Calendar of Events

Part of the 2015-2016 Broadway at the Tennessee Theatre season!

A brand new production of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, directed by three-time Tony Award® winner Jack O’Brien, will tour North America beginning September 2015. This lavish new production will launch at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, under the auspices of the Center Theatre Group, and will then tour North America for multiple seasons, playing multi-week and week-long engagements.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC features music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, suggested by The Trapp Family Singers by Maria Augusta Trapp. This new production is directed by Jack O’Brien (credits include: Hairspray, The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, The Coast of Utopia), and choreographed by Danny Mefford (Broadway’s Fun Home, The Bridges of Madison County and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson). The design and production team is comprised of Douglas Schmidt, Set Design (Tony Award® nominee: 42nd Street, Into the Woods); Jane Greenwood, Costume Design (2014 recipient of Special Tony Award ® for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre), Natasha Katz, Lighting Design (Four-time Tony Award® winner: Once, Aida, The Coast of Utopia, The Glass Menagerie) and Ken Travis, Sound Design (Aladdin, Newsies, Memphis).

Tennessee Theatre, 604 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. For information/tickets: 865-684-1200, www.tennesseetheatre.com, www.ticketmaster.com

Get your youngest ones gardening with our preschool program. These activities are designed for preschool-ages children and at least one adult.
Learn how a root can make a tasty treat! Decorate one gingerbread cookie to take home as an ornament and one to eat as a snack.

Tuesday, December 15, 10:00-11:30AM.
Cost: $5/member, $10/nonmember
All programs require preregistration. Contact Derrick Stowell, garden educator, at dstowell@utk.edu or 865 974-7151 or visit utgardens.wildapricot.org/UTGardensEvents.
UT Gardens, Chapman Drive, Knoxville, TN 37996. Information: 865-974-7151, http://utgardens.tennessee.edu

At Union Ave Books!

Tuesday , December 15th at 6:00PM: Book signing and reading with former Knoxvillian Jordan Nasser author of Home is a Fire and Fire Went Wild.

UNION AVE BOOKS
517 Union Avenue
Knoxville, TN 37902-2115
Phone: 865-951-2180
Fax: 865-851-8239
www.unionavebooks.com

With Goodwill Industries-Knoxville, at Ijams Nature Center.

Your registration guarantees that you will have a sweater in your size and all the glittery, glitzy, jingle-belly swag needed to decorate it! Workshop fee: $15.

Jingling Bells, decking the halls, however you are, come one come all! Join Ijams and Goodwill Industries-Knoxville as we provide tips and tricks to create your very own tacky Christmas sweater using recycled sweaters and swag! Goodwill is providing all of the supplies needed to bedazzle and bedeck your festive-wear. The Bearden Beer Market will be onsite selling brews, egg nog, and other holiday beverages! Register now for just $15! After you create your masterpiece, be sure to enter Goodwill’s annual “Share Your Sweater” contest for the chance to win a Goodwill shopping spree! Details at www.gwiktn.org/shareyoursweater.

Get all the details and reserve your spot (and your sweater and canvas) at www.goodwillknoxville.org/sweater.

The Tuesday Morning Musical Club will meet at Westminster Presbyterian Church, Northshore Drive. Performing will be St. John’s Cathedral Handbell Ringers, soprano Bettie McDavid Mason, violinist Mary Ann Fennell, pianist Pam Robertson and organist Candace Armstrong. Everyone is invited. Hope you can join us for this Christmas Musicale. Info: rsidey@stjohnscathedral.org

Popcorn balls and paper chains… fruits and nuts in their stockings … carols by the fire... a cedar tree cut in the nearby woods- that’s the Christmas most rural Appalachian children knew. And it's the Christmas we recreate each year throughout the Museum village at our special.... Join us as we recreate a meaningful holiday of simpler times. Traditional trees and hand-made decorations, typical of austere pioneer days, transform the Museum’s authentic log buildings.

Wander through the village and marvel at the simple treasures of their settlement days. In the one-room, dirt-floored “Dan'l Boone” cabin, strings of popcorn and cotton bolls circle a dormant tree; Paper chains and other ornaments trim the tree in the Little Tater Valley Schoolhouse. Sweet gum and sycamore balls are strung throughout the Mark Twain Family Cabin, and a traditional silver star tops a native red cedar Christmas tree in the turn-of-the-century Peters Homestead House. Apples, nuts, homemade toys, and oranges fill stockings hung in the cabins. Pick up some stocking stuffers in the Museum Gift and Antique Shop, which features everything from hand-crafted ornaments, locally made muscadine and moonshine jellies, and beautiful pottery, along with baskets, quilts, and plenty of Appalachian specialties. Or just come and enjoy a homemade southern country lunch in front of the warm fireplace. You'll want to make Christmas in Old Appalachia part of your family's annual holiday tradition!

Museum of Appalachia, 2819 Andersonville Hwy., Clinton, TN 37716 (16 miles north of Knoxville at I-75, exit 122, then one mile east). Open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. Information: 865-494-7680, www.museumofappalachia.org

The Arts & Culture Alliance proudly presents its 2015 Members Show, the largest annual exhibition of local artists in the Greater Knoxville area. The fresh mix of two- and three-dimensional works created within the last two years encompasses a wide variety of media such as oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, mixed media, photography, fine craft, sculpture, ceramics, fiber, and more from regional artists who are all individual members of the Arts & Culture Alliance, which serves and supports a diverse community of artists, arts organizations, and cultural institutions. Membership is open to all, and information may be found at www.knoxalliance.com/join.html. Most of the works in the 2015 Members Show are for sale and may be purchased through the close of the exhibition as holiday gifts.

The exhibition will be on display throughout the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville from December 4, 2015 – January 29, 2016. An opening reception will take place as part of First Friday activities on December 4 from 5:00-9:00 PM.

Gallery hours for the 2015 Members Show are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM and Sundays, December 6 & 20 and January 3 & 17, 3:30-6:30 PM. Additional special hours are posted at www.theemporiumcenter.com/visit.html. Please note, the Emporium will be closed December 24 – January 1 for the holidays. For more information, please contact the Arts & Culture Alliance at (865) 523-7543 or visit www.knoxalliance.com.

Opening reception Friday, December 4, 6:30-8:30pm

Works by Jessie Van der Laan in conjunction with Rose Center's Holiday Open House. Food, fun, and music!

Hours are 9-5, M-F through December 18. Please call ahead for holiday schedule after Dec. 18.

The Rose Center, 442 West Second North St., Morristown, TN, 37814. Information: 423-581-4330, www.rosecenter.org

After forty years of painting Knoxville’s cityscapes, Joe Parrott has turned to the architecture of the Mediterranean. With inspiration drawn from recent travels to Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Turkey, he has produced a vivid series of light-drenched, textural oil paintings.

Please join us Friday, December 4 from 5-8 p.m. for an art opening and Holiday Open House. Meet the artist, and experience the brilliant light of the Mediterranean the Impressionists often spoke of. Enjoy holiday cuisine from Holly’s Gourmet’s Market and live music by Michael Whitesides. Joe will also be performing a painting demonstration in the gallery on Saturday, December 5 from 1-4 p.m.

The District Gallery, 5113 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37919. Hours: M-F 10-5:30, Sa 10-4. Information: 865-200-4452, www.TheDistrictGallery.com

Bliss Home is pleased to present Aurora by Knoxville artist Jane Nickels, for December's First Friday. Bliss Home will host an opening reception on Friday, December 4th from 6pm to 9pm. Complimentary treats from Wild Love Bakehouse will be provided and Jane's art will be featured for the month of December.

Jane grew up in Europe, the USA and Asia attending high school at the United World College Of South East Asia, Singapore. Jane earned her BFA from Saint Mary’s College of Notre Dame, IN. Inspired by international experiences during her formative years, Jane chooses to use pattern and color presented in a non figurative format to filter out cultural bias and the visual experience of region, religion and politics. Patterns and designs found in cultures and the natural world around the globe and crossing multiple eras have been collected and studied, these patterns then are deconstructed and reformed in a foam printing or line drawing process seeking to illustrate a universal aesthetic of pattern and color. Aurora is a series of paintings that invite the viewer to explore optimism, anticipation and the energy of the aurora, of the dawn.

Bliss Home, 29 Market Square, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-329-8868, www.shopinbliss.com

The Arts & Culture Alliance is pleased to present a new exhibition of recent photographs by Dean Rice of Knoxville at the Emporium Center. These photographs show the faces of Syrian children who now live in the Zaatari Refugee Camp in the desert of Jordan and children who are orphaned living in Amman, Jordan. “We talk often of instability in the Middle East, and today we struggle with balancing our national security interests with our humanitarian desires to help the helpless,” says Dean Rice. “Through these photographs, however, we see the faces that can bring lasting stability, peace, friendship and gratitude.”

Dean Rice is chief of staff to Knox County Tim Burchett and also a member of the national advisory board of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF). In the spring of 2015, he traveled to Jordan to visit the Zaatari refugee camp and meet with various Syrians in exile. The photographs of children in this exhibition are some of those he met. Rice is a Global Security Fellow with the University of Tennessee’s Institute for Nuclear Security and serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s College of Communication and Information. In 2013, Rice received the Society of Universal Dialogue’s Atlantic Institute "Peace Award" in recognition of his efforts to promote inter-cultural engagement and dialogue. His photographs and paintings have been displayed in multiple exhibitions. A permanent exhibition of his refugee photos is scheduled to open at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC in January, 2016.

The exhibition will be on display in the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, in downtown Knoxville from December 4-23, 2015. An opening reception will take place as part of First Friday activities on December 4 from 5:00-9:00 PM with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and chocolate fondue by the Melting Pot of Knoxville. The First Friday reception features music by Pistol Creek Catch of the Day from 5:00-7:00 PM. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM and Sundays, December 6 & 20, 3:30-6:30 PM. Please note, the Emporium will be closed December 24 – January 1 for the holidays.

Arts & Culture Alliance at the Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902. Information: 865-523-7543, www.knoxalliance.com

Encore will wrap up its 9th season with a “FRA-GIL-E” package just in time for the holidays with “A Christmas Story: The Musical.” Ralphie Parker wants only one thing for Christmas; An Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle. “A Christmas Story The Musical” is the hilarious account of Ralphie's desperate quest to ensure that this most perfect of gifts ends up under his tree this Christmas. A kooky leg lamp, outrageous pink bunny pajamas, a cranky department store Santa and a triple-dog-dare to lick a freezing flagpole are just a few of the obstacles that stand between Ralphie and his Christmas dream. This new Broadway musical is based on the classic 1983 movie, which itself was based on stories by legendary radio humorist Jean Shepherd. With songs both funny and heartfelt by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, and a faithful yet inventive book by Joseph Robinette, “A Christmas Story: The Musical” captures holiday wonder with such deliciously wicked wit that it is sure to delight children and grown-ups alike. It's the Christmas present that you'll cherish all holiday long.

Performances are December 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 at 8pm. Matinee performances are December 6, 13, 19, and 20 at 2pm. Tickets are $20 for adults, $17 for Seniors, and $12 for Students and Youth.

At Walters State Community College. Encore Theatrical Company: 423-218-8331, www.etcplays.org