Salt Lake City Public Library’s Super Summer Challenge program, Strike A Chord, has recommendations, incentives for everyone, regardless of age

Libraries rock. That straightforward declaration is the guiding theme for summer reading and literacy programs in library branches across the country, as millions of families consider creative ways to combat the risk of the summer slide so that their children do not lose the learning momentum they achieved in the school year that just ended. … Read more

Forty pianists, 17 countries in next month’s 17th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition

Next month’s 17th Gina Bachauer International Artists Piano Competition in Salt Lake City unquestionably will be the most cosmopolitan representation of gifted pianists in the Foundation’s 42-year history. Forty pianists, ranging in age from 19 to 32, will represent 17 countries, as they compete in the quarterfinals that will lead ultimately to finalists who will … Read more

Ballet West National Choreographic Festival celebrates women

Debuting last year, Ballet West’s National Choreographic Festival introduces audiences to new works from around the country by inviting guest companies from around the nation to join Ballet West dancers. Spread over two weekends, the performances are divided into two individual programs allowing audiences to view a full six works if desired. Included in this … Read more

Utah Symphony presents an adventurous evening of Strauss

Utah Symphony’s tribute to Richard Strauss continues this evening with three pieces, all highlighting the talents of Utah Symphony’s own musicians. Presented as part of the O.C. Tanner Company Masterworks Series, the program featuring two of Strauss’ most popular tone poems and his Serenade for Winds with masterful storytelling through the voice of instrumental music. … Read more

UMFA talk to feature Spencer Finch, who created largest Pantone installation piece Great Salt Lake and Vicinity

One of the most popular stops since the Utah Museum of Fine Arts reopened last year after its comprehensive renovation is Great Salt Lake and Vicinity, an installation artwork by Spencer Finch featuring more than 1,100 Pantone color swatches in the museum’s G. W. Anderson Family Great Hall. The work constitutes a richly detailed field … Read more

Utah Film Center’s 7th Peek Award honors Dina, Sundance award-winning documentary

Dina, a documentary film about a middle-aged woman with Asperger’s Syndrome who marries her boyfriend (Scott), is a perfectly timed selection for the 7th Peek Award for Disability in Film by the Utah Film Center. The film, which took the Grand Jury Prize in documentaries at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, continues an evolving narrative … Read more

The many pillars of love in Jenifer Nii’s The Weird Play, new production of Plan-B Theatre, Sackerson

In one of opera’s most famous and most captivating arias, Tosca sings Vissi d’arte, which translates literally to “I lived for art.” The aria from this Giacomo Puccini opera is an anguished prayer because Tosca, a singer, faces the most impossible choice. To save her lover (the painter Cavaradossi) from the death sentence, she must … Read more

UMFA’s Go West! Exhibition offers intriguing, eye-opening juxtaposition of American West history, mythology

Not that many decades ago, the work of artists who imagined and represented the American West — spanning the transition from Lewis and Clark’s famed expedition in the early 1800s to the culmination of the manifest destiny ideal that occurred at the turn of the 20th century — was not seen regularly in the same … Read more

Spy Hop Productions’ 15th annual PitchNic premieres slated for Nov. 2

A dozen Utah teen filmmakers working on four short films for Spy Hop Productions’ 15th annual PitchNic program experienced many of the same barriers and problems professionals in the movie industry confront continuously in their projects. A group producing the program’s first murder mystery not only had to tell its story without representing violence on … Read more

Utah Film Center to screen 11/8/16, impressive time capsule of a day in American politics

Shortly before the 2008 presidential election that put the first American black president into office, Jeff Deutchman used social networks to ask amateur and professional independent filmmakers to document experiences of voters and campaign volunteers on the day of national voting. “It was an experiment in crowd-sourcing footage and material for a documentary film about … Read more