USUO Fall 2025

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TRUST IN POSSIBILITY

Ruth

A Girl from New York An American Opera in Three Acts

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November 1, 2025 beginning at 11:00am Libby Gardner Concert Hall University of Utah The Utah District round of the competition is open to the public and admission is free. Visit UtahMONCAuditions.org after October 24 to view a schedule of singers and updated competition times.

The Utah District round of the Metropolitan Opera Eric and Dominque Laffont Competition is supported in part by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the residents of Salt Lake County through the Zoo, Arts & Parks (ZAP) Program, and the University of Utah School of Music.

WELCOME 6

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THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 10 TICKETING & PATRON SERVICES 11 UTAH SYMPHONY 12

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MENDELSSOHN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO

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CELEBRACIÓN SINFÓNICA

AN INTERVIEW WITH OUR NEWEST SYMPHONY MEMBER — ELINA RUBIO 55 THE ROAD TO BECOMING A RESIDENT ARTIST 68

Patrick Witmer Publication Designer/ Web Development Ken Magleby Patrick Witmer Graphic Designers

37 THE MUSIC OF PHIL COLLINS & GENESIS

ADMINISTRATION 18 AN INTERVIEW WITH OUR NEW PRINCIPAL GUEST CONDUCTOR — DELYANA LAZAROVA 35

Cynthia Bell Snow Office Administrator Jackie Medina Art Director/ Production Manager

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USUO SPONSORS 14 MUSICAL MOMENTS AT UTAH SYMPHONY |

Dan Miller President

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41 THE SHINING

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57 RACHMANINOFF’S SYMPHONY NO. 1

INDIVIDUAL DONORS 79 LEGACY GIVING 83

63 MAHLER’S “TITAN” SYMPHONY

MEMORIALS & TRIBUTES 84 INSTITUTIONAL DONORS 85 TANNER & CRESCENDO SOCIETIES 87 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 90

71 TCHAIKOVSKY’S “PATHÉTIQUE” SYMPHONY

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76 DISTANT WORLDS: MUSIC FROM FINAL FANTASY

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Welcome

O

n behalf of the board, musicians, and staff of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, it is our pleasure to welcome you to today’s performance.

Whether you’re joining us for an exceptional concert of symphonic masterworks, a thrilling live theatrical production of The Shining (a 21st century opera closely based on the novel by Stephen King, learn more on pp. 41–52), or one of our special themed concerts, we guarantee you will leave enriched through the shared experience of great live music. Come as you are and leave changed.

What you may not know is that all of our professional artists—from our orchestral and vocal musicians to the visual artists in our scenic and costume studios— contribute to the societal and economic fabric of this region in multiple ways. They teach as faculty members and special guest clinicians at universities and colleges, as well as in private studios. They participate as soloists and artistic leadership in local chamber music organizations and other community performances. And they care deeply about the quality of life in our region, where they volunteer and are engaged in a variety of civic institutions. We are proud of the diverse contributions our artists and staff members make to this community and grateful to be part of a community which so obviously values the arts as a crucial part of Utah’s Life Elevated. (See articles about our Resident Artist program on pp. 68–69 and our newest member of the orchestra Elina Rubio on p. 55.)

Our incredible variety of high-quality performances richly achieve our mission to connect the community through great live music. The outstanding musicians of our orchestra (one of only 17 year-round orchestras in the United States) perform an impressive range of music with new programs every week! They are joined by some of the world’s highest-regarded artists (learn about our new Principal Guest Conductor Delyana Lazarova on p. 35) and bring a vibrant quality to our opera performances that you will typically only find in the world’s largest cities.

Our talented musicians and artists create live shared experiences unlike any other. Every live performance is immediately a unique work of art and a singular social gathering.

Thank you for joining us and we look forward to seeing you and the friends and colleagues you share these performances with throughout the season!

Sincerely, Steven Brosvik President & CEO

Annette W. Jarvis Chair, Board of Trustees

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The Board of Trustees

ELECTED BOARD Annette W. Jarvis* Chair Judy Moreton* Vice Chair Joanne F. Shiebler* Vice Chair Thomas Wright* Vice Chair Jason Englund* Secretary Steven Brosvik* President & CEO The O.C. Tanner Chair

Dr. Stewart E. Barlow Larry Brownstein Paul E. Burdiss George Cardon-Bystry Gary L. Crocker John D’Arcy* David L. Dee* Barry L. Eden* Senator Luz Escamilla Jonathan Freedman Brandon Fugal Marie Gochnour Gardner Dennis H. Hranitzky Stephen Tanner Irish* Thomas N. Jacobson Abigail E. Lowder Derek B. Miller Dr. Dinesh C. Patel Frank R. Pignanelli* Gary B. Porter Jennifer Price-Wallin

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* Executive Committee Member

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Ticketing & Patron Services

Tickets for Utah Symphony | Utah Opera events can be purchased online at usuo.org, by calling USUO Patron Services at 801-533-NOTE (6683), in person at Abravanel Hall during regular business hours, and through authorized ArtTix sellers.

Discounts may be available for subscribers, students and under-30s, groups of 10 (or more), educators and military (with valid ID). Contact Patron Services for assistance.

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera Patron Services Abravanel Hall Ticket Office 123 W South Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84101 801-533-NOTE (6683) info@usuo.org Box Office Hours • • • •

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Accessibility Utah Symphony | Utah Opera is committed to making our programming, community engagement, and overall audience experience accessible to people with disabilities.

Some features and accommodations include: • Website Accessibility Interface • Assisted hearing devices, available by request at Guest Services.

• ASL-Interpreted performances • Closed-captioned or supertitled performances • Braille or large print programs available by advance request • Wheelchair, limited mobility, transfer, and bariatric seating available • Weighted lap pads, earplugs, and other sensory aids available by request at Guest Services.

We understand that accessibility needs and standards are shifting daily, so if you see something you would like us to implement or change, please contact our Access Services Administrator, Melissa Robison, at mrobison@usuo.org or 801-869-9067.

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Utah Symphony Markus Poschner Music Director Designate The Maurice Abravanel Chair, endowed by the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation Thierry Fischer Music Director Emeritus David Robertson Creative Partner Jessica Rivero Altarriba Assistant Conductor Austin McWilliams Chorus Director & Opera Assistant Conductor VIOLIN* Madeline Adkins Concertmaster The Jon M. & Karen Huntsman Chair, in honor of Wendell J. & Belva B. Ashton Kathryn Eberle Associate Concertmaster The Richard K. & Shirley S. Hemingway Chair Laura Ha 2nd Associate Concertmaster Claude Halter Principal Second Evgenia Zharzhavskaya Acting Associate Principal Second Karen Wyatt Acting Assistant Principal Second Erin David Emily Day-Shumway~ Joseph Evans Wen Flatt Lun Jiang Rebekah Johnson Tina Johnson~ Alison Kim Amanda Kofoed~ Jennifer Kozbial Posadas~ David Langr Hannah Linz Yuki MacQueen Alexander Martin Rebecca Moench Suni Norman~ Hugh Palmer David Porter Lynn Maxine Rosen# Elina Rubio Barbara Ann Scowcroft Ju Hyung Shin Bonnie Terry Julie Wunderle

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VIOLA* Brant Bayless Principal Yuan Qi Associate Principal Julie Edwards Joel Gibbs Carl Johansen Scott Lewis John Posadas Leslie Richards~ Whittney Sjogren CELLO* Matthew Johnson Acting Principal The J. Ryan Selberg Memorial Chair Andrew Larson Acting Associate Principal John Eckstein Walter Haman Anne Lee Louis-Philippe Robillard Kevin Shumway Hannah Thomas-Hollands~ Pegsoon Whang BASS* David Yavornitzky Principal Corbin Johnston** Associate Principal Andrew Keller Edward Merritt Masaru Podgorny~ James Stroup~ Jens Tenbroek Thomas Zera HARP Louise Vickerman** Principal FLUTE Mercedes Smith Principal The Val A. Browning Chair Lisa Byrnes Associate Principal Caitlyn Valovick Moore PICCOLO Caitlyn Valovick Moore

OBOE Zachary Hammond Principal The Gerald B. & Barbara F. Stringfellow Chair James Hall Associate Principal

TRUMPET Travis Peterson** Principal Alex Mayon~ Acting Principal

Lissa Stolz

Jeff Luke Associate Principal

ENGLISH HORN Lissa Stolz

Seretta Hart~ Paul Torrisi

CLARINET Tad Calcara Principal The Norman C. & Barbara Lindquist Tanner Chair, in memory of Jean Lindquist Pell

TROMBONE Mark Davidson Principal The Nathan & Shannon Savage Chair In Memory of Neal Savage

Erin Svoboda-Scott Associate Principal The Shane & Stacey Stowell Chair

Sam Elliot Associate Principal/Second Trombone

Lee Livengood BASS CLARINET Lee Livengood E-FLAT CLARINET Erin Svoboda-Scott BASSOON Lori Wike Principal The Edward & Barbara Moreton Chair Leon Chodos# Associate Principal Jennifer Rhodes Jaquain Sloan~ CONTRABASSOON Leon Chodos# Jaquain Sloan~ HORN Jessica Danz Principal The Marcia JS Richards Chair Edmund Rollett** Associate Principal Lauren Robinson~ Acting Associate Principal Jonathan Chiou Julia Pilant~ Stephen Proser

BASS TROMBONE Graeme Mutchler TUBA Alexander Purdy Principal TIMPANI Micah Harrow~ Acting Principal Eric Hopkins Associate Principal The Theodore & Elizabeth Schmidt Family Foundation Chair PERCUSSION Keith Carrick Principal Eric Hopkins Michael Pape KEYBOARD Jason Hardink Principal LIBRARIANS Clovis Lark Principal Anna Thompson~ Acting Librarian ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL Hannah Thomas-Hollands Orchestra Personnel Manager * String Seating Rotates ** On Leave # Sabbatical ~ Substitute Member

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Musical Moments at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera

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Musical Moments at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera

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Headerfuff

Headerfuff

7 1.

Our Music Director Designate Markus Poschner conducts Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique last spring.

He returns to conduct Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony October 30 & November 1 as well as Tchaikovsky’s final work—his “Pathétique” Symphony—November 7 & 8.

2.

Resident Artists Stephanie Chee, soprano, and Aaron McKone, tenor, perform during the 2025 Madeleine Festival at The Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.

3.

After playing Madame Butterfly all over the world, Hiromi Omura starred in this re-imagined production of Puccini’s beloved opera in Utah. But will Butterfly’s relatives ever understand her heart?

4.

Hip-hop star Common gets everyone up and moving at the 2025 Deer Valley® Music Festival.

8 5.

USUO Vice President of Education and Community Engagement Ben Kipp, second from right, holds the Excellence in Education award USUO received at the 2025 Honors in Education Gala while standing with, from left, Deseret News Publisher Burke Olsen; Utah First Lady Abby Cox; and Deseret News Executive Editor Doug Wilks.

6.

Assistant Conductor Jessica Altarriba conducts our musicians on the Rio Tinto Kennecott Stage at America First Square in Daybreak this July.

7.

A little princess delights in our annual Disney concert this summer at the Deer Valley® Music Festival.

8.

Associate Concertmaster Kathryn Eberle, right, and Veronica Kulig stay cool at the Ogden Amphitheater during a community concert in June.

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Administration ADMINISTRATION Steven Brosvik President & CEO The O.C. Tanner Chair

David Green Senior Vice President & COO

Micah Luce Director of Human Resources &

OPERA TECHNICAL Sam Miller Technical Director Kelly Nickle Properties Master

Dusty Terrell Scenic Charge Artist

Organizational Culture

JR Orr Head Carpenter/Shop Foreman

Natty Taylor Human Resources Generalist

COSTUMES Carol Wood Costume Director

SYMPHONY ARTISTIC Kerry Smith Vice President of Artistic Planning

Abby Gehring First Hand

Julie McBeth Executive Assistant to the CEO

Hannah Thomas-Hollands Orchestra Personnel Manager Morgan Moulton Artistic Planning Manager

Isabella Zini Artistic Planning Coordinator & Assistant to the Music Director Jessica Rivero Altarriba Assistant Conductor OPERA ARTISTIC Christopher McBeth Opera Artistic Director

Austin McWilliams Chorus Director & Opera Assistant Conductor Deborah Robertson Principal Coach

Michelle Peterson Director of Production

Ashley Tingey Production Coordinator

Stephanie Chee, Soprano

Julia Holoman, Mezzo-Soprano Aaron McKone, Tenor

Rodney Sharp II, Baritone Jie Fang Goh, Pianist Resident Artists

SYMPHONY OPERATIONS Jen Shark Director of Orchestra Operations Melissa Robison Front of House Director Chip Dance Director of Production Sarah Madany Stage Manager

Garrett Vargo Assistant Stage Manager

Marcos Ambriz Cutter/Draper & Costume Manager

Mallory Goodman Costume Rentals & Collection Manager

Spencer Smith Costume Rentals & Collection Assistant Manager Milivoj Poletan Master Tailor

Kathryn Wieland Assistant Tailor

Julie Porter Crafts Artisan/Milliner Amy Fernelius Doris Rynearson Kelsey Nichols Stitchers

DEVELOPMENT Leslie Peterson Vice President of Development Garrett Murphy Director of Development

David Hodges Director of Development, Institutional Giving

Calli Forsyth Assistant Director of Institutional Sponsorships and Engagement

Katie Swainston Assistant Director of Individual Giving Lisa Poppleton Grants Manager

Dallin Mills Development Database Manager

Ellesse Hargreaves Corporate Engagement Manager Maren Holmes Manager of Special Events

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Meredith Kimball Laing Vice President of Marketing & Communications Adia Thornton Director of Marketing

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Julia Lyon Communications Manager Emma Price Marketing Manager

Nina Starling Website Content Coordinator

Camila Baltazar Marketing & Communications Coordinator PATRON SERVICES Faith Myers Director of Patron Engagement Jaron Hatch Patron Services Manager

Caitlin Marshall Sales & Engagement Manager

Toby Simmons Patron Services Assistant Manager Genevieve Gannon Group Sales Associate

True Moore Chloe Toyn Patron Services Specialists

Michael Gibson Ananda Spike Val Tholen Samantha Morris Kjelbi Elassali Tanush Saran Patron Services Associates ACCOUNTING & INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Steve Hogan Vice President of Finance & CFO

Mike Lund Director of Information Technologies Melanie Giles Controller

Jared Mollenkopf Patron Information Systems Manager Bobby Alger Accounts Payable Specialist

EDUCATION & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Ben Kipp Vice President of Education & Community Engagement Kevin Nakatani Opera Education Manager Beth Foley Education Coordinator

We would also like to recognize our interns and temporary and contracted staff for their work and dedication to the success of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera.

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MASTERWORKS

Grieg’s

PIANO CONCERTO WITH ORION WEISS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 / 8 PM / NEWEL & JEAN DAINES CONCERT HALL (LOGAN) FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL ANJA BIHLMAIER, conductor ORION WEISS, piano UTAH SYMPHONY

WILSON GRIEG

Shango Memory (08’) Concerto in A minor for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 16 (30’) I.

Allegro molto moderato

II.

Adagio

III.

Allegro moderato molto e marcato

INTERMISSION

R. SCHUMANN

Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38, “Spring” (30’) I.

Andante un poco maestoso - Allegro molto vivace

II.

Larghetto

III.

Scherzo: Molto vivace

IV.

Allegro animato e grazioso

CONCERT SPONSOR

THE JEFFREY DRENKER ESTATE

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Artists’ Profiles

A

nja Bihlmaier has been Principal Guest Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic since September 2024. Previously, she held posts as Chief Conductor of the Residentie Orkest (Den Haag) 2021–2025 and Principal Guest of the Lahti Sinfonia 2020–2024.

In 2025–26, she conducts for the first time the London Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, and Orchestre National de Lyon, returning to the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Sydney and Melbourne symphonies, and the BBC Proms. She continues her residency at the Bonn Beethovenfest conducting the DSO Berlin, with whom she will also open the Berlin Musikfest. Last season she debuted with the Seattle Symphony, NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic, all of whom have reinvited.

Anja Bihlmaier Conductor

In the past two seasons, Bihlmaier conducted new opera productions at the Berlin Staatsoper (Cassandre) and Glyndebourne Festival (Carmen) – both debuts, and both leading to immediate reinvitations. In Spring 2026 she will debut at the Hamburg Staatsoper (Elektra).

O

ne of the most sought-after soloists and chamber music collaborators today, Orion Weiss is a “brilliant pianist” (The New York Times) who has performed with all of the major orchestras of North America and at all of the major venues and music festivals.

In February 2025, Weiss released Arc III, the final album in his Arc recital trilogy on First Hand Records. Known for his affinity for chamber music, Weiss performs with artists such as violinists James Ehnes, Augustin Hadelich, and William Hagen; pianists Michael Stephen Brown and Shai Wosner; and many string quartets, including the Ariel, Parker, and Pacifica Quartets.

Orion Weiss Piano

GUEST ARTIST SPONSOR

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A native of Ohio, Weiss attended the Cleveland Institute of Music and made his Cleveland Orchestra debut in 1999. In 2004, he graduated from the Juilliard School. Weiss’s awards include the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year, Gilmore Young Artist Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and more. Learn more: www.orionweiss.com.

History of the Music

By Noel Morris

Key Notes to Know • Olly Wilson was an eclectic musician. As a teen, he played piano and bass in jazz clubs. He wrote Shango Memory for the New York Philharmonic.

• Edvard Grieg grew up hearing Norwegian folksong, which flavored the melodies in his Piano Concerto.

• Robert Schumann struggled with mental health, but the First Symphony came to him during a happy and productive time.

African drumming, which manifests in the outsized role of percussion in Shango Memory. At the same time, he added crunching harmonies that point toward his passion for jazz.

Wilson said, “Shango Memory is inspired by the Yoruban deity Shango, the god of thunder and lightning, [a deity] of not only the Yoruba people of West Africa, but also in many places of the African diaspora, particularly the Caribbean and South America. In this composition, I attempted to use Shango as a metaphor for West African musical concepts that were reinterpreted in the American context and became the basis for African-American music.”

OLLY WILSON

EDVARD GRIEG

born Sept 7, 1937 in St. Louis, Missouri died Mar 12, 2018 in Berkeley, California

born Jun 15, 1843 in Bergen, Norway died Sept 4, 1907 in Bergen

Shango Memory

Piano Concerto

composed 1995 premiered in New York City 1995

composed 1868 premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark 1869

The Backstory

The Backstory

Wilson grew up in St. Louis, to the north of the “Delmar Divide,” meaning that Jim Crow impacted everything from healthcare to home ownership. Yet a creative culture flourished. By the time Wilson earned his PhD at the University of Iowa, he was a respected jazz musician.

“Why not begin by remembering the wonderful, mystical satisfaction of stretching one’s arms up to the piano and bringing forth—not a melody,” said Grieg. “Far from it! No, it had to be a chord. First a third, then a fifth, then a seventh.

And finally, both hands helping—Oh joy!”

Olly Wilson was a Renaissance man, an academic, a leader, a classical composer, and an ethnomusicologist. When he taught a college class, it played like a self-help seminar, serving up revelations in music, thought, and life through rigorous intellectual pursuit. With a Guggenheim Fellowship (one of two), he moved to Ghana to study indigenous music. He set up an electronic music program at Oberlin and an African and African-American music history program at Berkeley.

Grieg’s mom recognized his artistic spirit and began to teach him piano. At school, the kids nicknamed him “Mozak” (they couldn’t remember the name Mozart). If this tale has a fairy godmother, it came in the form of Uncle Ole—the violin virtuoso Ole Bull, who visited the family in 1858. After hearing the 15-year-old Edvard play his compositions, Ole declared: “You are going to Leipzig to become an artist.”

At a concert in Boston, Olly Wilson told a student, “Listen to more Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, and Charlie Parker.” This worthy list of pioneering 20th-century composers also points to Olly Wilson’s eclectic musical outlook. He thought of music as “experience consciously transformed.”

The Music

Olly Wilson wrote Shango Memory in 1995 for the New York Philharmonic. While it reflects his passion for wideranging musical styles, it also models his notion of African diaspora—as people spread around the globe, they became musical sponges and developed unique voices.

Although Wilson didn’t visit Ghana until he was in his 30s, he internalized the highly sophisticated language of West-

Edvard’s father, Alexander Grieg, was a successful merchant in Bergen, Norway, and served as British viceconsul. He saw his firstborn son, John, as the heir to his business, which was good for his second son, Edvard, who was a poor student.

Bull was a mover and shaker among Europe’s musical elite.

He’d known Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn, who, among other things, founded the Leipzig Conservatory. Bull escorted his nephew to the prestigious school and signed him up. And Grieg began to make his way.

The Music

The story of Grieg’s piano concerto begins with another piece of music.

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History of the Music

Few pianists were more famous than Clara Schumann. A single mother of seven and the widow of composer Robert Schumann, she supported her family by touring and used her husband’s piano concerto as her signature piece. With a head for business, she withheld publication of the score so that anyone wanting to hear Robert’s concerto had to attend one of her concerts. Grieg heard her play the piece in 1858. Toward the end of his life, he recalled his impressions of the Schumann Piano Concerto.

“Inspired from beginning to end, it stands unparalleled in music literature and astonishes us as much by its originality as by its noble disdaining of an extravert, virtuoso style,” he wrote in 1903. “It is beloved by all, played by many, played well by few, and comprehended in accordance with its basic ideas by still fewer—indeed, perhaps by just one person—his wife.”

Inspired by Schumann’s piece, Grieg started writing a piano concerto in 1868 and it bears some similarity to Schumann’s earlier work. Both concertos are in A minor.

They both begin with an explosive flourish before landing on a hushed woodwind theme and share a likeness in spirit. Similarities aside, Grieg presents a clear and original voice in his concerto, echoing sounds that were popular in Norwegian folksong.

With its premiere in April of 1869, the Grieg Piano Concerto became an instant success. Making its way into recording history in 1909, the piece is now heard in film, television, comedy, and video gaming.

ROBERT SCHUMANN born Jun 8, 1810 in Zwickau, Saxony died Jul 29, 1856 in Bonn, Prussia

Symphony No. 1 Spring composed 1841 premiered in Leipzig 1841

What to listen for

Schumann built his principal theme off the words, “Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf” (eem TAH luh BLOOT dehr FROO ling OWF), which means, “In the valley Spring is blossoming.”

The Backstory

Like many young people, Robert Schumann tried several careers before settling on the occupation that made him one of the most famous composers today. Granted, he grew up playing and composing for the piano, but amateur musicians

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were a dime a dozen in a world without streaming services.

Schumann was also an avid reader. When he passed his final exams, he followed his mother’s advice and moved to Leipzig to study law. It didn’t sit well with him. He dropped out and moved to the home of the piano teacher Friedrich Wieck, who promised to make him a star. Wieck had similar aspirations for his 8-year-old daughter, Clara; more on that in a moment.

Thanks to his father’s lucrative publishing business, Robert Schumann had the luxury of being impractical. He practiced for hours a day and launched the music magazine Die Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. In time, a hand injury ended his piano prospects, but the magazine took off. Robert Schumann became a widely read journalist and music critic. All along, he continued to write piano compositions, but they didn’t seem to interest anyone—anyone other than Clara.

A piano prodigy, Clara Wieck declared Schumann a genius.

She spent endless hours sharing ideas and playing music with him. Through her teens, a romance blossomed, and music became their secret love language. Friederich Wieck hotly opposed the match and ran interference. He sent Clara on tours for months at a time and even took Robert to court. Finally, a judge consented, and Robert and Clara married in September 1840.

The Music

In 1840, Schumann was riding high. He’d won the girl of his dreams and made an incredible discovery as an investigative journalist—an unknown symphony by the late Franz Schubert. He arranged its first performance with conductor Felix Mendelssohn.

Then, musically, Schumann took a left turn. He started writing songs. Before he knew it, he’d written some 140 songs in just one year, and they started to sell. People bought them to sing at home.

Encouraged by his newfound popularity, Schumann decided to write a symphony. He made a few false starts before it hit him in the dead of winter. He picked up a poem

by Adolph Böttger, “You spirit of the cloud, dreary and damp/Why have you driven away all my happiness?” and Schumann latched onto the last line, “Im Thale blüht der Frühling auf!” (In the valley spring is blossoming!).

Notice how the German rhythm undergirds the opening theme of the Spring Symphony. In a flash of inspiration, Schumann sketched the entire piece in just four days in January 1841. He finished the orchestration within a month.

Conductor Felix Mendelssohn happily welcomed springtime with a March premiere.

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7/19/2025 11:59:20 PM

MASTERWORKS Mendelssohn’s

VIOLIN CONCERTO & BEETHOVEN’S SYMPHONY NO. 4 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2025 / 7:30 PM / BROWNING CENTER AT WSU, AUSTAD AUDITORIUM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL DELYANA LAZAROVA, conductor GENEVA LEWIS, violin UTAH SYMPHONY

RAVEL

MENDELSSOHN

Le tombeau de Couperin (17’)

I.

Prélude

II.

Forlane

III.

Menuet

IV.

Rigaudon

Concerto in E minor for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 64 (30’) I.

Allegro molto appassionato

II.

Andante

III.

Allegretto non troppo - Allegro molto vivace

INTERMISSION

BEETHOVEN

Symphony No. 4 in B-flat major, Op. 60 (34’) I.

Adagio - Allegro vivace

II.

Adagio

III.

Allegro vivace

IV.

Allegro ma non troppo

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27

Artists’ Profiles

D

elyana Lazarova is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Utah Symphony, whose wide-ranging repertoire has been influenced by her international musical education. Born in Bulgaria, she has a natural affinity to Eastern European and Russian repertoire but feels equally at home in the Viennese Classical period, influenced by her studies in Switzerland. She is passionate about music from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Lazarova has won conducting competitions and prizes worldwide and was assistant to Sir Mark Elder and Cristian Măcelaru. She is also an accomplished violinist with a master’s degree from the Jacobs School of Music in Indiana.

Delyana Lazarova Conductor

In addition to conducting multiple Utah Symphony concerts this season, she will serve as Principal Guest Conductor of BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.

Debuts in 2025-26 include the BBC Proms with BBC Scottish Symphony, Colorado Symphony, Orchestre Symphonique de Quebec, Madrid’s Orquesta Sinfonica y Coro de RTVE, Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. She returns to the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Orchestre Philharmonique de Strasbourg, Munich Chamber Orchestra, and embarks on a European tour with Kammerorchester Basel.

N

amed a BBC New Generation Artist (2022-24), Geneva Lewis is also the recipient of a 2022 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and a 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant. She was also Grand Prize winner of the 2020 Concert Artists Guild Competition, winner of the Kronberg Academy’s Prince of Hesse Prize (2021), Musical America’s New Artist of the Month (June 2021), a Performance Today Young Artist in Residence and a YCAT Concordia Artist.

Geneva received her Artist Diploma from New England Conservatory as the recipient of the Charlotte F. Rabb Presidential Scholarship, studying with Miriam Fried, and went on to study with Professor Mihaela Martin in the Professional Studies Program at Kronberg Academy. Prior to that, she studied with Aimée Kreston at Colburn School of Performing Arts.

Geneva Lewis Violin

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Geneva currently performs on a composite violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, c. 1776, generously on loan from a Charitable Trust.

History of the Music

By Noel Morris

Key Notes to Know •

•

•

Maurice Ravel was a genius orchestrator, but almost all his orchestral works began as piano compositions. For this reason, much of his orchestral music is also core repertoire for pianists.

Mendelssohn burned twice as bright and half as long. He wrote his first masterpiece at 16, led a major orchestra, and founded a conservatory. Sadly, he burned himself out and died at 38.

Beethoven had a big belly laugh and loved to joke around. He packed his boisterous Fourth Symphony with good humor—notice how his serious intro sets up, not a dark and heavy piece, but a galloping romp. It’s Beethoven’s version of peekaboo!

What to listen for

Ravel used a modest-sized orchestra for Le tombeau de Couperin. Still, notice the difference in color between his piece and Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Ravel gave the wind players far more sunlight.

MAURICE RAVEL born Mar 7, 1875 in Ciboure, France died Dec 28, 1937 in Paris

Le tombeau de Couperin composed 1914–1919 premiered in Paris 1920

The Backstory

When Germany declared war on France in August 1914, the 39-year-old composer Maurice Ravel made several attempts to enlist. He aspired to be a pilot or perhaps an observer in the French air force, but he was rejected as physically unfit.

And so it was, in 1915, he volunteered as a driver.

“I admired him for it because at his age and with his name, he could have had an easier place—or done nothing,” his friend and fellow composer Igor Stravinsky said. “He looked rather pathetic in his uniform. So small. He was two or three inches smaller than I am.”

Ravel was just over 5’. The war, as it did for so many others, nearly broke him.

The Music

In the early months of WWI, Ravel expressed his patriotism through music: He started composing a piano suite based

on French Baroque dances, an homage to the 18th-century composer François Couperin and to a golden age in French composition.

“No, it isn’t what you think: La Marseillaise will not be in it.

But it will have a forlane and a gigue; no tango, however,” he joked. At that time, the tango was all the rage in Paris (and quite scandalous).

In 1916, Ravel served on the front lines at the Battle of Verdun. By 1917, he suffered from what was in all likelihood PTSD, as well as a heart condition, frostbite, and complications from dysentery.

During a long recovery, he returned to work on his French suite, now titled Le tombeau de Couperin. He designated each movement as a memorial to a friend who had died in the War (tombeau means tomb or musical memorial).

The last was a toccata dedicated to Joseph de Marliave, husband of pianist Marguerite Long, the woman who played the first performance in 1919.

Some listeners noted at the time that Le tombeau de Couperin is not particularly somber, to which Ravel replied: “The dead are sad enough in their eternal silence.”

He arranged four of the movements for orchestra in 1920.

FELIX MENDELSSOHN born Feb 3, 1809 in Hamburg,Germany died Nov 4, 1847 in Leipzig, Germany

Violin Concerto composed 1838–1845 premiered in Leipzig 1845

The Backstory

You could say the story of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto began in a townhouse in Hamburg. The composer was born there in 1809. Ferdinand David, the original violin soloist, was born in the same house a year later.

The Mendelssohns didn’t stay in that flat for long. In the chaos of the Napoleonic wars, Abraham Mendelssohn literally pulled his family from their beds and fled to Berlin.

Felix Mendelssohn was a man with more than one brilliant career. He wrote his first masterpiece at sixteen. He founded the Leipzig Conservatory and was a major conductor. He’d had a charmed upbringing. His father, Abraham, became a prominent banker. His mother championed the arts and

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History of the Music

brought a steady stream of famous people to the family home. Not only was young Felix a celebrated child prodigy (along with his sister), he excelled at sports, writing poetry, painting, and foreign languages.

Ferdinand David also proved to be a gifted child. At thirteen, he went to live in Kassel to study with the prominent violinist Louis Spohr. At fifteen, he and his pianist-sister went on tour. Along the way, they stopped in Berlin where they reconnected with the Mendelssohn family, and the two boys became best friends.

At that time, Mendelssohn’s violin teacher wrote to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about his impressions of the boy composer: “My Felix has entered upon his fifteenth year. He grows under my very eyes. His wonderful pianoforte playing I may consider as quite exceptional. He might also become a great violin player.”

As teens, David and Mendelssohn whiled away the hours playing music together. In 1829, the violinist moved to Estonia. Mendelssohn went to university and was asked to chair the music department when he was 21 (he declined).

By that time, Felix Mendelssohn was composing some of his most famous works.

The Music

When 26-year-old Mendelssohn took the reins of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, he hired his old friend Ferdinand as his concertmaster. In July of 1838, he wrote to him, “I should also like to compose for you a violin concerto for the winter; one in E minor sticks in my head, the beginning of it leaves me no peace.”

Soon, Mendelssohn began to buckle under the strain of his hectic existence. Work on the concerto went slowly.

Although he could play the violin, he often conferred with his friend on technical matters. (In fact, David is credited with having written the first-movement cadenza.)

Mendelssohn completed the piece in 1844 but was too frail to conduct its premiere. David played the first performance in Leipzig with Niels Gade on the podium.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN born Dec 1770 in Bonn, Germany died Mar 26, 1827 in Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 4 composed in Upper Silesia in 1806 premiered in Vienna 1807

The Backstory

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1806 was a fraught year for Beethoven personally, but it was a wondrous year for his music. He wrote his Violin USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

Concerto, his Fourth Piano Concerto, his Razumovsky Quartets, and his Fourth Symphony, and began the piece we know today as “Beethoven’s Fifth.”

In November 1805, he was trying to launch his career as an opera composer and having a bitter time. He tangled with friends, singers, and the Emperor’s censors. And then, incredibly, Napoleon seized Vienna a week before his opera’s opening night. (That opera would go on to become Fidelio, which Utah Opera will present January 17-25, 2026.)

The French occupation lasted just long enough to drive Beethoven’s audience away. His private life caused further headaches. He suffered hearing loss and quarreled with his brother. Clearly, he needed a break. That’s when his friend Prince Lichnowsky suggested a country getaway. With the promise of a private room and a piano, Beethoven packed up his scores, including the unfinished C minor Symphony (the Fifth), and boarded a carriage to join his friend in Upper Silesia in what is now the Czech Republic.

Word spread of his arrival. Count Franz von Oppersdorff, a neighboring nobleman had a flare for hospitality and an interest in glomming onto the famous composer. He invited them over to his castle.

The Music

Beethoven and the Count became friends and negotiated plans for a new piece. Setting aside the manuscript that would become the Fifth Symphony, the composer wrote a spirited symphony in B-flat. To accommodate the Count’s more modest-sized orchestra, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony uses a leaner orchestra (more like the one used in his Second Symphony than his Third).

Unfortunately for him, the aggravations of 1806 continued to mount. When French army officers dropped in on the Lichnowsky estate, the Prince urged Beethoven to sit at the piano and play for them—not a good idea. Beethoven couldn’t stand to be treated like a lapdog—especially for enemy officers—and flatly refused. The two friends fell into a shouting match. In some versions of the story, Oppersdorff had to block Beethoven from beaning the Prince with a chair. That night, the composer packed up his scores and left, walking for miles in the rain to catch a ride back to Vienna. Indeed, the original manuscript of the Appassionata Sonata has water stains.

The Fourth Symphony received a private premiere in Vienna in 1807 at the palace of Prince Lobkowitz. The public had to wait another year to hear the piece.

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Acuarela for Orchestra (04’)

TRADITIONAL

El Cóndor Pasa (04’)

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Bajo el Almendro (03’)

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El día que me quieras (04’)

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Quizás, quizás, quizás (03’) Huapango (07’) INTERMISSION

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33

Artists’ Profiles

E

nrico Lopez-Yañez has quickly established himself as one of the nation’s leading conductors of popular music and become known for his unique style of audience engagement. Lopez-Yañez holds the titled positions of Principal Pops Conductor of the Detroit and Pacific Symphonies, Principal Conductor of Dallas Symphony Presents, and Principal Guest Conductor of Pops at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. He previously served as Principal Pops Conductor of the Nashville Symphony for eight seasons.

Enrico Lopez-Yañez

Lopez-Yañez was the recipient of the 2023 “Mexicanos Distinguidos” Award by the Mexican government, an award granted to Mexican citizens living abroad for outstanding career accomplishments in their field. As an advocate for Latin music, he has arranged and produced shows for Latin Fire, Mariachi Los Camperos, The Three Mexican Tenors, and collaborated with artists including Aida Cuevas, Arturo Sandoval and Lila Downs.

Conductor

M

ónica Ábrego is considered one of Mexico’s most outstanding and versatile sopranos. She has performed on stages around the world with a diverse repertoire that include opera, art song, mariachi and Latin American music. Ábrego is the founder and Executive director of the Baja Musical Arts Initiative, a nonprofit, whose mission is to improve the lives of children and young adults in NY City and Mexico through musical education and performances. Ábrego developed the program Sharing Notes, an academic exchange program between Mexico and the US, for musicians with a passion for teaching and interest in community work, by offering masterclasses, lectures, and concerts to the students in Mexico and to inspire them in their musical growth, using music as an instrument to promote values such as discipline, solidarity but also be part of a social project where music, culture, language, and inspiration is promoted.

Mónica Ábrego Soprano

B

allet las Americas de Utah is a Latin American folk and modern dancing group that is sponsored by Utah Arts Alliance in Salt Lake City. The group has pre-Hispanic to modern Latin music and dancing. It promotes unity and love through music and dance as we share differences and similarities – for diversity makes us a stronger community.

The group has been part of the annual Living Traditions Festival, Mondays in the Park, SLC Dance Community by Corriente Alterna, the Annual Guelaguetza, Latin American Festival in Provo, Mexico’s Independence Day with Mexico’s Consulate in SLC, Days of ’47 Parade, and in multicultural programs in public schools, churches, and other organizations in Northern Utah.

Ballet las Americas de Utah Guest Artists

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Irma B. Hofer General Director Gilberto Gonzalez Artistic Director

An interview with our new Principal Guest Conductor — Delyana Lazarova

musicians on stage. I’m there to help them shine, to support them in bringing the music to life with authenticity, energy, and intention—just as the composer imagined it.

You conduct all over the world. What appealed to you about becoming Principal Guest Conductor of the Utah Symphony?

There were many factors, of course—but the main one is difficult to put into words. After our first concerts together, I felt an immediate connection with the musicians of the Utah Symphony. I left Salt Lake City not with a sense of closure, but with the feeling that something truly special was just beginning.

Delyana Lazarova will join the Utah Symphony as Principal Guest Conductor this fall. She reflected on what the position means to her and how she got here.

Tell us about your journey to the podium. What made you want to become a conductor? Was there a concert that sparked that interest? A conductor who inspired you?

My musical journey began so early that I can’t remember a time without it. Becoming a conductor felt like a natural extension of my life as a violinist. I loved playing the violin— truly—but I realized I loved music even more.

I vividly remember my first classical concert. I was 5 years old, completely mesmerized by the sound, the energy, the atmosphere. But what fascinated me most was the conductor. From my tiny seat in the audience, he looked almost like a magician—a mysterious figure with his back turned, hands moving in the air, guiding something I didn’t yet understand. He stared into a score I couldn’t make sense of, and I was desperate to know what he was seeing.

The moment we got home, I asked my parents for an orchestral score. I wanted to see for myself what the conductor had been reading. That curiosity never left me.

At the time, there were no women conductors in Bulgaria, so I simply assumed I would be a violinist. It wasn’t until I moved to the U.S. that I realized conducting could be a real path—my path.

How would you describe your conducting style?

My goal as a conductor is to be clear, expressive, inspiring—and above all, deeply communicative. I see my role as a bridge between the composer’s vision and the

What struck me most was how natural everything felt— musically and personally. It was clear that the chemistry we shared on stage was mutual, and I had a deep sense that I was in the right place at the right time. With the Utah Symphony, it felt like the possibilities were endless—like the sky was the limit.

You are an accomplished violinist as well as a conductor.

How does being a musician influence your conducting?

Playing the violin is one of my greatest assets as a conductor.

I believe every conductor should possess a high level of instrumental and artistic proficiency, as we are leading exceptionally skilled musicians and must fully understand what we can ask of them. This foundation not only deepens my connection with the orchestra but also allows me to lead with greater empathy, insight, and collaboration.

Women remain a minority in the conducting world.

What would you say to a girl who might be interested in becoming a conductor like you?

Don’t wait for permission—the podium is for anyone with vision, skill, and the courage to lead. Being a conductor isn’t about gender; it’s about inspiring others through music. If you love it, pursue it boldly. Your voice matters, and by stepping up, you help reshape what leadership in music looks like.

Utah is known for its majestic outdoors as well as its growing cities. Tell us about some of your favorite places in Utah. (And it’s OK if one of them is Abravanel Hall!)

I’ve yet to discover the full beauty of Utah, and I honestly can’t wait. As a passionate hiker and nature lover, the state’s incredible national parks are calling my name—I’ve heard so much about their breathtaking landscapes.

That said, Abravanel Hall already has my heart—it’s truly one of the finest concert halls I’ve experienced, and I’m genuinely excited for the incredible music we’ll make there in the coming concerts.

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Learn More About Utah Opera’s Innovative Production of BEETHOVEN’S

JAN. 17–25, 2026

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A Masterpiece Worth Updating

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From the tense underground rescue to the radiant Prisoners’ Chorus, this Fidelio is as visually stunning as it is musically powerful.

Why This Production Stands Apart

Love, courage, and freedom shine brighter than ever on the Utah Opera stage.

Acclaimed director Tara Faircloth creates a fully staged version of her groundbreaking concept first seen with the Houston Symphony. Poetry, historical quotes, and striking projections heighten the urgency and dramatic themes.

Tickets Start at $26

New scenic and costume construction

by Utah Opera

POPS

THE MUSIC OF PHIL COLLINS & GENESIS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2025 / 7:30 PM / BROWNING CENTER AT WSU, AUSTAD AUDITORIUM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL STUART CHAFETZ, conductor AARON C. FINLEY, vocalist BROOK WOOD, vocalist BRIAN KUSHMAUL, drums UTAH SYMPHONY

TONY BANKS/PHIL COLLINS/MIKE RUTHERFORD “Turn It on Again” (03’30)

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37

Artists’ Profiles

S

tuart Chafetz is the Principal Pops Conductor of the Columbus Symphony and Principal Pops Conductor of the Chautauqua and Marin Symphonies.

Chafetz, a conductor celebrated for his dynamic and engaging podium presence, is increasingly in demand with orchestras across the continent. This season Chafetz will be on the podium in Detroit, Naples, Buffalo, Kansas City, Vancouver, and Seattle. He enjoys a special relationship with The Phoenix Symphony where he leads multiple programs annually.

Chafetz’s original programs are a signature of his artistic profile. His popular programs including “Symphonic Genesis & Phil Collins” and “Totally 80’s” showcase the orchestra in an especially entertaining way and attract large audiences throughout North America.

Stuart Chafetz Conductor

Chafetz previously held posts as resident conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and associate conductor of the Louisville Orchestra. As principal timpanist of the Honolulu Symphony for twenty years, Chafetz also conducted the annual Nutcracker performances with Ballet Hawaii and principals from the American Ballet Theatre.

B

orn and raised in Montana, Aaron C. Finley’s career has spanned coast to coast as a professional actor and singer. Educated at Pacific Lutheran University in Seattle, he quickly rose to prominence in the Pacific Northwest, performing in Jesus Christ Superstar (Jesus/Judas), Rent (Roger), Fiddler on the Roof (Perchik), Hairspray (Link Larkin), It Shoulda Been You (Greg Madison), and The Gypsy King (Drago). He originated the role of Billy in the musical Diner, with music by Sheryl Crow and direction by Kathleen Marshall. Finley made his Broadway debut in Rock of Ages (2013), later starring in It Shoulda Been You and Kinky Boots. In New York, he also joined a lab production of George Takei’s Allegiance. He currently stars in Broadway’s Moulin Rouge and performs a symphony pops concert celebrating 1980s and Phil Collins music. Finley enjoys mountain biking, skiing, golf, basketball, and lives in Montclair, NJ with his family.

Aaron C. Finley Vocalist

B

rook Wood is a versatile singer based in New York City, known for her powerful vocals and dynamic stage presence. She recently appeared on Season 27 of NBC’s The Voice, showcasing her vocal talents to a national audience. In summer 2023, she brought the music of Queen and Journey to life at Prima Theatre in Lancaster, PA. She has performed with major symphonies including the San Diego Symphony at the Rady Shell, the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn, and the Philly Pops. Wood currently tours with 50 Years of Rock and Roll, alongside top Broadway vocalists. She has also toured internationally with Postmodern Jukebox On Deck aboard Holland America Line. Originally from Indianapolis, IN, she is a proud graduate of Indiana University. Whether singing with an orchestra or in intimate venues, Wood brings passion and connection to every performance.

Follow her on social media: @brookwoodmusic.

Brook Wood Vocalist

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Artists’ Profiles

B

rian Kushmaul grew up in Columbus, Ohio, playing rock and roll and pop music in several local bands. He was a jazz major at Capital University and earned a Master of Music degree in classical percussion from Temple University. He has drummed with many top orchestras, including Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Columbus, Vancouver, Kansas City, San Diego, The Philly Pops, North Carolina, Nashville, Calgary, and Phoenix. Kushmaul is the principal percussionist with the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra, and has been a member of the orchestra for over 30 seasons. When not on stage, there is a good chance he is on a golf course trying to break 80.

Brian Kushmaul Drums

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UTAH OPERA SPONSORS — THE SHINING OPERA ARTISTIC DIRECTOR SPONSOR

OPENING PERFORMANCE SPONSOR

BRIAN & DETGEN GREEFF

DIRECTOR SPONSOR

FLORAL SEASON SPONSOR

CAST PARTY SPONSOR

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VIP INTERMISSION RECEPTION SPONSOR

VIP INTERMISSION BEVERAGE SPONSOR

UTAH OPERA Paul Moravec & Mark Campbell’s

THE SHINING

OCTOBER 11 (7:30 PM), OCTOBER 13 (7 PM), OCTOBER 15 (7 PM), OCTOBER 17 (7:30 PM), OCTOBER 19 (2 PM) JANET QUINNEY LAWSON CAPITOL THEATRE

Based on the novel by Stephen King Published by and presented with the permission of Subito Music Corporation Composed by Paul Moravec with Libretto by Mark Campbell Premiere – May 7, 2016, Ordway Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota Utah Opera Premiere Performed in English with Supertitles (Captions)

CAST

(in order of vocal appearance) Wendy Torrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kearstin Piper Brown Jack Torrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Craig Irvin Stuart Ullman/Delbert Grady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christian Sanders** Danny Torrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bella Grace Smith & Emmy Ward Dick Hallorann . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patrick Blackwell Bill Watson/Lloyd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aaron McKone* Mark Torrance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher Clayton Grady Girls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eva Peterson• & Lilah Burrell• Mrs. Grady . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stephanie Chee* Mrs. Massey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Julia Holoman* Horace Derwent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rodney Sharp II*

ARTISTIC TEAM

Conductor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Geoffrey McDonald Stage Director & Concept Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian Staufenbiel Chorus Director & Assistant Conductor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Austin McWilliams Scenic Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jacquelyn Scott Costume Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alina Bokovikova Lighting Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marcella Barbeau Projection Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David Murakami Associate Projection Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morgan Embry Soundscape Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. Andrew Mayer Wig & Makeup Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kate Casalino Principal Coach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deborah Robertson Guest Coach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laura Bleakley** Rehearsal Pianist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jie Fang Goh* Assistant Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nora Winsler Fight Choreographer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Christopher DuVal Stage Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lisa R. Hays Assistant Stage Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hope Griffin & Hannah Schumacher Supertitle Musician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mitchell Atencio Set & Costumes rented from Co-Production by Opera Parallèle, Hawaiʻi Opera Theatre, and Portland Opera Supertitles by Opera Parallèle The performance run time is approximately 2 hours with one intermission *Current Resident Artist **Former Resident Artist •Choristers of The Madeleine Choir School. See page 47 for more information.

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Artists’ Profiles

Marcella Barbeau (New York) Lighting Designer Most Recently at Utah Opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs Recently: Madama Butterfly, Austin Opera & Opera San Antonio Acis & Galatea, The Florentine Opera L’elisir d’amore, Florida Grand Opera Upcoming: La bohème, Portland Opera Der Silbersee, Chicago Opera Theater La traviata, Opera Columbus

Alina Bokovikova (California) Costume Designer Utah Opera debut Recently: Harvey Milk, Opera Parallèle La bohème, Opera San José

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Patrick Blackwell (California) Dick Hallorann Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Marriage of Figaro Recently: Fidelio, Los Angeles Philharmonic Antony and Cleopatra, San Francisco Opera La traviata, Los Angeles Opera

Kearstin Piper Brown (New York) Wendy Torrance Utah Opera debut Recently: Falstaff¸ Portland Opera Poppea/The Comet, American Modern Opera Company at Lincoln Center Upcoming: Omar, Lyric Opera of Chicago

Artists’ Profiles

Kate Casalino (New York) Wig & Makeup Designer Most Recently at Utah Opera, Madame Butterfly Recently: I & You, McCarter Theatre Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Geva Theatre Upcoming: La bohème, Palm Beach Opera The Pearl Fishers, Palm Beach Opera Rigoletto, Palm Beach Opera

Christopher Clayton (Utah) Mark Torrance Most Recently at Utah Opera, Rigoletto Recently: Falstaff, Lyrical Opera Theatre Il trovatore, St. Pete Opera

Stephanie Chee (California) Mrs. Grady Most Recently at Utah Opera, Hansel & Gretel Recently: Utah Opera Resident Artist The Rape of Lucretia, The Shepherd School of Music L’incoronazione di Poppea, The Shepherd School of Music Upcoming: Fidelio, Utah Opera

Morgan Embry (California) Associate Projection Designer Utah Opera debut Recently: The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, Opera Chapman Towers of the Moon, Opera Chapman Upcoming: The Art of Being a Mess, Lauren Spencer-Smith World Tour USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

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The Charles Boynton Resident Mezzo-Soprano

Artists’ Profiles

Julia Holoman (North Carolina) Mrs. Massey Utah Opera debut Recently: Utah Opera Resident Artist Alcina, The Shepherd School of Music Dido and Aeneas, The Shepherd School of Music Upcoming: La traviata, Utah Opera

Geoffrey McDonald (Pennsylvania) Conductor Utah Opera debut Recently: Dialogues of the Carmelites, Wolf Trap Opera Lucidity (world premiere), Seattle Opera & On Site Opera Upcoming: The House of Yes, Wolf Trap Opera & Mannes Opera

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Craig Irvin (Iowa) Jack Torrance Most Recently at Utah Opera, The Pirates of Penzance Recently: The Pigeon Keeper, Opera Parallèle The Cook-Off, Nashville Opera The Pirates of Penzance, La Calisto, The Glimmerglass Opera Upcoming: Silent Night, Florida Grand Opera Intelligence, Virginia Opera

Aaron McKone (South Carolina) Bill Watson/Lloyd Most Recently at Utah Opera, Madame Butterfly Recently: Utah Opera Resident Artist Pagliacci, Utah Opera Hamlet, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Upcoming: Fidelio, Utah Opera

Artists’ Profiles

Austin McWilliams (Missouri) Chorus Director & Assistant Conductor Most Recently at Utah Opera, Madame Butterfly Recently: Associate Conductor & Chorus Master, Opera Grand Rapids Director of Choral Activities, Aquinas College Upcoming: Utah Symphony | Utah Opera 2025-2026 Season

David Murakami (California) Projection Designer Utah Opera debut Recently: Falstaff, Portland Opera American Idiot, Center Theatre Group Upcoming: Bluebeard’s Castle, Opera Omaha

Christian Sanders (Georgia) Stuart Ullman/Delbert Grady Most Recently at Utah Opera, Sweeney Todd Recently: The Rake’s Progress, Des Moines Metro Opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Opera Theatre of St. Louis Loving v. Virginia, Virginia Opera Upcoming: Susannah, Opera Omaha Orpheus and Eurydice, Pacific Opera Victoria

Jacquelyn Scott (California) Scenic Designer Utah Opera debut Recently: Harvey Milk Reimagined, Opera Parallèle Fellow Travelers, Opera Parallèle Upcoming: Light Falling Down, Starry Night Productions Mr. Obsolete, Obsolete Productions USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

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Artists’ Profiles

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Rodney Sharp II (Texas) Horace Derwent Most Recently at Utah Opera, Madame Butterfly Upcoming: Utah Opera Resident Artist Fidelio, Utah Opera La traviata, Utah Opera

Brian Staufenbiel (California) Stage Director Utah Opera debut Recently: Pigeon Keeper, Harvey Milk Reimagined, Opera Parallèle Das Rheingold, Calgary Opera Ainadamar, Pacific Opera Victoria The Shining, The Atlanta Opera Upcoming: Fellow Travelers, Pittsburgh Opera La belle et la bête, Doubt, Opera Parallèle

Bella Grace Smith (Utah) Danny Torrance/Danny Double Utah Opera debut Recently: St. Therese Choir, The Madeleine Choir School Upcoming: The Madeleine Choir School

Emmy Ward (Utah) Danny Torrance/Danny Double Utah Opera debut Recently: Show Stoppers, Fox Hills Elementary Manor On The Hill, Fox Hills Elementary Upcoming: Madagascar, Mountain Shadows Elementary

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Artists’ Profiles

UTAH OPERA CHORUS

Soprano Rebekah Barton Stockton Lauren Bohannan Kahli Dalbow Katie Sullivan

Alto Melissa James Jamie Johnson Rebecca Keel

Tenor Dyson Ford (Senator) Elijah Hancock Daniel McDonnall (Mafia Guy)

Bass Rodrigo Hernandez-Vazquez (Man in Dog Mask) Nelson LeDuc (Ranger) Oscar Safsten (Crooner) Daniel Tu’utau (Mafia Guy)

THE MADELEINE CHOIR SCHOOL

T

he Madeleine Choir School, founded in 1996 as a mission of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Salt Lake City, serves students from Pre-K through Grade Eight in downtown Salt Lake City. Inspired by historic European cathedral schools, it forms engaged scholars, effective communicators, dedicated liturgical musicians, and responsible world citizens.

Its unmatched music curriculum includes vocal training, music theory and history, and violin study. Students also receive exceptional instruction in the humanities, sciences, math, languages, visual arts, theology, and athletics, with a strong emphasis on character formation.

Choristers in Grades 5–8 assist in Cathedral liturgies and concerts, including Monday–Thursday evening Masses and Sunday morning services at the Cathedral of the Madeleine. They tour annually, recently performing in Italy and singing at a Papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. The school regularly collaborates with Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, Ballet West, and Grand Teton Music Festival.

Visit utmcs.org or contact admissions@utmcs.org for more information.

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A Note from the Composer

A NOTE FROM THE COMPOSER

The opera focuses on the musical characterization of Jack Torrance as a genuinely conflicted, three-dimensional person. Much of the music, including the orchestral interludes, works to get us inside Jack’s mind and central nervous system so that we can feel the transformation of a basically decent guy trying to do the right thing as he is overwhelmed by madness and evil.

Deeply resonant archetypes are the stuff of operatic treatment. Among the archetypes in Mr. King’s story guiding my composition of the score are those of Abraham-and-Isaac, Jekyll-and-Hyde, and even Siegfried/Götterdämmerung.

By Paul Moravec

S

tephen King’s novel The Shining is naturally operatic: it sings. The story dramatizes three of the most basic aspects of opera—love, death, and power. To me above all, it is about the power of love in the presence of evil and destructive forces. For all of the supernatural elements and high-voltage action, it’s a very human story about an ordinary family trying to stay together under extraordinary duress. It was a joy for me and Mark Campbell to imagine this timeless predicament in musically dramatic form, along with the novel’s evocation of terror and the supernatural.

IMAGES?

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I have composed for each character a distinctive group of Leitmotivs that continually evolve and combine over the course of the drama. The two contrasting realities—the natural and the supernatural—are reflected in two distinct musical sound-worlds that periodically converge as the drama requires.

In the final analysis (odd as this may seem) I would like the members of the audience to forget that they’re watching an opera. For all of its complexity and sophistication in the synthesis of drama and music, the power of opera as an art-form arises from its essentially primal, irrational nature and from “the primitive underworld of our souls,” in the words of Robertson Davies. “Opera speaks to the heart as no other art does, because it is essentially simple.”

A Note from the Librettist

A NOTE FROM THE LIBRETTIST

By Mark Campbell

I

’m very proud that Utah Opera is presenting another opera that I penned the libretto for, following the company’s splendid productions of Silent Night in 2019 (composer: Kevin Puts) and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in 2023 (composer: Mason Bates). It’s a very good thing that Christopher McBeth and his team recognize that Salt Lake City audiences cannot live on an operatic diet of Bohème and Traviatas alone and like to shake up the repertoire now and then with new American work.

If The Shining is successful as an opera, it’s largely because of Paul’s and my choice to adapt it from Stephen King’s novel rather than the Stanley Kubrick movie. While the latter is deservedly iconic, it is, like many Kubrick movies, purposefully austere and anti-dramatic, and the audience knows from the get-go that Jack Torrance intends to murder his family (look no further than Jack Nicholson’s eyebrows in the opening scene). It can also border on

camp with lines like “Here’s Johnny!” and the exaggerated portrayals of its secondary characters. In contrast, the novel is a masterful blend of horror and gripping drama, telling the story of a family struggling with mental illness. And it is decidedly operatic.

Bringing the novel to the operatic stage necessitated a few minor adjustments to that story. To instill a sense of claustrophobia, I placed most of the story in one setting: the Overlook Hotel. The novel spans several months; I condensed it to several weeks in Act I and made Act II unfold essentially in real time. I included four places in the libretto for orchestral interludes to show the passing of time and allow for the staging of the hotel to ‘come alive’; Jack Torrance’s increasing mental instability is dramatized through the inclusion of his abusive father Mark (who appears as an apparition in the book) and the staggered introduction of the hotel’s former guests, who we hear about, then hear, then vaguely glimpse, then see fully realized in the finale of Act I, as the first blizzard of the season seals the Torrance family inside. Finally, those apparitions are all part of Jack’s imagination—not paranormal activity; in the libretto, they never physically touch him.

All these changes honor the intent of the novel, but it’s really Paul’s music that has transformed The Shining into what is widely considered the most successful theatrical adaptation of a Stephen King work to date. From the opera’s opening chords to its beautifully wrought love songs to its crashing Act I and Act II finales to its powerful aria of healing in the epilogue, the score brilliantly captures in notes and measures the powerful and moving story King put forth in words and sentences.

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Composer & Librettist

Recipient of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music, he has composed numerous orchestral, chamber, lyric, choral and operatic works. He has been described in Opera News as “a masterful musical dramatist,” and his music has been hailed as “tuneful, ebullient and wonderfully energetic” (San Francisco Chronicle), “riveting and fascinating” (NPR), and “assured, virtuosic” (Wall Street Journal).

Paul Moravec Composer

Mark Campbell Librettist

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Frequently commissioned by notable ensembles and major music institutions, Paul’s recent premieres include the oratorios All Shall Rise and A Nation of Others, to libretti by Mark Campbell, for the Oratorio Society of New York at Carnegie Hall; Songs of Nature, with Amor Artis chorus and Eddie Barbash, alto sax; and Miami Variations for the Frost Symphony. Recent albums include the GRAMMY-nominated The Shining (Pentatone) and Sanctuary Road (Naxos).

The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon. Mark has created 41 opera librettos, lyrics for 7 musicals, and the text for 9 song cycles and 5 oratorios. Utah Opera audiences will recognize him as the librettist for Silent Night (2020) and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs (2023). Other works include: As One, Sanctuary Road, A Thousand Acres, Edward Tulane, Unruly Sun, A Nation of Others, Stonewall, Later the Same Evening, The Manchurian Candidate, Stonewall and Songs from an Unmade Bed. Mark created and funds the first award for librettists in the history of the art form: The Campbell Opera Librettist Prize. He received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Opera Association and this year will be inducted into the 2025 OPERA America Hall of Fame.

Synopsis

Act I

Jack Torrance has been hired as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in a remote part of the Rockies and arrives there with his wife Wendy and son Danny at the end of the hotel’s season. The family meets the hotel manager Stuart Ullman, its custodian Bill Watson, and its cook, Dick Hallorann. Watson instructs Jack about boiler maintenance and reveals a few secrets about the hotel’s dark past, while Hallorann identifies Danny’s psychic abilities—which he calls “the shining”—and tells the boy to call out his name if the Torrance family is ever in danger. Ullman, Watson, and Hallorann leave for the season.

One evening not long after the Torrances’ arrival, Danny has disturbing visions. As Wendy consoles Danny with a lullaby, Jack recalls the abuse his father Mark inflicted on him when he was a child. Danny utters a curious message (“redrum”) as he falls asleep which she attibutes to his bedtime reading, Treasure Island.

Jack finds boxes of memorabilia in the basement and learns more about the hotel’s past, including the murders of the Grady family, the suicide of Mrs. Massey in Room 217, and a mafia execution involving Horace Derwent. An invitation to a New Year’s Eve masked ball drops from a scrapbook.

Jack’s sudden obsession with the hotel worries Wendy and she demands that they leave—but Jack refuses.

A month later, Wendy and Danny are awakened by strange noises in the hotel. Jack investigates, hears a party in the ballroom, and discovers an oversized croquet mallet that has been placed there.

Danny enters Room 217. In the hotel office, a ranger on CB radio warns Jack about an approaching blizzard. Suddenly, the voice becomes that of Jack’s father, telling him to kill his family. Jack smashes the radio with the croquet mallet.

Wendy tries to calm him, and Danny enters bruised and wet with lipstick marks after visiting Room 217. As Jack rallies to protect his family, the hotel’s apparitions appear and possess him. Danny cries out for Hallorann, as the first snow begins to fall.

Act II

In the basement, Delbert Grady appears to Jack and urges him to murder his family. In the caretaker’s quarters, Danny warns Wendy that the hotel’s spirits have possessed his father. Jack spirals further into madness at the imagined New Year’s Eve masked ball where his father makes a guest appearance and again attempts to murder his family.

Having heard Danny’s cries, Hallorann arrives at the hotel via snowcat. Danny finally stands up to his father and escapes. The ghosts appear again, warning Jack that the boiler is about to explode. In the basement, Jack resolves to let his family live; when Wendy, Danny and Hallorann are out of harm’s way, he allows the boiler to explode. The hotel bursts into flames.

More than a year later, Wendy and Danny are staying in a cabin at a hotel in Maine where Hallorann now works as a cook. While Wendy observes, Hallorann urges Danny to try to move on in his life and be strong for his mother.

Synopsis written by Mark Campbell

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Novel vs. Movie

T

NOVEL VS. MOVIE

he opera The Shining is an adaptation of the novel

by Stephen King, not the Stanley Kubrick movie. As you may know, there are many differences between the two. The novel tells the story of a father struggling with alcoholism and deepening schizophrenia as his wife and son try to help him. In the movie, the story and characters are secondary to its visual brilliance and austerity.

Both succeed, but only the first is operatic.

Which version of The Shining do you know better?

There are other differences, some of which appear in the quiz below. Each item listed is either from the novel, movie, or both. If you don’t know the answer, you may need to call on your own “shining” ability to help.

By Mark Campbell

20=Expert, 15=Brilliant, 10=Good, and 5=Okay, 0=Ah, well.

Book

⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣

2. A fire axe 3. Moving topiary 4. Dick Hallorann’s murder 5. Twin daughters 6. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

7. “Redrum” 8. Room 237 9. Frozen hedge maze 10. The Overlook exploding 11. Roque mallet 12. Man in a dog mask 13. Bloody elevator 14. A cabin in Maine 15. “You are not my daddy.”

16. Mark Anthony Torrance 17. “Take your medicine.”

18. The Overlook scrapbook 19. Room 217 20. Volkswagen bug Movie. (See item number 19) Movie.

Book Book.

Both.

Movie.

Book.

Book.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

Book. (Jack’s father.)

Book.

Both.

Book.

Both. (But it’s red in the book; yellow in the movie.)

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8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

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⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣ ⃣

Answers: 1.

Movie.

2.

Movie.

3.

Book.

4.

Movie. (in the book, he becomes the hero!)

5.

Movie (they’re not twins in the book).

6.

Movie.

7.

Both.

1. “Here’s Johnny!”

Movie

Take the memory home with you.

UTAH SYMPHONY | UTAH OPERA SHOP

HEADER SPECIAL EVENT

HALLOWEEN SPOOKTACULAR TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2025 / 7 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL JESSICA RIVERO ALTARRIBA, conductor UTAH SYMPHONY

Selections to be announced from the stage.

N

uanced interpretations, dynamic energy and a charismatic stage presence are hallmarks of Cuban conductor Jessica Altarriba. Praised for her communicative skills, impactful performances, and equally vested in both established and well-known repertoire and contemporary compositions, Altarriba currently serves as Assistant Conductor for the Utah Symphony and is a Taki Alsop Fellowship Award Recipient (2024–26). Altarriba is concurrently pursuing her master’s degree in conducting at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.

Jessica Altarriba Conductor

This past summer she conducted the Utah Symphony’s summer community concerts as well as select concerts during the Deer Valley Music Festival, including Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture concert, closing the festival. She also participated in the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles National Festival in California, collaborating with LA Philharmonic Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, YOLA Artistic Director Gaudy Sanchez, and the YOLA National Team in festival programming and conducting a final concert in collaboration with Dudamel.

CONCERT SPONSOR

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CONDUCTOR SPONSOR

An Interview with our Newest Symphony Member — Elina Rubio

years old, but even before that I had a toy violin that I used to take with me everywhere.

By Megs Vincent

Elina Rubio, 29, will join the Utah Symphony this September as its newest member. We asked the violinist to tell us more about her journey.

Winning an audition at a full-time symphony like the Utah Symphony is many musicians’ dream. How did you prepare for the audition?

I started preparing for this audition a month and a half before. I started by dividing the list into two different groups to work on every excerpt and cover the music in two days.

I find it easy to get overwhelmed when the lists involve a lot of music and getting it organized from the beginning to make it more manageable was very helpful for me.

The two lists I had for two different days allowed me to work more efficiently on every excerpt. I involved a lot of metronome throughout this process, starting at slower tempos to establish the rhythm and settling the intonation was very important to me. Towards the end of my preparation (about a week and a half away from the preliminary round) I started practicing performance—randomly choosing groups or excerpts to cover all the music in three rounds.

After playing them through, I would repeat the same three rounds but with a metronome and under tempo—just to clean up some parts and make sure I could play the music slower or in case the committee asked me to do that. Finally, I would say I made it a priority to get enough sleep and rest—I did not want to sound tired or burned out so I made it a goal to feel fresh and physically ready to perform whenever necessary.

Musicians at your level spend years refining their skills. How old were you when you first started playing violin and when did you know you wanted to become a professional musician?

My mom, Tania Boneva, is a wonderful violin teacher. She used to be the concertmaster of my hometown orchestra in Elche/Alicante (Spain). I grew up knowing I wanted to be a violinist; the stage always felt like home to me. She started practicing violin with me on a regular basis when I was 5

Sharing music with other musicians and with the public was something I knew I wanted to do since I was a little kid. It was a way to express myself and I found my voice with my instrument very early on thanks to the knowledge passed down from my mom.

What were some of the challenges you faced along the way?

Artists face all sorts of challenges along the way. There are many lonely moments of uncertainty, of social pressure and of judgement—from ourselves and from others. To a certain extent those same challenges and how we choose to deal with them make us resilient and shapes the commitment we have to our craft.

Classical music has become a very competitive field.

It’s tricky and challenging to focus on your craft without comparison and judgment. A big challenge for me was finding a healthy competitiveness with myself, focusing on becoming a better version of myself through my music and my lifestyle. The journey of building habits to commit to my goals and working on my instrument with patience and adaptability was not linear. It had many ups and downs.

I have a life motto that has always kept me on my toes: “Train like an athlete, perform like an artist.” I committed to train like an athlete; a core principle of high-level athletic performance is recognizing the difference between fatigue and quitting.

What would you say to a young musician who hopes to follow in your footsteps?

Something I would tell to any young musicians trying to succeed in this industry is: “Doubting yourself is normal.

Letting it stop you is a choice. There will always be someone doubting your worth as an artist. Don’t let that someone be you.”

How did you learn you’d gotten the job with the Utah Symphony and what did you do to celebrate?

I learned right after the final round. They told me shortly after I played. I called my family in Spain right away.

I remember—it was around 1AM their time—but they were waiting on the line for me to tell them the results. I also remember calling some of my close friends­—there was a whole lot of screaming and laughing on the phone!

By the Numbers 149 musicians applied for the violin audition Rubio won last May. USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

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MASTERWORKS

Rachmaninoff’s

SYMPHONY NO.1 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025 / 10 AM / ABRAVANEL HALL (FINISHING TOUCHES) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL DAVID ROBERTSON, conductor TIMOTHY MCALLISTER, saxophone UTAH SYMPHONY

BOULEZ STEVEN MACKEY

Mémoriale (07’) Anemology, Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra, Utah Symphony co-commission (25’) I.

Spindrift

II.

Soughing

III.

Aeolian Howl

INTERMISSION RACHMANINOFF

Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13 (42’) I.

Grave - Allegro ma non troppo

II.

Allegro animato

III.

Larghetto

IV.

Allegro con fuoco

CONCERT SPONSOR

HARRIS & AMANDA SIMMONS

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Artists’ Profiles

D

DAVID ROBERTSON Conductor

CONDUCTOR SPONSOR

avid Robertson—conductor, artist, composer, thinker, American musical visionary—occupies the most prominent podiums in orchestral and new music, and opera. He is a champion of contemporary composers, and an ingenious and adventurous programmer. Robertson has served in numerous artistic leadership positions, such as Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a transformative 13-year tenure as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, with the Orchestre National de Lyon, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and, as protégé of Pierre Boulez, the Ensemble InterContemporain. He appears with the world’s great orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, São Paulo State Symphony Orchestra, Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, and many major ensembles and festivals on five continents. Since his 1996 Metropolitan Opera debut, Robertson has conducted a breathtaking range of Met projects, including the 201920 season opening premiere production of Porgy and Bess, for which he shared a Grammy Award, Best Opera Recording, in March 2021. In 2022, he conducted the Met Opera revival of the production, in addition to making his Rome Opera debut conducting Janáček’s Káťa Kabanová. Robertson is the Director of Conducting Studies, Distinguished Visiting Faculty of The Juilliard School, New York, and serves on the Tianjin Juilliard Advisory Council. In the 2024–25 season, he celebrates the Boulez Centennial with the New York Philharmonic, Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, and Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra; conducts the orchestras of Philadelphia, Cleveland, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Seoul, Berlin, Leipzig, the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, and Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks. He leads European tours of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and the Australian Youth Orchestra, and continues his three-year project as the inaugural Creative Partner of the Utah Symphony and Opera, where his guitar ensemble, Another Night on Earth, made its US debut. Robertson is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France, and is the recipient of numerous artistic awards. Discover more about David Robertson at ConductorDavidRobertson.com, and on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and YouTube: @conductordavidrobertson.

O

ne of today’s most celebrated wind soloists, Timothy McAllister is a member of the renowned Prism Quartet and has appeared with the world’s top orchestras in over 20 countries. He is a champion of contemporary music credited with over 50 albums and is featured on three Grammy® Award-winning recordings. Recent highlights included his debut with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Slatkin, featuring John Corigliano’s saxophone concerto, Triathlon, which was written for him, as well as a new concerto by Adolphus Hailstork with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic.

TIMOTHY MCALLISTER Saxophone

McAllister joined David Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony to record the music of John Adams, including both the Saxophone Concerto dedicated to McAllister, and City Noir, earning a GRAMMY® Award for Best Orchestral Performance. Other notable works premiered by McAllister include Tyshawn Sorey’s Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith) which received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

McAllister’s most recent release, Project Encore, Vol. 2, showcases composers including Wynton Marsalis, Iman Habibi, Adam Schoenberg, Sean Hickey, and Jennifer Higdon.

For more information visit www.timothymcallister.com.

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History of the Music

By Noel Morris

Key Notes to Know • Pierre Boulez, born 100 years ago, became dominant in post-World War II music.

• Steven Mackey plays electric guitar and is a Grammywinning composer.

• Sergei Rachmaninoff emigrated to the United States in 1918 and lived there until he died in 1944. He toured extensively, and people considered him the greatest pianist alive. Sadly, he wrote only six major compositions.

PIERRE BOULEZ born Mar 26, 1925 in Montbrison, France died Jan 5, 2016 in Baden-Baden, Germany

Mémoriale composed 1985 premiered in Nanterre, France 1985

The Backstory

Pierre Boulez (boo LEZ) was a firebrand, a modernist, and a radical. He entered the conservatory in post-World War II France when the division yawned between musicians, presenters, audiences, and academics. At the same time, mass communications amplified social unrest and Cold War politics. Nevertheless, in that fractured world, this giant of the avant-garde became one of the most respected and admired figures across the board.

Boulez’s reputation as a firebrand came from his giant intellect and unapologetic clarity of purpose. In a recent article, The New York Times wrote, “Boulez... seemed to hold only severe opinions.”

And yet, Boulez was known as a warm, genial, soft-spoken man.

The Music In the mid-1970s, Boulez was at the helm of the New York Philharmonic when French President Georges Pompidou offered him his own sandbox, so to speak. With government funding, Boulez founded IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, to explore the intersection between science and music—instrumental music, computers, synthesized sound, recorded music, and acoustics. He recruited teams of musicians and researchers to conceptualize and realize aspects of electronic music-

making that we now take for granted. Alongside his research, he founded a performance group, the Ensemble InterContemporain (later led by Boulez protégé and Utah Symphony Creative Partner David Robertson).

The young Canadian Lawrence Beauregard joined Boulez’s ensemble as principal flute in the early 1980s. “Larry” loved to tinker and found a way to build a fiber-optic interface between his flute and a computer. Tragically, he succumbed to cancer at age 28. Boulez wrote Mémoriale in his memory.

Mémoriale (1985) grows out of material dating back to 1971, a piece called explosante-fixe, or “fixed explosion.”

Highly experimental music, Boulez wrote the piece in memory of Igor Stravinsky, but seemed unable to contain his inspirations in a single work. Explosante-fixe has many offspring featuring different instruments and even electronics. Mémoriale is all about the flute.

In much of the piece, Boulez mutes the accompanying instruments and applies them like added pigments on top of the flute sound. The flutist gets a workout with tremolos and flutter tonguing. (Flutter tongue is a trill produced by either making a rolled “r” sound into the instrument or gargling at the back of the throat.)

STEVEN MACKEY born Feb 14, 1956 in Frankfurt, Germany

Anemology, a Utah Symphony Co-Commission composed 2024 premiered Carmel-by-the-Sea 2024

A note from composer Steven Mackey

Many composers are focused on sound, which is understandable since the common definition of music is “an art of sound in time” (Dictionary.com). I like sound as much as the next composer, probably more than the average civilian, but the “in time” part has preoccupied me. Or more specifically, the movement of sound through time.

It seems improbable that a vibrating column of air directed by a saxophonist through a brass tube to produce varying frequencies at varying intervals could make us feel anything … other than a breeze. The small movements of our eardrums can be assembled by the brain into a vivid sense of motion at varying speeds across varying topographies

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History of the Music

in varying viscosities and through portals to surprising new dimensions—an epic journey with concomitant emotional ups and downs along the way. The illusion of movement in music is magic!

“I had a very high opinion of my work,” he said, reflecting on its composition. “The joy of creating carried me away.

I was convinced that here I had discovered and opened entirely new paths in music.”

Woodwinds, including the saxophone, are generally capable of speed, agility, and a variety of colors. Tim McAllister, Anemology’s dedicatee, possesses a rare and special virtuosity which I’ve become familiar with through various collaborations over the past 20 years. His playing howls, grooves, flutters, and flows like the wind.

So what went wrong? Everything. And nothing.

Anemology, the science, is the study of air movement . . . and so is music. Music and wind are invisible except for the movement they cause. Anemology celebrates movement.

—SM

Since then, scholars have had to reassess Rachmaninoff and dissect a truth that has been intuitive to audiences for decades: Rachmaninoff was a brilliant composer who applied exceptional craftsmanship to irresistible melodies.

P.S. Writing this program note on the return flight from a ski trip brings to mind how two of my lifelong passions—skiing and music—have influenced each other. They are frequently metaphors for each other, and at their core, share a joy of motion and a dance with invisible forces like wind, gravity, and tonality.

A Young Composer

SERGEI RACHMANINOFF born Apr 1, 1873 in Staraya Russia, Russia died Mar 28, 1943 in Beverly Hills, CA

Symphony No. 1 composed 1895 premiered in St. Petersburg 1897

What to listen for

The Gregorian chant Dies irae obsessed Rachmaninoff.

Hear it in his First Symphony.

The Backstory

If ever there were a Cinderella story of symphonies, this is it.

On March 28, 1897, the 24-year-old composer Sergei Rachmaninoff huddled on a staircase at a concert hall with his head in his hands. He jabbed his fingers in his ears to blot out the sound of an under-rehearsed orchestra playing for a reportedly drunk conductor. It was the premiere of his First Symphony.

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In 1897, he faced an audience that wasn’t ready for his symphony’s power or bracing harmonies. Later on, despite his box office success, modernists dismissed his work as a 19th-century throwback.

When he was 12, his mother packed him up and sent him 450 miles away to live with an esteemed piano teacher, Nikolai Zverev.

Rachmaninoff described it as a “musical prison.” And it was a piano prison at that. Zverev openly interfered with young Rachmaninoff’s attempts to write music. At 16, he left his teacher and moved in with his aunt’s family, where he became part of a happy home—something he’d missed under Zverev’s roof. During the summer, he and his cousins roamed the countryside at Ivanovka, the family estate.

Meanwhile, he shifted his focus at the Conservatory to composition. At 18, he completed his First Piano Concerto (later revised) and the opera Aleko.

Before Rachmaninoff even left school, there was a buzz around him. He signed a deal with the publisher Guthiel, and the Bolshoi Opera announced its intention to stage Aleko.

The Music

In 1895, Rachmaninoff spent ten months at Ivanovka writing his First Symphony. He ostensibly based the piece on Russian Orthodox chant, but a rather unorthodox tune—the Dies irae—turned up in it.

The Dies irae—day of wrath—is a plainchant from the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead. (It also turned up in Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack to the movie adaptation of The Shining.) In the First Symphony, Rachmaninoff pinched a bit of the chant to fashion a motif that permeates the piece. (You’ll first hear it in the solo clarinet.)

History of the Music

This brings us to the total wipeout at the first performance.

After César Cui compared the symphony to the seven plagues of Egypt, the young composer suffered a breakdown and wrote nothing for almost three years.

Twenty years later, he fled the Bolsheviks and abandoned the manuscript. It disappeared. For years, people said he’d destroyed it in a fit of passion, but rumor is that it’s in a private collection.

If this Cinderella story has a glass slipper, it’s the original set of orchestral parts. It sat in a Leningrad music library and surfaced after the composer’s death. A scholar named Pavel Lamm used the parts to reconstruct the score, leading to a triumphant revival in 1945. Since then, conductors and publishers have taken liberties with the piece because we don’t have Rachmaninoff’s final say.

For this performance, David Robertson uses a new edition that cleans up typos and inconsistencies between the different orchestral parts.

“It’s a pretty straightforward editorial process,” wrote editor Ed Liebrecht. “But there are other editions that include ‘remembered’ additional percussion or alternative orchestrations, supposedly heard by audience members at the premiere concert in St Petersburg, which, given the total impossibility of verification, we left out entirely. As far as it is possible to prove, this is what Rachmaninoff wrote.”

Ultimately, this performance gives us a window into an extraordinary talent at age 22.

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Celebrate

HOLIDAY MAGIC AT

MASTERWORKS

Markus Poschner conducts Mahler’s

“TITAN” SYMPHONY THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2025 / 5:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL MARKUS POSCHNER, conductor VADYM KHOLODENKO, piano UTAH SYMPHONY

BARTÓK

Piano Concerto No. 3 (23’) I.

Allegretto

II.

Adagio religioso

III.

Allegro vivace

INTERMISSION

MAHLER

Symphony No. 1, “Titan” (56’) I.

Langsam. Schleppend - Immer sehr gemählich

II.

Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell

III.

Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen

IV.

Stürmisch bewegt

ORCHESTRA SPONSOR

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Artists’ Profiles

M

arkus Poschner is Music Director Designate of the Utah Symphony, assuming full duties as Music Director beginning in the 2027-28 season. This season, Poschner begins his tenure as Chief Conductor of Sinfonieorchester Basel and, in 2026-27, he becomes Chief Conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Markus Poschner Conductor

He was Chief Conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana from 2015 to 2025, leading the orchestra in two International Classical Music Award-winning recordings: the complete Brahms symphonies in 2018 and a Hindemith/ Schnittke recording in 2025. His recording of Offenbach’s Maître Péronilla with the Orchestre National de France was honored with the German Record Critics’ Award 2021. In 2024, Poschner received the Special Achievement Award from the ICMA jury for the complete recording of all Bruckner symphonies with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, of which he has been Chief Conductor since 2017, and the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. Together with Bruckner Orchestra Linz, he was given the Orchestra of the Year and Conductor of the Year prizes at the Austrian Music Theatre Awards 2020.

G

old Medallist of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, Vadym Kholodenko’s distinguished pianism and profound artistic gifts have led to invitations from many of the world’s finest orchestras and concert halls.

Kholodenko has held the position of Artist-in-Residence with the Fort Worth Symphony and the SWR Symphonieorchester (Stuttgart, Germany).

VADYM KHOLODENKO Piano

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Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, Kholodenko took his first piano lessons at the age of 6, and began touring internationally at 13-years-old. He was educated at the Kyiv Lysenko State Music Lyceum and the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, under the renowned pedagogues Natalia Gridneva, Borys Fedorov, and Vera Gornostaeva. He won First Prize at the Sendai International Piano Competition (2010) and Schubert International Piano Competition (2011), before taking the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2013). He resides in Luxembourg.

History of the Music

By Noel Morris

Key Notes to Know • Béla Bartók wrote the Third Piano Concerto at the (now) Albemarle Inn in Asheville, North Carolina. For just $274 a night, you can stay in his room and sit in the garden that inspired him.

• Gustav Mahler was an avid hiker who typically composed at a desk with a great view.

• Gustav Mahler was a famous conductor, but not an especially popular composer. Composition was something he did during summer vacation.

What to listen for

Birds! Both Mahler and Bartók added bird calls to their music. Listen for the thrush and the towhee in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto, especially in its slow movement. Hear the cuckoo in the opening of Mahler’s First Symphony.

BÉLA BARTÓK born Mar 25, 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary died Sep 26, 1945 in New York City

Piano Concerto No. 3 composed 1945 premiered in Philadelphia in 1946

The Backstory

Béla Bartók wrote much of his Third Piano Concerto in Asheville, North Carolina, near the end of an unlikely journey.

He was a proud Hungarian citizen, born in Nagyszentmiklós.

A brilliant pianist, Bartók earned a spot at the prestigious Vienna Conservatory but, for love of country, chose the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest instead. When he overheard a girl singing folk songs in 1904, Bartók realized a treasury of local music waited to be discovered. Together with Zoltán Kodály, he hauled Edison’s phonograph throughout Central Europe. Expanding into Turkey and North Africa, he recorded, translated, and cataloged as many as 10,000 songs. And folk music filtered into the DNA of his compositions. Meanwhile, his prestige as a pianist and composer became a source of national pride.

The 20th century was cruel to this Hungarian patriot. An international treaty ceded his hometown to Romania. Then, the fascists came. The Nazis dismissed his publisher and sent Bartók a questionnaire inquiring about his ethnicity.

“Naturally, neither I nor Kodály filled it out,” he wrote. The passivity and complicity of his fellow citizens appalled him.

“I am really ashamed that I come from this class,” wrote Bartók. His refusal to cooperate grew untenable, and he emigrated to America in 1940. He left his beloved country with a parting shot: He issued a will prohibiting Bartók tributes until all markers venerating Hitler and Mussolini had been stricken from Hungarian soil.

The Music

Béla Bartók’s life in the United States underscores a certain truth: he’s one of the greatest 20th-century composers, but his popularity lags. He struggled to make a living in the U.S. and wouldn’t take a handout. Various people in the music community leaped into action, surreptitiously sending him work until his health began to fail.

It started with a stiff shoulder and then fevers. After a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis, Bartók spent a winter in Asheville, North Carolina, to take in the mountain air, where his health improved. Meanwhile, he translated folk songs until the seasons changed in early 1945.

“The birds become entirely intoxicated by spring and organize concerts such as I have never heard,” he wrote. With the same precision used to notate so many songs, Bartók wrote down the bird calls of Appalachia, sending them fluttering into the slow movement of his Third Piano Concerto.

Written for his wife Ditta (a pianist), the concerto was to be presented on her birthday in October 1945. The music exudes airiness—much lighter than his first two piano concertos.

Sadly, he died of leukemia in September, leaving the last 17 bars unorchestrated. Bartók’s friend and student Tibor Serly finished the piece. For years, Ditta left it to other pianists to perform. She finally took up the piece in the 1960s.

GUSTAV MAHLER born Jul 7, 1860 in Kaliště, Bohemia died May 18, 1911 in Vienna, Austria

Symphony No. 1 composed 1884–1888 premiered in Budapest 1889

The Backstory

At 23, Gustav Mahler was a rising star working as an assistant conductor at the opera house in Kassel. As cliché as it sounds, young Mahler had an affair with one of the USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

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History of the Music

sopranos, who broke his heart. The unseemly episode forced him to look for another job, but it also inspired a major composition: Songs of a Wayfarer. Using his own poems, he wrote a set of songs about a jilted lover seeking solace in nature.

“I walked across the fields this morning,” sings the Wayfarer. “And then, in the sunshine, the world suddenly began to glitter.” Two of these song melodies found their way into Mahler’s First Symphony a few years later.

The Music

“A Symphony must be like the world,” he wrote. In fact, the First Symphony is like his world, laced with echoes of Vienna and nature and with Jewish, Bohemian, and Austrian folk music. Mainly conceived in 1888 and then hammered into shape over more than a decade, we see a composer who is not just revising his work but developing, struggling to find exactly the right form for his ideas. In 1889, at the first performance of the symphony’s earliest incarnation, he called it a “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts.” An 1893 version came with titles that suggested narratives. For example, he called the first movement “Spring without End” but abandoned these titles when he published the piece in 1899.

Even without that descriptive title, it’s hard to escape the

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laughing, spring-like atmosphere of the opening (remember the line, “the world suddenly began to glitter”). Using harmonics in the strings spaced seven octaves apart, Mahler creates a startling effect like the “shimmering and glimmering of the air,” as he called it. Peals of clarinets and trumpets suggest a distant military garrison, like the one in his hometown of Jihlava, while the solo clarinet sounds the cuckoo’s call.

The second movement opens with a robust ländler, a popular Austrian dance (picture Maria dancing with Captain von Trapp on a moonlit terrace).

For the third movement, Mahler drew inspiration from a strange scene in children’s literature: a hunter’s funeral procession in which the forest’s animals replace the mourners. Seizing upon its sardonic imagery, Mahler used a minor-key version of Frère Jacques, initially given to the solo double bass in an impossibly high register.

This produces a strained, off-kilter effect. When Mahler’s funeral procession takes a left turn into klezmer, he lays before us the essence of the natural sound world—sounds continually collide.

An Alpine thunderstorm kicks off the finale but soon gives way to triumph and glorious sunshine.

Dining AT

The Road to Becoming a Resident Artist

THE ROAD TO BECOMING A RESIDENT ARTIST

By Julia Lyon

Standing Out from the Crowd

Utah Opera chooses a select number of applicants for a live audition. Several days of auditions take place in Salt Lake City, New York City, and Chicago near the end of the year.

Then, finalists are interviewed. A handful will win a position and join the USUO family the next fall.

But the number of openings depends on the year. This year there was only one.

Hundreds of Performances

One of the biggest parts of the RA program is K-12 school performances. The process of performing again and again for an ever-changing, unpredictable audience helps strengthen performers’ skills—and confidence.

During the 2024–25 season, RAs gave 128 in-school assemblies and presentations. To get there, they drove 9,500 miles in the opera van, lovingly nicknamed ‘Vroomhilda.’

They performed for almost 40,000 students at 110 different schools across the state—not to mention performing in community concerts everywhere from Primary Children’s Hospital to The Grand America Hotel. All of it not only improves them as performers but as public speakers.

Star Soloists

Christian Sanders, left, performs in Utah Opera’s 2017 production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor as Normanno.

B

ecoming a Resident Artist at Utah Opera is no easy feat. To begin with, the numbers are against you. Around 600 people typically submit applications for one of the full-time positions— four vocalists and a pianist—which last up to two years.

Most have recently finished a graduate music degree. They know that being a Resident Artist (RA) will bridge the gap between higher education and a career.

“What you learn in an academic setting doesn’t always fully translate to the professional world,” said Kevin Nakatani, Opera Education Manager. “So developing that understanding of how things work at a professional level is incredibly important. We help them take the next step.”

But, first, they have to get the gig.

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RAs are also soloists at the annual Messiah Sing-In in November and the Access to Music concert. They perform roles in Utah Opera productions at the Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre and typically study a principal role as well to expand their repertoire.

Regular voice lessons and masterclasses with sought after teachers, visiting artists, and conductors help them grow.

The end result? Some RA alumni come back to perform in Utah Opera productions.

This October, Christian Sanders, who was an RA from 2015 to 2017, returns as Stuart Ullman and Delbert Grady in The Shining. Christopher Oglesby, who was an RA in 2017–18 and part of the 2018–19 season, returns as Alfredo Germont in La traviata next May. “Anytime an RA has returned, they always say regularly waking up and doing a school performance at 8AM has built their confidence in their instrument,” Nakatani said.

“When they go into auditions, they know what they’re capable of at any time.”

The Road to Becoming a Resident Artist

The 2024–25 Resident Artists, including Sarah Scofield, left, work with Joseph Colaneri during a masterclass last spring.

Christopher Oglesby, right, performs in a 2018 presentation of Opera Up Close for a high school choir class.

More than three decades after it started, the Resident Artist program continues to impact the opera world.

“Working so closely alongside mainstage artists at Utah Opera deeply shaped the kind of performer I aspire to be and strengthened my confidence in contributing ideas freely in any room. The exceptional outreach and community engagement opportunities shaped me both on and off stage. Talking about my craft, and sharing it with others, made me sharper, more confident, and more certain of the kind of artist I want to be.” —Sarah Scofield, mezzo soprano, who was an RA from 2023-25

“The return on this organization’s investment in these wonderful artists goes beyond just the training of individuals for our stages,” said Christopher McBeth, Opera Artistic Director. “We are contributing to the opera and symphony art forms on a global level; many of the artists that come through this program are seen on cast lists all around this country and Europe.”

What our Alums Say

“The Utah Opera RA program welcomed me at a pivotal time in my life that shifted my trajectory from academia to performance and galvanized my self-image as a singing actor. Through ample performance opportunities all over Utah I began to grasp the breadth and depth of my capabilities; and as a company that quickly felt like family, Utah Opera was the perfect place to make lifelong friends and feel safe while learning the ropes of this complex industry.” —Christopher Oglesby, tenor, who will be singing in La traviata with Utah Opera next spring

“The RA program at Utah Opera was a critical and formative few years in the development of my career. It taught me so much about my own technique and operatic preferences as well as how the day to day ‘life’ of an opera company works. I learned an incredible amount about the intangibles of the career: how a company comes to serve its community through education and how an administrative team and artists on a production work together to present an opera to the community. I think Utah Opera is truly unique in this way, and I’m so proud to be an ongoing part of the Utah Opera family.” —Christian Sanders, tenor, who will appear in The Shining with Utah Opera this October

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MASTERWORKS Markus Poschner conducts Tchaikovsky’s

“PATHÉTIQUE” SYMPHONY THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2025 / 7:30 PM / BROWNING CENTER AT WSU, AUSTAD AUDITORIUM FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL MARKUS POSCHNER, conductor SHEA OWENS, baritone CHORISTER FROM THE MADELEINE CHOIR SCHOOL AUSTIN MCWILLIAMS, chorus director UTAH SYMPHONY UTAH SYMPHONY CHORUS

FAURÉ

Requiem, Op. 48 (36’) I.

Introit and Kyrie

II.

Offertorium

III.

Sanctus

IV.

Pie Jesu

V.

Agnus Dei

VI.

Libera me

VII. In paradisum

INTERMISSION TCHAIKOVSKY

Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74, “Pathétique” (45’) I.

Adagio - Allegro non troppo

II.

Allegro con grazia

III.

Allegro molto vivace

IV.

Finale: Adagio lamentoso

CONCERT SPONSOR

HARRIS & AMANDA SIMMONS

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Artists’ Profiles

Please see Markus Poschner’s bio on page 64.

H

ailed for his “beguilingly sounding” (Opernwelt) voice and his “irrepressible playfulness” (Luzerner Zeitung) on stage, baritone Shea Owens continues to be recognized for his exceptional artistry and vocal versatility. At Utah Opera he was last seen performing the role of The Pilot in The Little Prince, and he was a featured soloist on the Utah Symphony’s “Music Elevated: Forever Mighty® State Tour. Owens is a former ensemble member and soloist of Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland, where roles performed included Prince Ivan in RimskyKorsakov’s Kashchey the Deathless, Ottone in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Belcore in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, and Valentin in Gounod’s Faust.

He has also performed with Switzerland’s Grand Théâtre de Genève, France’s Théâtre du Chátelet, and the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Along with maintaining an active performing career, Owens currently serves as the Director of Opera at Brigham Young University.

Shea Owens Baritone

A

ustin McWilliams is a conductor and countertenor who specializes in contemporary vocal music. He strives to present compelling, intriguing art that is directly relevant to the communities in which it is performed. This season marks his second as Chorus Director & Opera Assistant Conductor at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera.

Previously, McWilliams was Associate Conductor and Chorus Master at Opera Grand Rapids, Head of Music at West Michigan Opera Project, and Co-Artistic Director at Ad Astra Music Festival. In Grand Rapids he was the choir director at Fountain Street Church, a non-denominational, non-creedal institution that serves as a venue for heterodox speakers and ideologies.

Austin McWilliams Chorus Director

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A dedicated conductor and educator, McWilliams has served as Director of Choral Activities at Aquinas College and as adjunct faculty at Western Michigan University. He is also a faculty member at Missouri Scholars Academy, a governor’s school for gifted high school juniors in his native state.

Chorus

UTAH SYMPHONY CHORUS

Soprano Jenny Andrus Cydnee Barnum Farmer Abigail Bendixsen Julia Bigelow Caitlyn Bramble Christina Brandt Anadine Burrell Isabella Carlton Jana Conrad A. Elizabeth Davis Julie Fleming Emelia Hartford Kaily Jacobs Elliott Jeppsen Macy Kelson Rachel Kibler Kate Olsen Abby Payne-Peterson Anna Roelofs Anna Roussel Natalie Sandberg Michaela Shelton Erin Stocks Margaret Straw Carolyn Talboys-Klassen Hannah VonHatten Jennifer Way Zemp Cassie Weintz Breanne White Lindsay Whitney

Alto Christine Anderson Joanna Armstrong MJ Ashton Sara Bayler Caite Beck Joan Jensen Bowles Chelsea Cummins Sylvia Fisk Kate Fitzgerald Paula Fowler Gabriella Gonzales Jennifer Hancock Annette W. Jarvis Catherine Jeppsen Raenell Jones Samantha Lange Heather Perry Ruth Rogers Anastasia Romanovskaya Jenica Sedgwick Sue Sohm Jennifer Taylor Maizie Toland Sammie Tollestrup Dawn Veree Valerie Wadsworth Kathy Wight Ruth Wortley

Tenor Stephen Anderson Drake Bennion Geordie Burdick Mosiah Cipriani Holden Deitsch Dyson Ford Elijah Hancock Samuel Hancock Tim Hanna Nate Kemp Matthew Koster Isaac Lee Jeanne Leigh-Goldstein Dale C. Nielsen John Pearce Alan Robertson Kevin Rowe Ben Schneider Jesse Skeen Jared Swift Scott Tarbet Carl Wadsworth Edgar Zuniga

Bass Olivier Bauer Simon Colton Butler Richard Butler Paul Dixon Jarren Hancock Michael Hurst Stephen Jackson Thomas Klassen Andrew Luker Tom McFarland Steven McGregor Lyman Moulton Michael Moyes Vincent Nguyen Richard Olsen Chris Patch Dwight Perry Gabriel Poulson Say-Eow Quah Bryce Robinson Nathan Scott Mark Sorensen Marc Titcomb Matthew Toone

See page 47 for a profile of The Madeleine Choir School.

Utah Symphony Chorus

The Utah Symphony Chorus is composed of volunteer singers from the Salt Lake City area who come from all walks of life. The chorus typically performs three concerts each season with the Utah Symphony in Abravanel Hall, which may include choral masterworks, pops concerts, and our annual audienceparticipation Messiah Sing-In. Singers have performed under the baton of Utah Symphony Music Directors Maurice Abravanel, Varujan Kojian, Joseph Silverstein, Keith Lockhart, and Thierry Fischer, as well as numerous guest conductors including Robert Shaw, Margaret Hillis, Roger Wagner, Peter Eros, Bernard Labadie, Andrew Litton, Stanisław Skrowaczewski, and many others.

The Utah Symphony Chorus rehearses Tuesday evenings for several weeks before each concert and most evenings the week of a performance. Visit usuo.org/choruses to learn more about joining the chorus.

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History of the Music

By Noel Morris

Key Notes to Know •

Paris, France is renowned for its church organs. Many great French composers have had church jobs and have written music for choir and organ.

•

Formal music training came late to Russia.

Tchaikovsky was a member of the first graduating class at Russia’s first conservatory (St. Petersburg Conservatory) in 1865.

•

Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem is one of the most often performed requiems in the world. It’s not only heard in the concert hall but is designed to work liturgically, meaning its sections function within the structure of a liturgical church service (Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.). It’s most often sung on November 2, All Souls Day. GABRIEL FAURÉ born Apr 12, 1845 in, Pamiers, Ariège, France died Nov. 4, 1924 in Paris

Requiem composed 1877–1900 premiered in Paris, France, in 1900

What’s a Requiem?

The name comes from the first words of the Roman Catholic Mass for the Dead, “Requiem aeternum,” or eternal rest. Traditionally, it was an attempt to standardize the funeral service. This is to say the material is really old. Evolving from Medieval prayers, the Mass became standardized at the Council of Trent (1545-1563). Alongside this liturgical evolution, musically-minded monks (later choirs) sang the prayers instead of speaking them. By 1700, there were several hundred musical settings of the requiem Mass—all from different composers creating music around the same set of words (more or less).

Artistically speaking, requiems are like gumbo. Each cook brings something unique and individual to their recipe, with differences spanning centuries, musical styles, politics, local conventions, Church dictates, and matters of personal faith. Now, it is a beloved musical tradition. Even with today’s greater artistic freedom, composers continue to set the Latin funeral rite. Others, including Benjamin Britten and Johannes Brahms, dropped the Latin Mass in favor of a text that better aligns with their message.

Gabriel Fauré was a 19th-century Frenchman, a lifelong church musician, and an independent thinker. He wrote his

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requiem using the traditional Latin Mass but with less fire and brimstone.

The Backstory

Gabriel Fauré came from a large family in southwestern France. As a kid, he spent hours noodling around on a pump organ and started to draw attention. Gabriel was only nine when his father took him on a three-day journey to Paris and left him at a boarding school. It set young Fauré on an 11-year conveyor belt to become an organist and choirmaster. And he would be exceptionally good at that vocation, though he didn’t like it much.

The school gave him an excellent foundation in church music, including works by J.S. Bach and various Renaissance composers. Outside the curriculum, his teacher and close friend Camille Saint-Säens turned him on to the contemporary music of Schumann, Wagner, and Liszt.

Gabriel Fauré wasn’t especially religious. Nevertheless, he worked his way into some of France’s most prestigious church jobs, where he turned out fabulous organ improvisations without ever writing them down. Each year, composition—his first love—had to wait until summer break. For all the time Fauré spent in the church, he didn’t write much for that world, preferring to focus on the piano, chamber music, and songs.

The Music

The years ticked by, and Gabriel Fauré got only local recognition for his compositions. He wrote the Requiem in stages between 1877 and 1900. First, he made a setting of Libera me, a prayer to be said before burial (not part of the Mass). Two years after losing his father, he penned a piece called a Petit requiem with five of the seven sections (Introit, Kyrie, Sanctus, Pie Jesu, and In paradisum) but denied any connection to his dad’s death.

“My Requiem was not written for anything—for pleasure, if I can call it that,” he said.

He expanded the piece in 1893 and made the orchestral version in 1900.

Structurally, Fauré sidestepped Church orthodoxy. The traditional Mass for the Dead is terrifying. The Dies irae (Day of Wrath) sequence depicts a massive earthquake yanking people from their graves to face judgment. In other requiems, such as those written by Verdi and Mozart, those gaping jaws of Hell served as a potent drug for music making. Fauré skipped the drama in favor of the Pie Jesu: “Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest.”

The Fauré Requiem opens with a shock, like the horrid

History of the Music

stillness of a life extinguished. The music sounds spooky— even gothic—in parts, but blooms into an exquisite radiance. This requiem is not about Hellfire but a look toward Heaven.

Fauré quipped, “[I wanted to] stray from the established path after all those years accompanying funerals! I’d had them up to here. I wanted to do something different.”

Fauré’s church, La Madeleine, performed his Requiem at his funeral in 1924. Gradually, the piece began to circulate with the help of advocates, like Aaron Copland. In 1965, almost 90 years after the composer wrote his kinder, gentler Requiem, the Catholic Church concluded Vatican II where it “got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages,” including the Dies irae (Day of Wrath).

PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY born May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, Russia died Nov 6, 1893 in St. Petersburg

Symphony No. 6, “Pathétique” composed 1893 premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia 1893

What to listen for

Tchaikovsky revealed to a friend that his Sixth Symphony has a program—it tells a story—but he never revealed what it was. What kind of story do you think it tells?

The Backstory

On November 6th, 1893, Pyotr Tchaikovsky died, succumbing to cholera only nine days after conducting the first performance of his Symphony No. 6. The public’s response to the new piece had been tepid. Who knew, only days later, tens of thousands of mourners would flood the streets of St. Petersburg?

News of the composer’s passing hit Russia like a thunderbolt. Within a week, a second performance of the 6th Symphony was scheduled. Black drapery and a copy of his death mask adorned the hall, and concertgoers marveled at the symphony called “pathetic.”

The Music

Today, we’re more likely to associate “pathetic” with inadequacy or derision. However, the other, less standard definition applies to this piece: marked by sorrow or melancholy and having the capacity to move one to compassionate pity.

In a letter to his nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davidov (the dedicatee), Tchaikovsky confessed that the piece was personal: “The idea of another symphony visited me, this time programmatic, but with the program [story] that will remain a riddle for everybody—let them guess it who can. . . .Of all my programs, this is the one most imbued with subjectivity. During my journey, while composing it in my mind, I frequently wept.”

In 1893, the 53-year-old composer was a major celebrity.

He toured, attended performances, and drew crowds at train stations. He wrote the symphony at white heat between February and June. That same June, he received an honorary doctorate at Cambridge University.

It was the shock and suddenness of his passing that kicked up a flurry of speculation, fueled, in part, by the deathlike finality of his last musical statement (low strings hold a B minor chord until it sinks into the abyss—it’s marked pppp).

Given the work’s somber conclusion, some wondered: did he anticipate his death?

Indeed, as recently as the 1980s, a writer speculated that a tribunal had ordered Tchaikovsky to commit suicide over a homosexual liaison. This theory was widely circulated but didn’t stand up to scrutiny (for one thing, homosexuality was broadly overlooked among the Russian elite). Exhaustive examination of Tchaikovsky’s death has yielded little more than an unfortunate glass of unboiled water and a man’s stubborn refusal to see a doctor.

Without question, Tchaikovsky had a delicate spirit. His frequent shifts between joy and melancholy are fully displayed in the 6th Symphony. Yet, for all the crushing despair expressed in its closing bars, the composer found it deeply gratifying: “To me it would be typical and unsurprising if this symphony were torn to pieces or little appreciated, for it wouldn’t be for the first time that had happened. But I absolutely consider it to be the best, and in particular, the most sincere of all my creations. I love it as I have never loved any of my other musical offspring.”

It seems Tchaikovsky did contemplate death in his mysterious program. He even quoted the Orthodox Mass for the Dead in the first movement. But days after the premiere, he also affirmed life: “It will not come to snatch us off just yet,” he said. “I feel I shall live a long time.”

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POPS

DISTANT WORLDS: MUSIC FROM FINAL FANTASY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2025 / 7:30 PM / ABRAVANEL HALL ARNIE ROTH, conductor AUSTIN MCWILLIAMS, chorus director UTAH SYMPHONY UTAH OPERA CHORUS

Selections to be announced from the stage.

Credit: © SQUARE ENIX. All Rights Reserved.

CONCERT SPONSOR

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Artists’ Profiles

C

Arnie Roth

onductor Arnie Roth is a Grammy Award-winning artist well known in the world of video game music for his work with legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu and SQUARE ENIX LTD as Music Director, Producer and Conductor of “Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY,” “Dear Friends: music from FINAL FANTASY,” and “VOICES: music from FINAL FANTASY.” He was chosen to conduct a series of symphonic concerts based on the music themes of various videogame series in Cologne with WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln, including Symphonic Fantasies, Symphonic Shades, and Symphonic Odysseys. Roth is equally at home in the areas of film and composition and was the winner of the Best Score Award at the 2003 DVD Premier Awards and nominated for an Emmy for his original song, “Shine,” from the Mattel movie “Barbie in The Twelve Dancing Princesses.” Roth has produced dozens of best-selling CDs on such labels as American Gramaphone, JVC, Mattel, Warner Bros., Sony, Koch, Razor & Tie, AWR Records, and SQUARE ENIX.

Conductor

Please see Austin McWilliams’ bio on page 72.

T

he Utah Opera Chorus is an ensemble of local professional singers who provide the energetic choral voice of Utah Opera’s productions. The ensemble fluctuates in size depending on the needs of each show but typically consists of 16–40 singers for approximately four operas annually. Core singers participate in all productions involving chorus, and additional singers may participate in as few as one production per year.

The dedicated members of the Utah Opera Chorus represent a broad array of professions, including attorneys, teachers, homemakers, business people, and college music students. The singers are highly trained, with many holding advanced degrees in music, and they bring a wealth of stage experience to their performances.

Utah Opera Chorus

UTAH OPERA CHORUS Soprano Rebekah Barton Stockton Lauren Bohannan Kate Olsen Larissa Olson Aoife Shanley Michaela Shelton Katie Sullivan Kathryn Thompson

Alto Katherine Filipescu Paula Fowler Melissa James Jamie Johnson Angela Keeton Alice Packard Jennifer Taylor Valerie Wadsworth

Tenor Drake Bennion Trevor Blair Dyson Ford Elijah Hancock Tim Hanna Layton Loucks Daniel McDonnall William Tepner

Bass Thomas Klassen Lyman Moulton Vincent Nguyen Richard Olsen Oscar Safsten Carson Smith Sam Thomas Daniel Tu’utau

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Delivering freshly roasted coffee to restaurants, businesses, and homes since 1992.

visit one of our retail locations or order online today! www.millcreekcoffee.com Downtown SLC, SLC Airport, Millcreek City

Individual Donors

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera is grateful to our generous donors who, through annual cash gifts and multi-year commitments, help us bring great live music to our community.

Gifts as of August 4, 2025 * in-kind donation ** in-kind & cash donations † deceased

Millennium ($250,000+) Anonymous

Marcia JS Richards

Jacquelyn Wentz

Encore ($100,000 - $249,999) Estate of Eva-Maria Adolphi Kem & Carolyn Gardner Dennis Hranitzky

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John & Marcia Price Family Foundation Beano Solomon

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Harris H. & Amanda P. Simmons Foundation George Speciale Jim & Zibby Tozer Wheatley Family Charitable Fund

Overture ($25,000 - $49,999) Frances Akita & Christine Akita Sulser Scott & Kathie Amann Doyle Arnold & Anne Glarner Thomas Billings & Judge Judith Billings† Bloomfield Family Foundation Mr. Charles Boynton Judy Brady† & Drew W. Browning Judy & Larry Brownstein Estate of Stephen L. Fife

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Individual Donors

Maestro ($10,000 - $24,999) Anonymous Dr. J.R. Baringer† & Dr. Jeannette J. Townsend Beesley Family Foundation Jim & Susan Blair Diane & Hal Brierley Paul Burdiss Howard & Betty Clark Joseph & Cathy Cleary Marian Davis & David Parker Pat & Sherry Duncan Barry & Traci Eden Sarah Ehrlich Pam & Jonathan Eichner Matthew B. Ellis Foundation Carolyn & Craig Enenstein Robert & Elisha Finney

Douglas & Connie Hayes Susan & Tom Hodgson Chuck & Kathie Horman Sunny & Wes Howell Mary P.† & Jerald H. Jacobs Family Stephen C.† & Lynda M. Jacobsen Annette & Joseph Jarvis G F Larsen Family Charitable Fund Duncan & Irene Lee Bill Ligety & Cyndi Sharp Matthew Prince & Tatiana Lingos-Webb Prince Michal & Maureen Mekjian Millburn Philanthropy Trust The Millerberg Family Giving Fund Harold W. & Lois Milner James & Ann Neal

Leslie Peterson & Kevin Higgins Frank R. Pignanelli & D’Arcy Dixon Pignanelli David & Shari Quinney Richard & Carmen Rogers James & Anna Romano Sandefur Schmidt Allison Schuster Dewelynn & J. Ryan† Selberg Shiebler Family Foundation Shane & Stacey Stowell** Mr. & Mrs. G. B. Stringfellow Thomas & Marilyn Sutton Kathleen Digre & Michael Varner Brad E. & Linda P. Walton Dr. & Mrs. Harry C. Wong Kathie Zumbro

Allegro ($5,000 – $9,999) Anonymous [5] 4Girls Foundation Marcia Aaron Pam & Paul Apel Austin & Kristi Bankhead Kyle & Melissa Barnett Clisto & Suzanne Beaty Paula Bronson David Brown Charlotte & Hal Browning Mr. & Mrs. William D. Callister Marc & Kathryn Cohen Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth R. Cutler Anne Daigle & Rich Heyman Michael & Sheila Deputy John D. Doppelheuer M.D. & Kirsten A. Hanson M.D.** Carol & Greg Easton Spencer F. & Cleone P. Eccles Family Foundation Karen & Earl Enzer Jack & Marianne Ferraro Fifty50Fifty Family Fund Tom & Carolyn Fey

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John H.† & Joan B. Firmage Ashton Newhall Sarah Ratchye & Edward Frank Eva Novak David E. Gee Patrick & Charlotte O’Connell Diana George Patricia Legant & Thomas Parks Barbara Greenlee Rhett M. Roberts Ray & Howard Grossman Barbara & Paul Schwartz Emma Hamilton & Brian Casper Karyn & Damon Shelly Michael Huerta & Ann Sowder Smith & Wilcox Blue Skies Foundation Neone F. Jones Family Gibbs† & Catherine W. Smith Rick & Paulette Katzenbach Sheryl & James Snarr Brian & Nancy Kennedy Sidney Stern Memorial Trust Jeanne Kimball Emily Stewart Dr. Donald & Alice Lappe Ruth Stone Tim & Angela Laros Craig Stuart Daniel & Deena Lofgren Steve & Betty Suellentrop Dennis & Pat Lombardi Paul Taylor David Luker Susan Warshaw Christopher & Julie McBeth Jaelee Watanabe Tom & Janet McDougal Mark & Debbie Weinstein Carol & Anthony W. Middleton, Jr., M.D. Douglas Wood Jed Millburn Caroline & Thomas Wright Gail Miller & Kim Wilson Moeller Family Foundation Michael Montgomery

Individual Donors

Abravanel & Peterson Society ($2,500 - $4,999) Anonymous [4] Brad Hare MD & Akiko Okifuji PhD Craig & Joanna Adamson Jeff & Peggy Hatch A. Scott & Jesselie Anderson Nancy Ann Heaps Drs. Crystal & Dustin Armstrong John Edward Henderson Tina & John Barry Patty Henderson Sue Barsamian Drs. Carolyn & Joshua Hickman Nancy Bartmess Whitney & John Higgins Dr. Peter & Rosemary Beck William & Michelle Holloway Charles & Jennifer Beckham Dixie S. & Robert P. Huefner Dr. Melissa Bentley Stephen Tanner Irish Philip Bienert Gordon Irving Alice & Bill Bierer Jay Jackson Ann Binder Jay & Julie Jacobson Diane Bok Drs. Randy & Elizabeth Jensen Teresa Bolton Maxine & Bruce Johnson Helen & Jeff Cardon Lisa Jordan Blair Childs & Erin Shaffer Dr. Michael A. Kalm Tracy Collett Lucinda L. Kindred Dr. Thomas D. & Joanne A. Coppin Howard & Merele Kosowsky Cindy Corbin Les Kratter James Cox Jeffrey LaMora Rod Cullum Nicole and David Langlie Ruth Davidson Stan & Susan Levy Michael Brent Davies Franklin Lewis Tim & Candace Dee Robert & Shelly Light Lawrence Dickerson & Marcela Donadio Don List Matt & Nancy Dorny Tom & Jamie Love Frank & Kathleen Dougherty David & Donna Lyon Susan Dube John & Kristine Maclay Karey Dye Steve & Marion Mahas Barbara & Melvin Echols Keith & Vicki Maio Judith Fader Heidi & Edward D. Makowski Midge & Tom Farkas Hillary Marquardson Hans & Nanci Fastre Kathryn & Jed Marti Rick & Patti Fersch Miriam Mason & Greg Glynnis Blake & Linda Fisher David & Nickie McDowell Karen Fletcher Karen & Mike McMenomy Shawn & Karin Fojtik Clayton McNeel Adele & James Forman George & Nancy Melling Linda Francis Ellen Mendell Dixie & Joseph F. Furlong III Pieter & Janice Mensink Mr. & Mrs. Eric Garen** John & Bria Mertens Kenneth† & Amy Goodman MJZR Charitable Trust Sue & Gary Grant Glenn & Dav Mosby Dr. & Mrs. John Greenlee Terrell & Leah Nagata Kenneth & Kate Handley Metta Nelson Driscoll

Vincent & Elizabeth Novack Thomas & Barbara O’Byrne Elodie Payne Joel & Diana Peterson Arlene & Stephen Pettise James S. & Dyan Pignatelli Lisa Poppleton & Jim Stringfellow Dr. Susan J. Quaal Esther Rashkin Mick Rasmussen Mitch & Shannon Rice Sandi & Reynold Rice Steven K. Richards Gina Rieke Lee Rippel Kenneth Roach & Cindy Powell Kathryn Rommel Rebecca Roof & Gary Smith Mark & Loulu Saltzman Marlin Sandlin Jr Margaret P. Sargent Gerald† & Sharon Seiner Lisa & Joel Shine Roberta Stanley Ray & Ann Steben Marcie & Avy Stein Toni Stein Eddie Stone Tim & Judy Terrell Douglas & Susan Terry Judith & Richard Valliere Marvin & Sandra Van Dam Susan & David† Wagstaff John & Susan Walker Grant Lippincott & Donna Walsh Gerard & Sheila Walsh Renee & Dale Waters Stephen & Elizabeth Watson Kelly & James Whitcomb Cindy Williams Barry & Fran Wilson Jennifer Wollin E. Woolston† & Connie Jo HepworthWoolston Peter Zutty

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Individual Donors

Friend ($1,000 - $2,499) Anonymous [6] Alan, Carol, & Annie Agle Ryan Aller & Natasja Keys Beth & Roger Armstrong Ian Arnold Gaylen Atkinson Dr. Ann Berghout & Dennis Austin Fred & Linda Babcock Julietta Bauman-Schreck Karen Bennett Lowell Bennion Vicki & Bill Bennion Patter & Thomas Birsic C. Kim & Jane Blair Roger & Karen Blaylock Susan Boyer Steven & Cassandra Brosvik Mary Bush Dana Carroll & Jeannine Marlowe Carroll Linda Jo Carron Mr. & Mrs. Fred L. Carter, Jr. Rebecca Marriott Champion Po & Beatrice Chang William & Patricia Child Dave Clark George & Katie Coleman Phillip I. & Gail Coleman Kenneth Colen Dr. & Mrs. David Coppin David & Carol Coulter Jason & Kristin Covili Coleen Cronin Cecilia Crystal Mark B. Dean Margarita Donnelly Paul Dorgan Eric & Shellie Eide Elana Spitzberg Family Foundation David & Susan Erhart Leonard Farnsworth The Fickling Family Foundation Craig Fineshriber & Dr. Nancy Futrell Drs. Norman L. & Carol† M. Foster Dr. Robert Fudge & Sylvia Newman

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Sheila S. Gardner Larry Gerlach Bob & Mary Gilchrist Ralph & Rose† Gochnour Graf Family Charity Fund Keith Guernsey & Rebecca Burrage Dr. Elizabeth Hammond Mauri Hansen Helene Harding & Patrick Briggs Robert & Marcia Harris Virginia Harris Jonathan Hart Lex Hemphill & Nancy Melich Laura Holleman Ron & Marsha Houston Caroline & David Hundley Eldon Jenkins & Amy Calara Jerry & Shari Seiner Family Charitable Fund Joann & Russell Jex Dr. & Mrs. Ramon E. Johnson Bryce & Karen† Johnson Rebekah & Joseph Johnson James R. Jones Family Kimberli Jones Michael & Amy Kennedy Hyo J Kim KKC Foundation Alsco Uniforms Steven & Christine Knudson Mary Denice & George Koch Michael & Peg Kramer Stacy Lederer Patricia L Leikhim Ms. Susan Loffler Patricia & Mark Lucas Neylan McBaine & Elliot Smith Julie Mckee Warren K.† & Virginia G. McOmber Mr. & Mrs. Reed W. Merrell David B. & Colleen A. Merrill Jim & Nanette Michie Dr. Nicole L. Mihalopoulos & Joshua Scoville Kenny Mizel

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Legacy Giving

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera is grateful to those donors who have made commitments to our Endowment Fund. The Endowment Fund is a vital resource that helps the long-term well-being and stability of USUO, and through its annual earnings, supports our Annual Fund. For further information, please contact 801-869-9015.

Anonymous Edward R. Ashwood & Candice A. Johnson Gael Benson C. Comstock Clayton Foundation Estate of Alexander Bodi The Elizabeth Brown Dee Fund for Music in the Schools Lawrence T. & Janet T. Dee Foundation Thomas D. Dee III & Dr. Candace Dee Hearst Foundation Estate of John Henkels Roger & Susan Horn Carolyn T. Irish Revocable Trust Estate of Marilyn Lindsay The Right Reverend Carolyn Tanner Irish† & Mr. Frederick Quinn† Loretta M. Kearns† Vicki McGregor Edward Moreton Estate of Pauline C. Pace The Linda & Don Price Guest Artist Fund Perkins-Prothro Foundation Kenneth† & Jerrie Randall The Evelyn Rosenblatt Young Artist Award Bill† & Joanne Shiebler Steven P. Sondrop Family Trust James R. & Susan Swartz Clark L. Tanner Foundation Norman C. & Barbara L. Tanner Charitable Trust Norman C. & Barbara L. Tanner Second Charitable Trust O.C. Tanner Company Estate of Frederic & Marilyn Wagner M. Walker† & Sue Wallace Jack & Mary Lois Wheatley Family Trust Edward & Marelynn† Zipser

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Memorials & Tributes

Many donors have made gifts to Utah Symphony | Utah Opera in memory or to honor friends and loved ones.

Thank you for your generous tributes.

IN MEMORY OF Jack Ashton Paul Christenson

Jay T. Ball Martha Ball Judy Watts Brady Drew W. Browning

Joyce & Elden Brown Steven R. Fisher

Ashby Decker Barbara A. Bellows-Terranova Kimberly Cohee Patricia Jarvis Olive L. Miller Frederick W. Milad Vicki & Robert Bourns Spencer F. & Cleone P. Eccles Family Foundation Winder & Counsel PC

Burton & Elaine Gordon A. Scott & Jesselie Anderson

Earle R. Bevins IN HONOR OF Anne & Ashby Decker Colleen Merrill

Joanne Shiebler Maria S. & Allen Tuttle

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Anonymous

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Ramon Johnson Cathy Zavodni Dr. Gary F. Larsen G F Larsen Family Charitable Fund Ruzena (Rose) Novak Eva Novak Glade & Mardean Peterson Leslie Peterson & Kevin Higgins

Kelvin Peterson Scott & Kathleen Amann Rick & Betsy Anderson Kirsten & Gary Dodge Lory Hendry & Rob Ayres Joann & Russell Jex Richard Morais Shelley Morandi Sean Myles

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Ed Zipser Wilma Odel

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David Winder David & Maun Alston Anonymous Janet Topham Alsco Uniforms Kerrie D. MacPherson

Institutional Donors

We thank our generous donors for their annual support of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera. * in-kind donation ** in-kind & cash donations

$100,000 or more AHE/CI Trust Frederick Q. Lawson The Church of Jesus Christ of Foundation Latter-day Saints Foundation George S. & Dolores Doré Dominion Energy Arts Eccles Foundation Foundation Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Emma Eccles Jones Foundation Foundation Lawrence T. & Janet T. Dee The Florence J. Gillmor Foundation Foundation LOVE Communications**

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$50,000 - $99,999 Anonymous The Grand America Hotel & 47G Utah Aerospace & Defense** Little America Hotel* Crocker Catalyst Foundation Janet Q. Lawson Foundation Marriott Residence Inn*

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Charles Maxfield & Gloria F. Parrish Foundation Minky Couture* Simmons Family Foundation Summit Sotheby’s International Realty Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation

$10,000 - $24,999 Altabank B.W. Bastian Foundation Bertin Family Foundation R. Harold Burton Foundation Caffé Molise* Capital Group Enbridge Gas Goldman Sachs Philanthropy

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Institutional Donors

$1,000 - $9,999 Anonymous American Online Giving Fdn The Buckner Company Chartway Credit Union CHG Healthcare Services Spencer F. & Cleone P. Eccles Family Foundation EcoView Windows & Doors Henry W. & Leslie M. Eskuche Charitable Foundation The Fanwood Foundation Western Office Grandeur Peak Global Advisors Holland & Hart

Huntsman International LLC Intermountain Health J. Wong’s Thai & Chinese Bistro* Kennecott Utah Copper LLC KKC Foundation Millcreek Coffee Roasters* Mountain America Credit Union Mountain Temp Services, LLC Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Precision Hermetic Technology Promontory Foundation Ray, Quinney & Nebeker Foundation Red Rock Brewing Company* Rocky Mountain Power Foundation

Ruth’s Chris Steak House* Salsa Queen SALTT Spencer Fane Snow Christensen & Martineau Foundation Sotheby’s Cares Squatters Pub Brewery* Summerhays Music Center The Swartz Foundation Trujillo Acosta Law Utah Autism Foundation Vox Marketing Group*

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera would like to especially thank our major sources of public funding that help us to fulfill our mission and serve our community.

ASSOCIATE BOARD A dynamic group of young professionals, the Associate Board partners with Utah Symphony | Utah Opera to shape the future of live music. They bring fresh ideas, cultivate philanthropy, and strengthen connections between USUO and the community. Contact Katie Swainston at kswainston@usuo.org for more information about becoming involved.

Curtis Woodbury, chair Kylee Dickamore

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Hillary Marquardson Rayanne Riepl

Zach Scott Roemer Stephen Tracy

Tanner & Crescendo Societies

Utah Symphony | Utah Opera offers sincere thanks to our patrons who have included USUO in their financial and estate planning.

TANNER SOCIETY OF UTAH SYMPHONY Beethoven Circle (gifts valued at more than $100,000) Anonymous [3] Doyle Arnold & Anne Glarner John & Flora D’Arcy Edward R. Ashwood & Candice A. Johnson Dr. J. Richard Baringer Haven J. Barlow Dr. Melissa J. Bentley

Marcy & Mark Casp Shelly Coburn Raymond & Diana Compton Anne C. Ewers Dennis H. Hranitzky Annette W. & Joseph Q. Jarvis Flemming & Lana Jensen James Read Lether

Daniel & Noemi P. Mattis Anthony & Carol W. Middleton, Jr., M.D. Robert & Diane Miner Glenn Prestwich Kenneth A.† & Jeraldine S. Randall

Robert & Carolee Harmon Richard G. & Shauna† Horne Virginia A. Hughes Turid V. Lipman Herbert C.† & Wilma Livsey Dianne May Jerry & Marcia McClain Jim & Andrea Naccarato

Stephen H. & Mary Nichols Hal Noyce Craig S. Ogan Mr. & Mrs.† Scott Parker Mr. & Mrs.† Michael A. Pazzi Richard Q. Perry Chase† & Grethe† Peterson

Mahler Circle Anonymous [3] Eva-Maria Adolphi† Dr. Robert H.† & Marianne Harding Burgoyne Richard Clegg Mr. & Mrs. Kenneth E. Coombs Dorothy Cromer† Paul (Hap)† & Ann† Green

CRESCENDO SOCIETY OF UTAH OPERA Anonymous Mr. & Mrs. William† C. Bailey Judy Brady† & Drew W. Browning Dr. Robert H.† & Marianne Harding Burgoyne Richard Clegg Shelly Coburn Dorothy Cromer† Travis & Jamie Donio Anne C. Ewers

Dennis H. Hranitzky Joseph & Pat Gartman Paul (Hap)† & Ann† Green Annette W. & Joseph Q. Jarvis Edward R. Ashwood & Candice A. Johnson Clark D. Jones† Turid V. Lipman Herbert C.† & Wilma Livsey Richard W. & Frances P. Muir

Marilyn H. Neilson Carol & Ted Newlin Patricia A. Richards & William K. Nichols Mr.† & Mrs. Alvin Richer Laura Scholl Jeffrey W. Shields G.B. & B.F. Stringfellow Dr. Ralph† & Judith Vander Heide Edward J. & Marelynn† Zipser

† Deceased

USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

87

Welcome

IMAGINE SITTING IN 1/3 OF A SEAT— THAT’S WHAT YOUR TICKET COVERS

The remaining 2/3 comes from generous supporters like you.

With ticket sales covering roughly 30% of the cost of our performances, your contribution helps complete the experience.

Here’s how you can help:

One-Time Gift

DonorAdvised Fund

Monthly Giving

Qualified Charitable Distribution

FIND OUT MORE | usuo.org/ways-to-give | 801-869-9200

Stock Gift

Welcome

PARTNER WITH A PLAYER “When I was young, I dreamed about becoming a professional horn player. I attended Eastman School of Music, but realized there was little chance of a female brass player being hired by a major orchestra. Today, I can be part of the Utah Symphony horn section through financial support, adding my name to the principal horn chair. My childhood dream is now realized in a different way.”

-Marci Richards Foster a unique connection with the individual behind the music while supporting the Symphony’s commitment to excellence.

LEARN MORE by contacting Garrett Murphy, Director of Development gmurphy@usuo.org

LEAVE A LEGACY

MAKE A PLANNED GIFT Make a lasting impact while meeting your financial goals today. Including Utah Symphony | Utah Opera in your will is simple, often taxadvantageous, and helps ensure the power of music touches lives for generations to come.

To learn more, please reach out to your financial advisor or contact us at: 801-869-9200 usuo.org/planned-giving

USUO.ORG | 801-533-NOTE (6683)

89

Acknowledgments

L E T ' S TA K E THE CADILLAC UTAH SYMPHONY | UTAH OPERA 123 West South Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84101 801-533-5626 EDITOR

Julia Lyon HUDSON PRINTING COMPANY www.hudsonprinting.com 241 West 1700 South Salt Lake City, UT 84115 801-486-4611 AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING SERVICES PROVIDED BY

Tanner, llc LEGAL REPRESENTATION PROVIDED BY

Greenberg Traurig, llp Parsons Behle & Latimer, llp

ADVERTISING MEDIA & WEBSITE SERVICES PROVIDED BY

Love Communications, Salt Lake City

The organization is committed to equal opportunity in employment practices and actions, i.e. recruitment, employment, compensation, training, development, transfer, reassignment, corrective action and promotion, without regard to one or more of the following protected class: race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, family status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity and political affiliation or belief.

Maurice Abravanel Hall and and The Janet Quinney Lawson Capitol Theatre are owned and operated by the Salt Lake County Center for the Arts.

By participating in or attending any activity in connection with Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, whether on or off the performance premises, you consent to the use of any print or digital photographs, pictures, film, or videotape taken of you for publicity, promotion, television, websites, or any other use, and expressly waive any right of privacy, compensation, copyright, or ownership right connected to same.

MEET

THE

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