Hong Xu, 2001 Bachauer bronze medalist, set to return to Salt Lake City for opening concert of 2019-2020 season

In 2001, Hong Xu was just 17 years old when he made his first trip to the U.S. to compete in the Salt Lake City finals for the Gina Bachauer Young Artists International Piano Competition. Just a year before, he made his orchestral debut as a soloist with the Wuhan Symphony Orchestra in China, playing … Read more

Utah Film Center set to screen However Long, new documentary about metastatic breast cancer patients in group therapy

Thirty years ago, in an issue of The Lancet medical research journal, the results of a 10-year study by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley were published on the effects of group therapy for patients with metastatic breast cancer in terms of their survival rates. They found that those patients … Read more

Utah Film Center set to screen Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, with panel organized by Utah Center for Architecture

When the documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and then was screened last January at the Sundance Film Festival, it attracted much attention for its incredible cinematography capturing the immense scope of what humans have wrought on the planet. Since then the documentary has been picked up … Read more

Elizabeth, the dance is rich, superb 56th season opener for Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company

Ann Carlson’s Elizabeth, the dance, is the supreme example of an organic, living work of art. And, the six current dancers of Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company nurtured and nourished it in a rich, superb performance in Traces, the opening concert of the company’s 56th season. As The Utah Review mentioned in an earlier preview, the 2017 … Read more

Inside Outside concert featuring 3 Utah premieres set for Repertory Dance Theatre’s 54th season opener

Three dance works – a trio from 1949 by one of the greatest American choreographers and two 2018 compositions by internationally known artists from New York City and Tel Aviv, respectively – will receive their Utah premieres next week in the opening concert of Repertory Dance Theatre’s 54th season. Rounding out the Inside Outside concert … Read more

Eric Samuelsen (1956-2019): A titan of the Utah Enlightenment

NOTE: Plan-B Theatre will present a free reading of Eric Samuelsen’s Borderlands, featuring the original cast of the 2011 premiere, on Oct. 5 at 2 p.m. in the Rose Wagner Center for Performing Arts. While the performance is free, tickets are required and can be obtained at this Plan-B page. For details about funeral services … Read more

Flora Meets a Bee set to premiere as latest entry in Plan-B Theatre’s Free Elementary School Tour program

Flora is eight years old. A Latina child, she has been in three foster homes since she was five. Change on such a frequent basis would test any adult’s resilience. Whenever Flora pulls a penny she keeps in her pocket, she remembers her mother: “Mi madre me to dio el que me fui. Creo que … Read more

Salt Lake Acting Company opens 49th season with riveting Utah premiere of Death of a Driver

The riveting counterpoint between Kennedy, a Kenyan driver for hire, and Sarah, a well-intentioned American engineer who leads a road construction project in the African country, animates the astutely integrated strands of historical, political, moral, social and economic ideas and philosophies that underpin the exceptional Utah premiere of Will Snider’s Death of a Driver, as … Read more

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company set to open 56th season with Traces concert

Just as families track their genealogy through tree charts, many creative artists and producers have traced their own lineage, often stretching decades, a century or more and, sometimes, even 300 years or longer. In music, the context of, say, an American School, French School or Afro-Cuban School of style, technique and pedagogy can be defined … Read more

Sackerson’s A Brief Waltz in a Little Room: 23 Short Plays about Walter Eyer is remarkable rendering of an incisive sense of place in Utah

The remarkable Sackerson theater company’s latest production A Brief Waltz in a Little Room: 23 Short Plays about Walter Eyer is one of the most incisive renderings of the consequential meanings and impact of a sense of place in Utah. Since Utah was settled more than 170 years ago, an all-abiding cult of perfectionism has shadowed, … Read more