catsittingstill

I went to Mozart in the Park yesterday—it’s put on by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, aka the KSO, in the Knoxville Botanical Gardens and Arboretum.

I was getting a new bow (thanks for the Christmas present, Dad!) from Knoxville Fine Violins, and I wanted to combine two trips in one because gas is cheaper than it was but still. So I took Beatrice along in her case, which has space to keep several bows safe and protected, and which is light and has backpack straps suitable for carrying around in the park, and set out about 3 pm.

Wesley was happy to sell the bow, and I *very carefully* stowed it away in the case, and set out to find the Botanical Gardens, which were only about fifteen minutes drive away.

Following the GPS directions I started seeing pink patches in the road—a pink dotted line, on car scale, in fact. Every time I had to make a turn, so did the dotted line. After a while I was intrigued enough to say “I’m nearly three hours early; I have time to follow this dotted line and see where it goes.” Sure enough it went to the park, turning onto a gravel drive. The gravel drive was a longer-than-I-expected gravel road, threatening to turn a bit rough in some places. I said to myself “What does Maggie even HAVE all wheel drive for if not to explore this gravel road in the middle of Knoxville that I found by following a pink dotted line?”

The gravel drive was bordered by low stone walls, very picturesque, and passed a tiny stone house and a few turnoffs onto ”roads” that were entirely grass, bordered by those low stone walls. I followed the gravel drive to a large gravel parking lot and parked in the shade there. My GPS was saying I was within walking distance of the Gardens. I got out and had a quick look around and verified that I was in fact IN the gardens; the point the GPS had selected was the office of the place, but it’s half gardens, half forest, 47 acres, with lots of stonework. Apparently the place was a plant nursery for a long time, owned at least part of that time by two brothers, one of whom was a stone mason. He must have been patient, busy, and long-lived, because there was stonework everywhere.

I explored a little, figured out where the event was going to be (thank you for your help, Phillia(?)—I’m terrible with names so I’m not sure I have that right—and Jessica) and made a quick side trip to grab take-out from the Wok and Roll. I went back to my shady parking spot (there are advantages to arriving 3 hours early and one of them is your pick of parking spots) and opened the windows and ate an early supper.

Then I shouldered Beatrice’s case again (no way was I leaving her or the new bow in a closed car; that’s a classic way of destroying instruments) and began more serious exploration. This would be a GREAT place for the SCA to have a demo tourney—or for that matter an actual event, though I suspect overnight camping is forbidden. The park is full of paths, some made of concrete and many lightly graveled and some (the older ones I expect) made of stone. In various spots nearer the buildings there are obvious millstones set into the path. There are several low round towers, and that tiny stone house I mentioned (there was some trash in that and I came back with my trash bag from the car and picked a lot of it up.). I was not positive where visitors were permitted so I did not open any doors, but the stone house had no door, so I figured that was fair game.

I found a stone seat (they’re all over) and sat down a while and played Beatrice with the new bow, just to get a little violin practice (honestly mostly just playing) in; it was a wonderful place and time to play, in the shade, with the weather cooled down, and the leaves rustling overhead. I need to make time to go back there in a couple of weeks and see leaf-turn.

There was a bamboo grove into which several paths had been cut; it was dim in there because the bamboo grows so closely together, so it had sort of a spooky maze effect. There were also garden areas, some with flowers (there was a sort of purple daisy that was blooming quite enthusiastically but most of the flowering plants were not; no fault of the gardens—it’s just fall) and signs identifying trees. There were some sprouts I’m fairly sure were poison ivy but I hopefully managed to avoid blundering into any.

Eventually I went back to Maggie, got my cardigan and my camp chair out of the back, and went off, still carrying the violin case, to set up at the first music spot.

Basically the plan was to start with 3 string quartets in 3 spots in the gardens, performing short Mozart pieces 3 times each so that people could move from place to place and see and hear all three. The spot I had chosen for set up was fairly popular, with several dozen people on the stone terraces. The stone walls provided a convenient place to sit, but the terraces were wide enough I could set up my camp chair behind the wall-sitters so everyone could see. They played a couple of movements of some late Mozart piece in E flat; I didn’t get the exact name. There was something very tender about the way the musicians were all so focused on each other, passing the lead back and forth, swaying in time. I have discovered that I love quartets. Also a clear autumn evening in the gardens is an utterly enchanting setting for a string quartet. 10/10 will go again!

The second spot I went to was in the Martha Ashe Garden section of the park, and I tried to set up behind the people who were sitting on the ground, with limited success because people were leaving and arriving in kind of a haphazard way. This Mozart piece was my favorite of what I heard, his Divertimento in D. The deep instrument in this was a double bass rather than a cello, with a strange silver extension on its head that was very clear in the fading light. The first movement had some lovely chirpy bits with everyone playing these very staccato dancing notes and everyone nodding and swaying and at one point the double bass player started playing pizzicato (plucking the strings with his finger rather than playing them with his bow) and it was just so funny I laughed and someone else in the audience laughed also and the bass player grinned this big grin. And in the second movement there was a bit that just made the feelings well up in me in a big confused mass and I wept, which is not something instrumental music usually does to me. Fortunately not very much, since there were so many people I was wearing a mask even though we were outside.

I stopped to talk to the musicians this time, and told the viola player how much I loved the moments when the viola took the lead to dance them all into the next phrase and asked the double bass player about the silver extension on his instrument—it is actually a string extender to make the lowest string EVEN LOWER and there are keys on it to let him finger the lower notes, like the keys on a flute; how cool is THAT! He can go all the way down to an octave below the C on the cello I think.

I’m not quite sure if they had trouble getting the timing to work or if I’d shot their plans in the foot by staying to talk but I got to the Greenhouse quartet kind of in the middle of their performance so I crept in the back and just stood rather than messing about with the chair. It was fun, but I was further away and I missed the start and it didn’t grab me the way the first two had. I am still glad I heard it though.

The evening finished up with the entire orchestra playing in the biggest building on the site, which had a big glass wall and multiple glass doors opening onto a stone courtyard on that side, and then a low stone wall (natch) and a grassy lawn stretching back. Every door was flung wide, and the whole thing miked so that you could sit outside and listen. By then it was pretty dark, but I found a place next to the sound person where I could set up my chair. The sound person was using an iPad to run the big soundboard that was off to the side, and every now and then I could glance over and see what he was doing, but the orchestra had most of my attention.

My violin teacher is the lead second violin in the KSO. He wasn’t in any of the quartets because he’d had a quartet performance earlier in the week and thus had that part of the evening off, but was going to be part of the 8pm performance of the full orchestra. However, from where I was sitting he was hidden by the post between a couple of the glass doors. I spent a certain amount of time craning my neck trying to figure out where he was, before the orchestra started swaying enough to reveal him. The full orchestra had woodwinds and reeds and drums and I think brass, but the strings were still playing a very large role in the music. They played several pieces, and finished with Eine Kleine Nachtmusiek which, as promised, was something I’d heard so many times I could have hummed along with the first part.

It was a wonderful evening. The KSO is worth hearing, even without the park, and the Knoxville Botanical Garden and Arboretum is worth visiting even without the music, and the combination is magical. I will definitely be checking the KSO’s schedule for future performances!