The Utah Symphony will rock you as festival ends
Aug 5, 2011 Freddie Mercury
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Queen
The Utah Symphony’s Deer Valley Music Festival closes it successful 2011 season with a bang and wail this weekend.
Live cannon fire will echo off the mountains surrounding the Deer Valley’s Snow Park Amphitheater during Friday’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s “1812” Overture, as Utah tradition requires. On Saturday, a cover band rocks the music of Queen, with the orchestra adding color and power to tunes such as “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Are the Champions.”
The Queen show’s conductor/arranger, Brent Havens, concedes there never will be another voice like departed Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s, but swears Las Vegas star Brody Dolyniuk’s four-octave set of pipes might fool you if you close your eyes.
Havens said adding strings, brass, woodwinds and plenty of percussion to Queen’s signature sound is a formula audiences seem to love.
“One thing about Queen’s music: It crosses a number of generations,” he said. “We’ve had 80-year-olds down to 5-year-olds at these concerts.”
Friday’s concert is another crowd-pleaser, by definition: The light classics on the program were chosen by audience survey. Grieg’s Incidental Music to “Peer Gynt” Suite is on the program alongside Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” and Mussorgsky’s thrill-filled “Night on Bald Mountain.”
Ukrainian pianist Dmitri Levkovich, bronze medalist of the 2010 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition, will perform Grieg’s ever-popular Piano Concerto in A Minor; guest conductor David Lockington will be at the podium for the evening of classics under the stars.
Utah Symphony | Utah Opera CEO Melia Tourangeau said this year’s Deer Valley Music Festival has been one of the most successful ever, and generated great momentum on the Wasatch Front and Back.
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“We’re somewhat the talk of the town,” she said. “People are just talking about it, which is what you want — you want to be the buzz.”
Tourangeau attributes the good vibes to her organization’s willingness to listen to its audience and the fact that people are learning where they can find the music they want at the festival, whether that is the pop-flavored outdoor amphitheater shows at Deer Valley or the classical concerts in Park City’s St. Mary’s Church.
Another sign that the festival is hitting its stride: The festival’s benefit salon concerts featuring guest artists, held in some of the Park City area’s beautiful homes, have sold out and had waiting lists, she said.
Tourangeau’s personal favorite amphitheater show of the 2011 DVMF season featured jazz trumpeter Chris Botti with the Utah Symphony.
“That kind of show in that setting is an ideal pop show for us,” she said. “It integrated the orchestra so well, and the musicians in his band were fantastic. To me, that’s the highlight.”
So far. There’s still one more weekend left if you want to picnic on a mountainside while listening to a Utah Symphony concert under the stars.
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Tags: Freddie Mercury
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