and this will be a nice diversion.
I may not be blogging much for the next 36 hours or so.
I slept in this morning, because I have to put in a full afternoon of work, then cover a 5 p.m. meeting, then cover a 7 p.m. meeting (school board, which is usually a long one).
Tomorrow morning, we will rush to get the newspaper out earlier than normal so that several of us can go to Chattanooga for the Tennessee Press Association awards luncheon. I’ll be driving the Times-Gazette van.
As soon as I return from the TPA luncheon tomorrow afternoon, I will meet several of my fellow members of the Symphony in Shelbyville steering committee; we will carpool to Nashville for our annual wrap-up meeting, which will be held at Schermerhorn Symphony Center, and we will stay for that night’s summer festival concert.
Fortunately, I have nothing on the agenda for Saturday — except finishing up my sermon for Sunday at Mt. Lebanon UMC.
Albert-George Schram rehearses with the SCHS band
Maestro Schram leads the Nashville Symphony
The crowd for the annual Nashville Symphony concert at Calsonic Arena in Shelbyville may have been down a little from last year. But I don’t care. We had a great crowd anyway, and it was a wonderful evening. The symphony sounded great and the Shelbyville Central High School band sounded great and the Motlow College Jazz Band sounded great.
Elizabeth Doyle, an SCHS student and the daughter of my pastor, the Rev. Lloyd Doyle, was picked this afternoon by Maestro Albert-George Schram to do the piccolo solo when the symphony and the SCHS band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in tandem at the end of the evening. Elizabeth did a terrific job.
Maestro Schram, as always, was a delight, with his enthusiasm and his wonderful humor (delivered in his native Dutch accent).
Just a great evening, as always, and I’m proud to have had any little part in putting it together as a member of the steering committee.
The live Gershwin concert — which was terrific — is being followed by a half-hour interview of Giancarlo Guerrero by John Siegenthaler. (For our out of town readers, this is the father of the former NBC anchor John Siegenthaler, whom Middle Tennessee residents still tend to think of with “Jr.” after his name.)
It’s a wonderful interview. When Siegenthaler asked Guerrero about his favorite pieces to conduct, his first reaction was Verdi’s “Requiem” — which is the only thing I’ve seen Guerrero conduct in person, on my birthday this year.
Guerrero told a very funny story about dreaming of playing the violin and then switching to the drums because the line for the violin tryouts was so long and he hates standing in line!
I’m getting ready to watch (on TV, unfortunately) the Nashville Symphony play Gershwin under the baton of its new conductor and music director: Nicaraguan-born, Costa Rica-raised Giancarlo Guerrero. (Technically, for contract reasons, he is conductor-designate this year and will become conductor a year from now.) And I love the new ads the symphony is running to introduce him. One will appear above the jump; the other three below.