Harold Duckett

Special to the News Sentinel

Musicians of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra this week will become part of the long tradition in classical music of presenting concerts to benefit charities.

A concert at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 20, titled Music for the Mountains: A Benefit Concert to Support the Gatlinburg Wildfire Disaster Relief, will be performed in the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church at 2931 Kingston Pike, which is donating the use of its facilities for the event.

The concert is free to the public, but donations are requested. One hundred percent of the donations will be forwarded to the Dollywood Foundation’s “My People Fund,” with the money going directly to families who have lost their homes in the wildfires.

“We encourage donors who want to come to the concert but pay with a credit card to please donate directly to the Dollywood Foundation via https://dollywoodfoundation,ord/donations/my-people-find/," said KSO principal horn player Jeffery Whaley, who is organizing the concert and for whom the fire loss in Gatlinburg is very personal.

“People will also be able to donate cash at the concert. Anyone wishing to bring a check should write it to ‘Dollywood Foundation’ and mark the memo line ‘My People Fund,’ Whaley said.

“We’ll be happy to take the cash and checks at the concerts, or people may also mail their checks to AMF Local 546, 127 E. Churchwell Ave., Knoxville, TN 37917,” Whaley said.

Whaley grew up playing horn and was drum major in the same Sevier County High School band in which Sevier County’s most famous citizen, Dolly Parton, played. Parton played the snare drum because she knew how to keep rhythm but hadn’t yet learned how to read music.

Fellow KSO horn player Mark Harrell also has connections to Sevier County. Harrell teaches music and is the band director at Gatlinburg-Pittman High School, where 50 of the students lost their homes in the Gatlinburg disaster.

The Knoxville Symphony’s musicians are an international group, coming from most of the states in the U.S. and 10 nations, where some of them have known political upheaval and disasters themselves.

The tradition of classical musicians performing concerts for charitable causes goes back hundreds of years. Among the many charitable concerts are a number of notable performances. George Frederick Handel’s “Messiah” premiered at a charity concert to benefit the Prisoners’ Debt Relief, Mercer’s Hospital and the Charitable Infirmary in Dublin, Ireland, in April 1742. In 1807 Beethoven performed a series of three concerts called Concerts for Music Lovers, with the proceeds donated to public charities. Eight-year-old Frederic Chopin made his professional debut at a charity concert in 1818. Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote his “Slavonic March” in 1876 to benefit Russian soldiers who joined the Serbs to fight the Turks in the Serbo-Turkish War.

As of the deadline for this story, 35 of the KSO musicians have committed to play for this concert to benefit Sevier County fire victims.