The revolution in chamber music programming continues: Fry Street Quartet takes music director reins as NOVA Chamber Music Series announces 2019-2020 season

It is a revolutionary move but it also makes perfect sense. The Fry Street Quartet, which is in residence at Utah State University, will take the reins as music director of NOVA Chamber Music Series, beginning next season. And the announcement of concerts for 2019-2020 — NOVA Chamber Music Series’ 42nd season — indicates that … Read more

NOVA Chamber Music Series to close exhilarating 2018-19 season with The Head and The Heart concert

Capping a season of many adventurous thrills, NOVA Chamber Music Series upcoming final concert of 2018-2019, The Head and The Heart, is apt in many ways. For her final concert as music director this season, Madeline Adkins, also Utah Symphony’s concertmaster, has selected four works spanning 250 years, assembled the usual legitimate all-star slate of … Read more

Two spring premieres: PYGmalion Theatre Company’s Sweetheart Come by Melissa Leilani Larson; Efren Corado’s Dust. Breath. Place. for RDT Link

PYGMALION THEATRE COMPANY: SWEETHEART COME One of the most extraordinary renderings of Emma Hauck’s story came in 2000 with In Absentia, a 19-minute film made by Stephen and Timothy Quay. The BBC commissioned the short film as part of a series matching filmmakers with music selected by BBC producers. The Quay Brothers already had chosen … Read more

Utah Film Center’s fundraiser to celebrate Napoleon Dynamite’s 15th anniversary

There are many reasons why the sleeper hit comedy Napoleon Dynamite (2004) deserves to be the pride of the Utah film industry. Directed by Jared Hess and written by Hess and his wife Jerusha, it has become a timeless pop culture staple featuring authentic characters and tropes who epitomized the high school scene that remains … Read more

Utah Film Center’s Through My Lens screening to feature short documentary films about immigration, migration by Salt Lake City valley students, their teachers

Sixteen short documentary films produced by students in schools throughout the Salt Lake City valley in collaboration with their teachers and featuring a wide range of stories about immigration and migration will premiere May 1, as part of the Utah Film Center program Through My Lens, an educational collaboration unlike any other in the U.S. … Read more

Efren Corado’s Dust. Breath. Place., an artistic reflection on immigration, set to premiere in Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series

The five dancers who will perform Dust. Breath. Place., a new work by choreographer Efren Corado, have transported themselves to a different world in the rehearsals leading up to the forthcoming premiere in three performances (May 2-4), as part of Repertory Dance Theatre’s Link Series (RDT). Observing Easter morning rehearsal was spiritually uplifting. Eleven days … Read more

Red Desert ensemble’s spring concert a mesmerizing jam session

The Red Desert ensemble, the duo project of clarinetist Katie Porter and composer/percussionist Devin Maxwell, organized one of the most interesting public jam session concerts to happen recently in Salt Lake City. Joining forces with numerous local musicians, Westminster College students, and University of Utah students from Radical Quiet, Phillip Bimstein’s honors college course about cultivating a heightened … Read more

Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company’s Bloom concert closes with a magnificent choreographic bouquet

Many florists and horticulturists associate metaphorical themes with flowers and plants. Indeed, in every spring bloom, there is a unique significance: friendship, perseverance, patience, enthusiasm, honesty, unconditional love and affection, rebirth, dignity, strength of character, trust, just to name a few. Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company delivered all of these blooms in a magnificent bouquet in its … Read more

Kapustin concerto Western Hemisphere premiere to highlight NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Parallel Worlds concert

This past weekend, Portuguese-born pianist Luis Magalhães made the 9,800-mile journey from his South African home to Salt Lake City for the Western Hemisphere premiere of Nikolai Kapustin’s Double Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra, Opus 105, in the upcoming NOVA Chamber Music Series concert titled Parallel Worlds. The concert (April 28, 3 p.m., Libby … Read more

Silent Dancer’s unique staging in Salt Lake Acting Company premiere resonates with good Jazz Age sensibilities

In 1931, as the Great Depression’s grip tightened, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the obituary for the flimsy age of roaring confidence and youth-driven abandon that had been “jolted” out of existence when the stock market crashed in 1929. In an essay titled Echoes of the Jazz Age, he wrote, “It was an age of miracles, … Read more