Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee, might be close to as far as you can get from classical refinement. The pleasing architecture is dripping with neon advertising.... Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee, might be close to as far as you can get from classical refinement. The pleasing architecture is dripping with neon advertising, and the sidewalks are busy with tourists eating barbeque, drinking beer, buying compact discs and cowboy boots, and listening to a plethora of sounds coming from the future country singers of America. If less than refined music wasn't enough, there's even a "Florida trailer diner" inside an old Victorian storefront.

Look down Third Avenue and you get a glimpse of the Country Music Hall of Fame. The architecture there is not enough to make you want to explore further, but spotting a free parking place may be enough to draw you down the street. Just about at the point where you get to the rear of the Victorian storefronts facing Broadway, you'll get a glimpse of a neo-classical building that looks as if it's been there for a hundred years.

I hadn't been to Nashville for more than ten years, and I didn't remember the building I was looking at. I was taken by its beauty, complementary to the Tennessee State Capitol and Parthenon replica that Nashville has known for years. Perhaps in recent years the "Athens of the South" has taken a second row seat to "Music City, U.S.A." as Nashville's moniker, yet the Schermerhorn Symphony Center seems to hold both flags up with ease.

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