Natalie L. Haslam College of Music

UT College of Music To Be Named After Natalie L. Haslam

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s College of Music will be named the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music, following approval by the Board of Trustees during its meeting that ended June 25.

The recognition is in honor of alumna Natalie L. Haslam, a member of the Haslam family, which is among the university’s most generous benefactors.

“I am not a musician, but music has always meant a lot to me,” said Haslam. “If we are lucky, music is a part of our lives at almost every turn – from the church services and weddings we attend, to football, basketball and other sports functions, and even to the parties, movies, plays and social activities in our lives. There’s always music. At the University of Tennessee, we are blessed to have an amazing music program, and Jim and I appreciate that very much. I’m honored to have my name associated with it.”

The college resides within a state-of-the-art facility, which in 2013 unified all music programs under one roof. Formally established in 2023 as an independent college — having evolved from the School of Music — it is the first college of music at a public university in Tennessee and the first in the Southeastern Conference. It is the fourth named college in UT’s 230-year history, joining the Haslam College of Business, the Herbert College of Agriculture and the Tickle College of Engineering.

“Natalie Haslam’s love for her alma mater and her appreciation for music and the arts have been both an inspiration and a benefit to us all. I am grateful for the generations of Volunteers who will hone their talents at the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music and who will pursue lives and careers that continue to extend the joy of music to others,” said Chancellor Donde Plowman.

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UT Alumnus Cade Botts Wins Bluegrass Scholarship Award

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Cade Botts, now a UT College of Music alumnus (MM, Music Theory, 2023 & BM, Music Theory, 2021) was reaching the end of his undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee when his passion for bluegrass was reawakened. Not that it ever exactly left. Born into a family of folk and bluegrass musicians, he grew up surrounded by music, not only on the radio or at shows, but at family reunions. 

“When I was 10 years old my family had a reunion and we built a little stage, just a bunch of crates put together for the bands in the family to show off. They played bluegrass and country and rock,” he said. “My grandma bought me a banjo that Christmas and I started taking lessons.”

Music soon enveloped his life, as he joined a bluegrass band in high school, wrote music for a teacher’s poems, and sang in church choirs. He arrived at the Knoxville campus determined to be a songwriter, and successfully auditioned for the vocal program. But even as he studied classical music and music theory, bluegrass always held a vital appeal for him. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, upending the typical mode of classes and rehearsals, Botts was drawn back into the music that first caused him to fall in love with music and composition.

“I brought my accent back out and went back to my roots. Then when I needed a topic for my senior thesis, I had this resurgence of bluegrass in my life. I thought, ‘Why not pursue that?’”

This began the project that led Botts to an underexplored area of academic music theory: What makes bluegrass, bluegrass? Botts’s treatment of the subject included an analysis of the hymn “Farther Along” across seven different notable bluegrass versions of the song. Once he transcribed them, he recognized a pattern.

“People sometimes think bluegrass musicians are just a bunch of hicks, but the music is extremely complex. They are playing extremely fast, doing complex chordal arrangements up and down the neck, the sorts of things you see classical musicians doing in other contexts,” he said. “But there’s just something different about bluegrass, too. You can feel the friction, especially through close harmony, where the voices are so close together that they’re creating overtones.” 

Botts enhanced his analysis not only by reading lots of articles and transcribing songs, but also by listening to hours of bluegrass vocals each day and interviewing bluegrass vocalists at music festivals. The master’s thesis that resulted from this work, titled, “Bluegrass: A Voicing,” has found an audience. The International Bluegrass Music Association awarded Botts with the 2023 Rosenberg Bluegrass Scholar Award. 

He’s very optimistic about the future of bluegrass scholarship. Robert Cantwell, one of the scholars Botts was inspired by, wrote that bluegrass music will one day be studied in higher education composition classes. Certainly, there has been a resurgence of interest in the genre both on campus, where the Appalachian String Band was founded in 2021, and in the greater Knoxville area, as evidenced by the East Tennessee Bluegrass Association. And Botts is proud to have played a part in the genre’s resurgence.

“This paper wouldn’t have happened if I never went to UT,” he said. “I was at the right place at the right time with the right people. More colleges are starting to expand, to study every kind of music, more than just classical.

“But at UT, that was already happening.”