Dr. Ann Silverberg on the Clarksville Community Concert Association, as part of the essay series “The Road to 250: Community Spirit in Action,” celebrating the history of unity in Clarksville ahead of America’s 250th anniversary.

In the same year that the United States of America celebrates its 250th birthday, the Clarksville Community Concert Association will celebrate 75 years of presenting music performances of high artistic merit and promoting interest in and enjoyment of live music concerts through community outreach and education.

The Clarksville Community Concert Association was founded by music educator and Austin Peay State University Professor Dr. Charles L. Gary in 1951. The series has offered a notable variety of fine music performances over the years, showcasing diverse genres of music performed by excellent musicians who typically travel long distances to come to Clarksville.

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The Association has historically emphasized diversity in all respects as it chooses artists, and it pays particular attention to fostering rising young talent, locally and in the musical world at large. The Association’s very first concert, held on Nov. 7, 1951 featured Lilian Kallir, a young pianist who had fled her native Prague with her parents in 1940, as the Second World War unfolded. Kallir was a child prodigy who had first performed on the radio at the age of 4. Kallir went on to have a long career as a concert pianist and teacher, performing in Europe and in the United States.

The Clarksville Community Concert Association crossed the color line for the first time in early 1955, with soprano Theresa Green’s concert, held nine months to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its historic decision in the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education ruling. Ms. Green Coleman went on to perform under the batons of renowned conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Erich Leinsdorf, and Efrem Zimbalist during an international career in concert and opera that lasted several decades.

Charles Gary left Clarksville and the Clarksville Community Concert Association in 1958, but the Association he founded continued to present concerts. In the ensuing decades, the Association brought a long list of outstanding musical artists to Clarksville, including the Beaux Arts Trio, pianist Jean Casadesus, and violinist Si-hon Ma, along with the Ballet Espagnol Ximenez-Vargas, the Prague and Royal Swedish Chamber Orchestras, the world-famous all-male vocal ensemble Chanticleer, pianist Virginia Eskin, and Metropolitan Opera tenor Michael Best.

In 1985, Austin Peay State University founded its Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts and established a university concert series that featured many notable musical artists. The university also opened an acoustically superb concert hall seating approximately 600 persons on two levels in 1990. The Clarksville Community Concert Association’s series merged with the Austin Peay State University concert series in 1995, strengthening both. In the first years of the 21st century, a Mid-South Jazz Festival concert was added to the series.

Grants, donations, membership subscriptions, and ticket sales support the important work of the Concert Association in our community. As the population of the city and county grows, entertainment and educational options will surely also expand. The Clarksville Community Concert Association is ready to change and adapt to serve the musical and educational needs and wants of the local community.

Dr. Ann Silverberg

| MORE: Visit the Clarksville Community Concert Association website, email ccca@clarksvillemusic.org or call 877-811-0200.

| ROAD TO 250 SERIES:

• Celebration of nation’s 250th kicked off with visit from John Adams, Mercy Otis Warren
• Sons of American Revolution stands behind creation of strong, unified country
• Daughters of American Revolution keeps spirit of independence alive
• Clarksville’s NAACP voice of conscience in an American community
• The Austin Peay belt: Generations across region part of APSU family
• Churches have shaped civic life in Clarksville for more than two centuries
• Cumberland Winds brings town and gown together for music, culture
• Journalism in Clarksville has merged competition with collaboration
• Central Civitan’s Lone Oak Picnic keeps cultural, political tradition alive
• Clarksville Federation of Women’s Clubs pulled together for education, activism

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