Nashville's contemporary arts scene is like a verdant garden, with new arts groups (chatterbird, Intersection, New Dialect) and venues (OZ Arts Nashville, The Platform) sprouting up seemingly all the time.
The most recent ensemble to take root is the Parthenon Chamber Orchestra, which makes its debut in a free concert Sunday afternoon at Trevecca Nazarene University. Chamber orchestras tend to come and go in Music City — the Nashville Chamber Orchestra folded in 2009, and this season the Clarksville-based Gateway Chamber Orchestra will move its Nashville series to Williamson County.
David Sartor, Parthenon's founding music director, says his group is filling a void. "It's about time Nashville had its own chamber orchestra," Sartor tells the Scene. Just as importantly, Parthenon is pursuing a critical mission. "We believe it's important for an ensemble to be sensitive to its surroundings, so we plan to have at least one piece by a Tennessee composer on all of our programs."
Parthenon's inaugural program will be a mix of contemporary music and historical repertoire. Nashville composer and arranger Don Hart, who's worked over the years with such pop and country icons as Amy Grant, Wynonna Judd and Martina McBride, is contributing one piece to the concert, his Masters in This Hall for string orchestra. (Hart will guest conduct his piece on Sunday.) The program will also include California composer Adrienne Albert's Boundaries along with Mozart's Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Trumpets and Beethoven's Symphony No. 2 in D major.
As a composer, Hart says he's thrilled at Parthenon's arrival. "You can't have too many orchestras that are willing to play contemporary music," he says. At the same time, he offers a sober assessment of the new group's prospects.
"Nashville can be a very tough sell," Hart says. "For a long time, people just wouldn't believe that Nashville could support anything but country music. But I think people are finally waking up to the idea that Nashville needs to have a rich and varied musical culture if it wants to be a great town."
Sartor, for his part, had no trouble convincing his musicians of Parthenon's importance. His players are drawn from such regional ensembles as the Nashville and Chattanooga symphonies (among many others) and from such universities as Austin Peay and MTSU.
"I was amazed at how many wonderful local musicians wanted to play in this orchestra," Sartor says. "As I recruited more and more great musicians, other musicians heard about it and wanted to join in as well."
A full roster of top-flight musicians means Sartor won't have to look far to find virtuoso soloists. Two of Parthenon's players, trumpeters David Hobbs and Michael Arndt, will be in the spotlight this Sunday in Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Trumpets. "David is principal trumpet with the Chattanooga Symphony and Michael is on faculty at MTSU," says Sartor. "They represent the level of talent people will hear at Parthenon concerts."
It's perhaps not a surprise that these gifted musicians will perform, at least in the short term, for nothing other than the sheer love of the music. But that's a situation Sartor hopes to change.
"The region's finest musicians deserve compensation," he says.
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