From Tucson, experimental quartet Compersion sets Utah Museum of Contemporary Art for March 19 stop on western U.S. tour

The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) will be one of the stops for the western U.S. tour of Compersion, a Tuscon-based experimental quartet which incorporates strings, wind instruments and percussion into instrumental electro-acoustic topographies. Abstract in its aesthetic conception. Compersion highlights improvisation and organic rhythmic expressions to emphasize the value of deep and immersive … Read more

A magnificent NOVA Chamber Music Series concert to Dance in the Desert

NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Dance in the Desert concert (March 10) was perhaps the season’s most challenging for the musicians but the set of five magnificently performed works, which included a world premiere, also was among the most easily accessible for the audience. For the concert finale, the world premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s Desert Portal … Read more

Continuum: Angela Cheng set to perform Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin on March 15 concert for Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation

During her teen years, Angela Cheng was expected by her family to prepare for a career as a doctor. Even as a piano major, she took pre-med electives in chemistry and calculus but Cheng also realized, as she recalls in an interview with The Utah Review, “I would have been a miserable doctor.” Her path … Read more

With art and dance integrated, Laura Kaminsky’s Desert Portal set for exciting world premiere at NOVA Chamber Music Series’ March 10 concert

The programming for NOVA Chamber Music Series’ upcoming concert (March 10, 3 p.m., Libby Gardner Hall) is an “embarrassment of riches,” Robert Waters, Fry Street Quartet’s first violinist, said in a previous interview. The centerpiece of a marvelous offering of works spanning more than 130 years will be the world premiere of Laura Kaminsky’s Desert … Read more

Utah’s first professional mounting of Bonnie & Clyde musical is stupendous in Pioneer Theatre Company production

The 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde was one of New Hollywood’s best artistic triumphs, in setting the story of two Great Depression Era rural bandits to reflect upon the social and cultural attitudes of the Sixties. Arthur Penn, who directed the Academy Award winning film, talked about why he was drawn to the story of two … Read more

Ballet West at its very best: Record-setting Swan Lake run closes with brilliant performances from everyone involved

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review is grateful to Chris Myers of Argyle Arts for being a guest reviewer. Over the last week, Ballet West continued their 60th anniversary season with a sold-out run of Swan Lake. Perhaps the most iconic non-Nutcracker in the repertoire, Swan Lake is a monumental classic filled with complex imagery and … Read more

The give and take between music and movement: A closer look at these unique challenges in Ballet West’s production of Swan Lake which opens today

It is fitting that Ballet West’s 60th anniversary season would include a production of Swan Lake, which opens today in the Capitol Theatre and will run through Feb. 17. Willam Christensen, Ballet West founder, staged the first American production of this Russian classic in 1940, during his tenure as San Francisco Ballet’s artistic director. At … Read more

Sundance 2024: Devo documentary gives proper due to one of pop music’s most astute groups of social, cultural intelligence

In the excellent documentary Devo, directed by Chris Smith and the first such project which band members authorized, the definitive roots of a band which commanded an intense amount of attention with albums that were produced and released between 1978 and 1984 are properly elucidated in the film. Audiences at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival … Read more

Sundance 2024: Ondi Timoner’s DIG! XX refreshes a cult classic that raises its historical value as a rock music documentary

Fifty, seventy and a hundred years from now, musicians and students of rock history will be studying and appreciating the catalogs of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, thanks to the phenomenal documentary DIG! XX, directed by Ondi Timoner and co-produced with her brother David Timoner. Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl called it the … Read more

Courage, creative fire, innovation, enterprise: The Utah Review’s Top 10 Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023

This year’s selections in The Utah Review of the top ten moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2023, the ninth annual edition, were the easiest to curate in the nine years of publishing this annual list. Likewise, selecting the top moment among the ten was just as easy. In Utah, there are creative producers in … Read more