Opening day headliners for June 22 on the main stages of the 41st annual Utah Arts Festival feature musicians with enduring legacies, both national and international. Shooter Jennings and Waymore’s Outlaws – 9:45 p.m., Amphitheater Stage The son of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, two of country’s music biggest legends, Shooter Jennings has carved out … Read more
Jazz’s prominence at the Utah Arts Festival has been rising in recent years. Last year’s show featuring the Salt Lake City Jazz Orchestra was a scorcher, with trumpeter Kris Johnson’s tremendously well received festival commission piece A Shift West and a special appearance with Clarice Assad performing new arrangements of iconic Brazilian songs. This year’s … Read more
The temporary miniature city of cosmopolitan art and culture that defines the Utah Arts Festival will open Thursday, June 22, with new stories and perspectives from artists of all stripes. The 41st annual festival will bring new faces and ideas from all venues. In the artist marketplace, 174 artists, including nine returning award winners, were … Read more
In its fourth year, the partnership between the Intermountain Acoustic Music Association (IAMA) and the Utah Arts Festival has blossomed and raised the profile of folk, bluegrass, Irish, Celtic and acoustic musicians not only at the festival but also the organization’s nationally juried songwriting competition. In addition, IAMA offers a songwriter’s academy open to musicians … Read more
Growing up first in Walnut Creek and then in Danville, California, Stacy Garrop played piano but her real music strengths were as an alto singer in choir and saxophonist in her high school marching band. At one point, her love of poetry inspired her to try her hand at writing her own verses but that … Read more
There is no question that Salt Lake City’s jazz scene will be electrified with an upcoming performance of Jim Crow’s Tears, a masterful musical of jazz verismo by Kris Johnson and book by playwright Gary Anderson. As summarized in the soundtrack review, published last December in The Utah Review, “It is a straightforward, robust, courageous … Read more
There were many fine moments this year for the Utah Enlightenment. In compiling the list of what I believe were the 10 best defining moments of Utah’s cultural awakening for 2016, the pool of choices was more than satisfying in breadth and depth. There has been a great deal of recent press, for example, about … Read more
The closing scene of Bamboozled, Spike Lee’s 2000 provocative film, is a montage of historical images that critic Ashley Clark says encompasses “blacked-up Hollywood stars like Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney; black stars in demeaning ‘coon’ and ‘mammy’ roles; racist cartoons; and disturbing scenes from films like The Birth of a Nation and Gone with … Read more
In the century since Joe Hill, the Swedish immigrant miner, musician and union activist who was executed in Salt Lake City after being wrongfully convicted of murder, there have been only a very few plays about this figure who recently has emerged from the footnotes of history in relevant ways. Last year, John McCutcheon, an … Read more
For Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007), undoubtedly among the most important composers of the 20th century, the element of text humanized the imagery of his music in the most emotionally intense and spiritually gratifying ways. Stockhausen was an exceptional and extraordinary creative force. He broke new artistic ground in electronic music, spatial musical performance and the use … Read more