The UTC Symphony Orchestra will present a free concert at 3 p.m. on November 6 in the Fine Arts Center’s Roland Hayes Concert Hall.
The concert will feature Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6, “Pastorale,” written as a celebration of life in the country as Beethoven came to terms with his deafness. Also on the program is Dr. Kenyon Wilson’s “Songs of Distant Earth,” a work inspired by the dwarf planets in the Milky Way solar system.
A former Fulbright Scholar to Azerbaijan, composer Kenyon Wilson is professor and interim head of the Department of Performing Arts at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is the winner of the 2014 Heartland Symphony Orchestra Composition Contest and the 2013 Hillcrest Wind Ensemble Composition Contest.
Wilson has received commissions from the University of North Dakota, Hokusho University (Japan), Morehead State University, Tennessee Technological University, Charlotte Tuba Ensemble, International Music Camp in North Dakota and the International Tuba/Euphonium Association. His recent work, “Five,” written in response to the July 2015 terrorist attack in Chattanooga, was a finalist for the American Prize in Composition and winner of the 2016 Carolyn Thompson and Roger Brown Community Engagement Award.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Education at Tennessee Technological University, a Master of Music Theory degree at Baylor University, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Georgia.
Principal tubist of the Augusta Symphony and Tuscaloosa Symphony orchestras, he has performed solo recitals in the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia, and he serves on the Board of Directors for the International Tuba/Euphonium Association.
This 60-member college/community orchestra, conducted by Sandy Morris, includes University music majors and non-majors, UTC music faculty members, area music educators and other talented amateur and professional musicians from the region.
