Music

February roundup: UtahPresents, NOVA Chamber Music Series, Westminster Concert Series, Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

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February was a busy month for the performing arts scene in Salt Lake City. Among the top events were the following: Christian McBride and Ursa Major: UtahPresents  A perfect end to UtahPresents’ inaugural jazz concert series for the 2024-25 season, Christian McBride and Ursa Major wowed the Kingsbury Hall crowd on Feb. 22, with plenty … Read more

An extraordinary chapter in the life of Spy Hop: A look back at Kasandra VerBrugghen’s stewardship at the helm of the nationally known youth media arts organization

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In well-established nonprofit institutions, the ideal leading administrative figure is a visionary leader who by encompassing every dimension of that organization creates the right conditions for fundraising success that ensures the institution’s long-term viability. In 2018, when Spy Hop Productions was poised to announce the largest capital fundraising campaign in its history to build its … Read more

Pianist Stephen Beus’ imaginative take on Nocturnes and Nightmares set for Feb. 28 Bachauer concert

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As a theme for programming recitals, the subject of dreams will always be a winner for performers and audiences. The universe of available music for this theme is vast enough for an equally wide scope of permutations. For Nocturnes and Nightmares, the theme of his upcoming solo concert, pianist Stephen Beus has taken a unique, … Read more

LFO exhibition at Material Gallery is superb collaboration, with Andrew Rease Shaw’s music, Mary Toscano’s quilts

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The late composer Pauline Oliveros said deep listening was central in her creative process.  “As a musician, I am interested in the sensual nature of sound, its power of synchronization, coordination, release, and change,” she wrote. More recently, Polygonia, DJ and producer of ambient music, added, “It’s the little details which make the timbre of each … Read more

Full throttle excellence in roof-raising performances: Pioneer Theatre Company’s Beautiful: The Carole King Musical continues through March 1

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… I’d like to know that your love Is a love I can be sure of So tell me now, and I won’t ask again Will you still love me tomorrow? (Gerry Goffin and Carole King) In 1960, Gerry Goffin and Carole King posed the question in the lyric, “Will you still love me tomorrow?,” … Read more

Like a perfectly fitted glass slipper: Cinderella showcases Ballet West at the heights of its artistic strengths

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“Out of old tales, we must make new lives,” the great literary scholar Carolyn Heilbrun once wrote. For London audiences still feeling weary after World War II, the Cinderella fairy tale took on a spectacular new life in the ballet choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton to the music of Sergei Prokofiev.  Seventy-seven years later, Ballet … Read more

New sets, costumes for Ballet West’s third staging of historical masterpiece, Frederick Ashton’s Cinderella, set for Feb. 7-16

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Few stories have been so versatile for adaptation than Cinderella. There have been versions for children’s theater, pantomime, opera, comic theater, vaudeville, burlesque, melodrama, risqué sendups, Christmas shows, rock music adaptations with Cinderella as antiheroine, television productions, mainstream and art films in many languages (more than 140 versions just of the fairy tale) and the … Read more

Sundance 2025: FOLKTALES’ poetic and musical cinematic portrait of Nordic folk school in the Arctic has charmed audiences

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Scandinavian Arctic culture receives some of the most memorable poetic and musical cinematic treatment to be found in this year’s Sundance slate, with the premiere of FOLKTALES, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. It is not surprising that this documentary has become quite the darling at Sundance. The film knits together stunning imagery of … Read more

Sundance 2025: Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is fabulous testament to underground queer dance club music culture

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Among its fabulous strengths, Move Ya Body: The Birth of House, directed by Elegance Bratton and produced by Chester Algernal Gordon, presents a compelling portrait of the wistful utopian history tracking the transition in Chicago from a disco culture to the thriving house music scene that queer musicians, DJs, and producers of color propelled into … Read more

Emotional and spiritual intelligence: The Utah Review’s Top Ten Moments of the Utah Enlightenment in 2024

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But I grew up in a landscape large enough to hold what I felt when the world of people pushed me away. There, where badgers roamed, where herons speared small fish in shallow pools, I found my place. I took my sketch pad and tackle box to the banks of that small creek and washed … Read more