Utah Music articles published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including classical, chamber, jazz, world, experimental.
When the pandemic hit, Utah Chamber Artists’ artistic director Dr. Barlow Bradford resisted pivoting to virtual concerts. Large groups of people singing live in enclosed spaces was definitely out. But recording separate individuals singing in their own homes? Where in that process, he thought, was the art? But […]
A year ago, I would have never anticipated a season opener like this for the Utah Symphony. Instead of bustling through downtown Salt Lake City amid dinner parties, transit traffic and other event crowds, I strolled with a friend across a rather desolate South Temple toward a sparsely […]
Fresh off of a tour around the American west, the New Music duo (and current Westminster College artists-in-residence) Red Desert Ensemble brought their set of (almost) brand-new commissions back to Salt Lake City for a night of exploratory, revelatory music. Future Music showcased the work of seven […]
Last weekend, Deseret Experimental Opera staged “Life Relegated,” a rock opera written by Jacob Rosenzweig and realized with a community of local musicians and dancers. The location was an out-of-the-way address inside The Gateway — the old Urban Outfitters, now a vast cement hall. It was filled for […]
It is sometimes difficult to imagine that at one point, every monumental contribution to the arts was once new: unheard, unsung, unseen. The initial reception of works that are now considered part of the canon, has little to do with how the works are ultimately remembered. For example, […]
As Barry White will tell you, love ain’t easy (and seems to be getting more complicated). So the idea of sitting down to an evening devoted to a musical love letter, written a century ago by a young composer for the woman who would become his wife, has […]
When you think of “Mormon music” what typically comes to mind? A world-renowned chorus of 360 middle-aged balding and white-haired members? Traditional hymns sung at a slightly-slower-than-comfortable pace in chapels punctuated by the cries of children below the “age of accountability”? Or maybe even songs about popcorn growing […]
“When I was a student, the feeling was composers were super nerdy, academic, and kind of out of it,” says Christian Asplund. “Composers were the pocket protector guys.” Asplund didn’t see himself in that vein, but he knew he wanted to write and perform music since grade school. […]
Ask Martha Sargent, director of the Utah Baroque Ensemble, how the group began nearly 30 years ago and she smiles. It’s a question she’s heard often. “The choir really began with Douglas Bush and the Utah Bach Choir,” she says, “but when Doug got too busy to continue […]
Percussionists have all the fun. On the symphony stage, while all the other instrumentalists are usually seated in their assigned chair, the percussionist moves around a playground of drums, symbols, marimbas, chimes, and triangles. Some of those instruments you may not even recognize. For example, the gender wayang. […]
The quality programming is definitely what the audiences come back for, but the surprises Intermezzo throws in also endear the audience to the organization. It isn’t uncommon for the musicians to take the stage to play a romantic sonata, but first launch into a short, unexpected contemporary work, […]
The talent of young cellist Matthew Zalkind, who performed a recital on June 29 at Libby Gardner Concert Hall as part of the University of Utah School of Music’s eighth Summer Chamber Music Workshop, comes from equal parts nature and nurture. His father, Larry Zalkind, retired from his […]
