Unconventional comedic holiday season treat: Plan-B Theatre, KUER’s RadioWest plan live broadcast premiere of Radio Hour Episode 13: Troll

NOTE: On Thursday, Dec. 13, at 9 a.m., The Utah Review will live blog the only live performance of Radio Hour Episode 13: Troll, produced by Plan-B Theatre and KUER-FM’s RadioWest program. Tune into KUER-FM 90.1 and follow The Utah Review during the broadcast. Four years ago for the Halloween season, Plan-B Theatre’s Radio Hour … Read more

Utah Film Center to present Hale County This Morning, This Evening, with director RaMell Ross attending Dec. 12

Among the most prominent recurring elements in Toni Morrison’s novels are the roots of the small town black community in the South, even when the stories and characters are living and working in the North. Take, for example, Jazz (1992), a story set in Harlem where both main characters left the South because of the … Read more

NOVA Chamber Music Series set to present R/Evolution: A Millennium of Musical Mavericks

One of the most popular programming approaches to highlight the string quartet’s extraordinary versatility as a chamber music ensemble is to organize cycles of a particular composer’s output in the genre or to juxtapose a series that emphasize parallels between how two composers developed their musical language for string players. The case is strong for … Read more

Sackerson’s The Distance of the Moon is marvelously inventive in word, movement, interpretation

More than the first half of Sackerson’s marvelously inventive premiere production of The Distance of the Moon overflows with magical expectations. Weaving together the lines of Italo Calvino’s short story converted to dialogue, the story line additions of playwright Morag Shepherd, the spot-on choreography of Breanne Saxton and the translucent sound design of Shawn Francis … Read more

Gratitude in three wonderful Utah programs: Repertory Dance Theatre’s Mosaic, NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Royal Musings, Spy Hop’s PitchNic

This month, three leading organizations in Utah’s arts and culture scene presented programs: Repertory Dance Theatre’s Mosaic, NOVA Chamber Music Series’ Royal Musings and Spy Hop Productions’ 16th annual PitchNic premieres. Reviews of all three programs are presented. REPERTORY DANCE THEATRE: MOSAIC It took 93 minutes of dance to create the opulent mosaic of movement … Read more

Royal Musings: NOVA Chamber Music Series All-British concert to feature composers from Purcell to Adès

Compared to its European neighbors, especially in the latter half of the 18th century and through most of the 19th century, Britain did not produce the same depth and breadth of composers whose works have endured. While Henry Purcell (1659-1695) is considered that nation’s preeminent Baroque composer, it was Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), one of the … Read more

Repertory Dance Theatre’s Mosaic concert set for Nov. 15-17

In a mosaic, the complete picture and the array of artistic tiles or photographs are distinguishable at the same time. More than a dozen years ago, scholars Georgia Chao and Henry Moon elegantly applied the mosaic metaphor to understanding how diversity is manifested in the workplace. If we view the cultural mosaic of an individual … Read more

Works by Beethoven, Rachmaninov to highlight Bachauer concert with Canadian pianist Jane Coop

Some of the most familiar works for solo piano by Beethoven and Rachmaninov will highlight the second concert of the Bach, Beethoven, Brahms … and Beyond series, which makes up the 2018-2019 season for The Gina Bachauer International Piano Foundation. Jane Coop, one of Canada’s most prominent pianists and music professors, will be the soloist … Read more

16th annual Spy Hop Productions’ PitchNic films scheduled to premiere Nov. 8

Last year’s class of PitchNic short films, produced, filmed and directed by students in one of Spy Hop Productions’ signature programs, added nicely to the 15-year totals of film festival appearances and awards for these projects. Winning the Utah Short Film of The Year prize at the 2018 Utah Arts Festival, the short narrative feature … Read more

Recent SLC art happenings: Utah Museum of Fine Arts’ Site Lines, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presentation of memorial videos

The Utah Review looks at two events from local museums: Site Lines, The University of Utah Art Faculty’s exhibition at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) and a recent video presentation at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) that was held in connection with a national conference of funeral directors held in Salt … Read more