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2018 Rossini Festival

This weekend I went to the 17th annual Rossini Festival International Street Fair.  It’s a celebration of the performing arts in downtown Knoxville.

The proximate reason I attended was because Knoxville Community Band had a short concert in the morning.  We played the following songs:

My vantage point:

Getting ready to play “Napoli”:

This was our first performance of 2018.  Overall, I think we did well.  There was a bit of a rough patch in “Napoli,” but a casual listener might not have even noticed it.  Our director, Mr. Larry Hicks, seemed pleased with our efforts.

I spent the rest of the morning/afternoon roaming about catching the sights, sounds, and smells of the festival (though frankly, I thought much of the fried food smelled and looked disgusting).

Performance by Pellissippi State’s vocal ensemble, Variations:

Thousands of people pack Gay Street.

It was great to see so many people out enjoying music on a pleasant spring day.

The festival is wonderful because you can conveniently sample many different musical genres.  Ordinarily, I probably wouldn’t go through the hassle of attending stand-alone concerts to hear all of this music live, but this day makes it easy.  I enjoyed a brass ensemble, a string quartet, interpretative dance, a choral group, opera singers, kids playing violins, and a jazz band.

Rossini Festival is one of my favorite Knoxville events.  I look forward to experiencing it again next year.

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