Backstage at the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition: Meet the Quarterfinalists Part 3

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each day this week, The Utah Review will provide short profiles, featuring the 33 quarterfinalists for the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition. Afternoon and evening sessions begin Monday, June 17. For tickets and more information, see the Bachauer website The Utah Review asked each pianist to answer four questions:  1. In addition … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition: The elegant art of adjudication; nine jury members announced

While many can justifiably describe the Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition as music’s counterpart to the Olympics, many might be surprised that the jury process for determining the top three prize winners by the end of June relies on a long-established protocol that replaced numerical scores with a secret voting process where each individual juror … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition: Meet the Quarterfinalists Part 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each day this week, The Utah Review will provide short profiles, featuring the 33 quarterfinalists for the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition. Afternoon and evening sessions begin Monday, June 17. For tickets and more information, see the Bachauer website. The Utah Review asked each pianist to answer four questions:  1. In addition to … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition: 33 quarterfinalists from 11 countries set to arrive later this week in Salt Lake City

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Utah Review is pleased to present extensive coverage of the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition. Each day this week, we will present profiles of the quarterfinalists. This week will focus on preview features and beginning June 17, a daily diary will be published about competition highlights.  The nation’s second largest piano … Read more

Backstage at the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition: Meet the Quarterfinalists Part I

EDITOR’S NOTE: Each day this week, The Utah Review will provide short profiles, featuring the 33 quarterfinalists for the 2024 Gina Bachauer International Artists Competition. Afternoon and evening sessions begin Monday, June 17. For tickets and more information, see the Bachauer website. The Utah Review asked each pianist to answer four questions:  1. In addition to … Read more

Ballet West’s stupendous Choreographic Festival VI: Asian Voices sets gold standard for artistic innovation

In 2017, when Ballet West launched its choreographic festival, Adam Sklute, artistic director, told Dance Magazine, “We want this festival for choreography to do what the Sundance Film Festival does for film—create a hub for creativity in dance.” Judging by the exceptionally enthusiastic response from the opening night audience, this week’s Choreographic Festival VI: Asian … Read more

Asian Voices front and center in Ballet West’s 6th Choreographic Festival, set for SLC June 5-8, and Kennedy Center, June 18-23

Ballet West’s 60th anniversary season has been simultaneously a celebration of its groundbreaking legacy in American dance and an exploration of fresh artistic possibilities going into the second quarter of the 21st century.  Phil Chan, an internationally known choreographer whose organization Final Bow for Yellowface initially engaged the ballet world’s artistic gatekeepers to resist treating … Read more

Gobsmacking and dazzling: Pioneer Theatre Company’s Utah premiere of Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, and The Great Comet of 1812 wows opening night audience

The electropop opera Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 draws the audience into the stage action in ways unlike conventional experiences with musical theater. Take, for example, the rapid-fire exuberance of the Act II sequence comprising Balaga, The Abduction and In My House.  On opening night for Pioneer Theatre Company’s (PTC) Utah premiere … Read more

A musical theatrical bounty for actors-musicians on stage: Pioneer Theatre Company set for Utah premiere of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812

The idea of turning even a rather small part of Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War and Peace into a musical would seem daunting, if not damn near impossible. However, Part 8 of the story, which occurs just before the novel’s midpoint, inspired Dave Malloy to do precisely that. Tolstoy, who achieved the epitome of rich … Read more

Etudious!: Vassily Primakov, 2002 piano competition silver medalist, set to return to Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation stage for concert of etudes

Growing up in Moscow during the 1980s, Vassily Primakov was just seven years old when he asked his mother, Marina Primakova, about starting piano lessons. “My mother was a pianist and I grew up with a lot of music around me, hearing her practice, rehearse and teach,” Primakov said in an interview with The Utah … Read more