Knoxville Museum of Art presents Alive Into 2019!, a New Year’s Eve celebration in the museum’s Bailey Hall on Monday, December 31 from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Doors open at 8:00 p.m.

Musical entertainment will feature the classic rhythm & blues dance music of Soul Connection. This nine-member band originated in Oak Ridge in the mid-1960s under the name of Soul Sanction. In 1968, they won the Tennessee State Battle of the Bands and competed in the National Finals in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The band broke up in the early 1970s, as band members pursued education, careers, and family, but they reunited in 1988 at the urging of their old classmates to perform at their 20th-year class reunion. Inspired by the success of that performance, Soul Connection stayed together and once again enjoyed great popularity with their dynamic male and female vocals and a horn section reminiscent of the Motown and Stax records of the ’60s and ’70s. They opened shows for such artists as B. B. King, Ray Charles, Bobby “Blue” Bland, and James Brown, and became one of the most popular bands to perform at the Knoxville Museum of Art’s Alive After Five series.

In 2006, personnel changes in the band required them to relinquish the name Soul Sanction. They decided to let the audience at an Alive After Five in August of that year vote on a new name for the band, and they’ve been Soul Connection ever since.

Reserve seat tickets to Alive Into 2019! are $55/$65, and general admission is $50. Admission includes supper and breakfast buffets, dancing, party favors, and a midnight toast of bubbly. Two cash bars (no credit cards) will be available. For more information or to order reserve seat tickets, please contact Michael Gill at (865) 934-2039.