Best of Nashville
Arts & Entertainment
Best Premiere by a Local Composer
Michael Alec Rose’s “Pastoral Concerto”
To be fair, I didn’t hear every local premiere this past year, but Michael Alec Rose’s “Pastoral Concerto” certainly was an outstanding piece. Soloist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, a Grammy-nominated English violinist who leads the Kreutzer Quartet, seemed to inspire a high level of playing from the student orchestra at Blair School of Music (where Rose teaches)—I found some moments of interplay between soloist and mallet percussionist especially memorable. Sheppard Skaerved has also inspired a creative flowering for Rose himself, who has written 11 works for the violinist since 2006. The concerto achieved a fine balance of natural lyricism with the complications of a contemporary musical vocabulary, and we even got to hear the composer’s take on a contra dance. Russell Johnston
