The Utah Symphony’s tour of Utah’s five national parks begins tonight with a chamber concert in Teasdale, just outside Capitol Reef National Park. The symphony rehearsed with a special guest conductor this afternoon.
Governor Gary Herbert took the podium for the Utah Symphony’s final rehearsal before leaving for what’s called the Mighty Five tour – performances at each of Utah’s national parks. The governor got some coaching from symphony music director Thierry Fischer, but he says it wasn’t too tough.
“Stars and Stripes Forever is just 2/2," Herbert told reporters afterward, "so if you can count to two, y’know, one-two, one-two, you can pretty well handle it. And we’ve got such great musicians I don’t think they could get off track no matter what I did up there on the stage.”
David Green, the symphony’s chief operating officer, says organizing the tour was a challenge, especially finding performance venues and planning for bad weather and other contingencies. But he told reporters that performances in Utah’s rural communities was part of the vision of the symphony’s founder.
Green told reporters at a media availability just before the rehearsal, “The legacy that Maurice Abravanel left the organization, which was 50-60 some-odd years ago, was that of the Utah Symphony, not just the Salt Lake symphony, not just the symphony that people can come to, but the symphony can go out into the rest of our state and have the same experience that they might here.”
Free tickets to the performances in communities near Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef and Zion National Parks were distributed last month, but Green says anyone who’d like to come should get in line for standby tickets and they’ll try to accommodate as many as they can. More information and the concert schedule is available at utahsymphony.org.
