It's the first "all-star" concert in the history of "Salute to Youth."
That means that for the first time since the very first "Salute to Youth" was presented on Nov. 26, 1960, the Deseret News and Utah Symphony are offering their first-ever "Salute to Youth" retrospective, featuring standout perform-ers from previous years. And it all takes place Saturday, May 24, at 8 p.m. at Abravanal Hall.What's more, tickets are free, to celebrate the completion of the Deseret News' new corporate headquarters at 30 E. 100 South. They are available, four to a person, on a first-come, first-served basis at the Utah Symphony box office, currently located on the Abravanal Hall plaza. For information call 533-NOTE.
Utah Symphony music director Joseph Silverstein will conduct the bulk of the program, which will feature 10 soloists selected from this series' 38-year history. Of course they aren't all the stars who have appeared on these concerts. But they represent a cross-section of the 237 performers who have soloed on past "Salutes."
In one case, moreover, they will be featured in roles other than those they occupied when they first performed on "Salute to Youth." That is in the piece that will conclude the first half, Saint-Saens' "The Carnival of the Animals," which will be conducted by Barbara Ann Scowcroft, who soloed as a violinist in 1977, and narrated by KBYU-FM's Walter B. Rudolph, who sang the Quartet from "Rigoletto" when he appeared as a baritone in 1969. In addition, the two-piano part will be performed by Susan Duehlmeier and Bonnie Gritton, who have established themselves internationally as a piano duo since they soloed individually in 1969 and 1966.
Which shows how diverse the career paths can be. But not for all.
Take Utah Symphony flutist Michael Vance, who was also a soloist in 1969 - in fact in the piece with which he will open Saturday's concert, Vivaldi's Piccolo Concerto in C major. His very first "Salute to Youth" appearance, however, was in 1965, when he performed Mozart's G major Flute Concerto. Within a year he was playing with the symphony on its recording of Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony, and in 1968, following his graduation from Bonneville High School, was signed as a regular member of the orchestra. He's been there ever since.
"In those days it was almost like a minor-league training ground, if (Utah Symphony music director Maurice) Abravanel had you in mind for the orchestra," Vance recalls. "Mitch Morrison, Lynnette Stewart, there were a lot of others, too. He was watching you and, if you did well, you got to go to Santa Barbara" (where Abravanel also directed the Music Academy of the West). "And if you did well there, he would get you playing in the orchestra."
To some extent, that "talent scout" aspect of "Salute to Youth" continues to the present. Pianist Eugene Watanabe, for example, who will be soloing Saturday in Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," first played on a "Salute to Youth" in 1980, when he was only 9, then went on to perform in 1982 and 1984, the last on both violin and piano.
That's as often, and as many times, as current regulations allow. But that wasn't the end of his association with the Utah Symphony.
"It was a wonderful experience to be able to play with the orchestra," Watanabe affirms, "and I know it motivated me to work even harder to get selected again. Then, after the third one, Mr. Silverstein must have liked my playing because he contracted me to play Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 the following summer," the first of many professional appearances he would go on to make with the orchestra.
Later the Salt Lake City native went on to become the first student in the history of the Curtis Institute of Music to graduate with degrees in both violin and piano. Last November, he was awarded second prize in the Esther Honens Calgary International Piano Competition.
But we could as easily have gone with his older sister, Mary, who, like her brother, logged three "Salute to Youth" appearances before she was out of high school. Nor are they the only family to have maintained a multiple presence at these concerts.
Take violinist Alison Dalton, now a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who will be playing the last two movements of the Barber Violin Concerto. Another three-time "Salute to Youth" soloist, in 1972, 1974 and 1982, she was followed in 1988 by her younger sister Hilary (who sang a Weber aria). Were that not enough, their father, David Dalton, has been the teacher of several of the viola soloists, including recently appointed Oregon Symphony principal Joel Bel-gique. So it isn't just the Utah Symphony that has benefitted from these concerts.
"I remember making my own dress the second time, and hemming it on the way to Salt Lake City from Provo," Alison recalls. "And as I came out to take my bow, passing by (principal cellist) Chris Tiemeyer, the hem caught on his end pin and jerked his cello out from under him. I remember the whole audience gasped."
Still, the "Salute" she remembers best was her last one, in 1982, because it was while she was home auditioning for that one that she met her husband-to-be, Scott Woolley.
"At that time I was principal second violin in the Austrian Radio Orchestra and was home on sick leave when we met. He was vacationing in Utah on his way back to the University of Chicago Law School, and we had about two dates before I went back to Vienna. He came back to see me perform and we got engaged the night of the concert."
Rudolph can beat that. He ended up performing with his future wife, soprano Marilyn Cloward, the night they were on "Salute to Youth" as Rigoletto and his daughter, Gilda, in the Quartet from the opera of that name. Now with four children of their own, he reflects on what that opportunity meant to him in other ways.
"I remember thinking that, if an organization the caliber of the Utah Symphony can take this kind of interest and time to work with young artists, or a young-artist-wannabe like me, the possibility of a career in music, or in service to the community through music, was within my grasp."
In the intervening years Rudolph has gone on to sing with Central City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Utah Opera (with whom he appeared as Master Page in "The Merry Wives of Windsor") in addition to becoming general manager of KBYU-FM. He is also in demand for his speaking voice, having narrated "Peter and the Wolf," "Hary Janos" and "A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" with the Utah Valley Symphony and served as master of ceremonies for the past three Gina Bachauer International Piano Competitions.
By the same token, Scowcroft has become as well known as a conductor in recent years as she has as a violinist. This, for example, will not be her first "Carnival of the Animals," as she led the original chamber version in 1993 on the Nova Chamber Music Series, of which she is the director. She is also the director of the Utah Youth Symphony Orchestra. And as she tells it, the die for her was cast that November night in 1977.
"I think everyone has a moment like that, when they realize there's no turning back," she says of that year's "Salute to Youth." "I mean, here I was within five feet of all these people in the orchestra I'd been admiring for years, and they were so supportive. I remember Christie Lundquist waving to me, and I'd never even met her, and I remember thinking, `Maybe I'll survive.' "
Enough so that she herself became a member of the orchestra in 1982, the same year she graduated from the University of Utah. Which, as it happens, is where Duehlmeier and Gritton met as undergraduates when they both were studying with Gladys Gladstone.
"Would you believe that, even with growing up in this area, I had never even been to a symphony concert before I played on `Salute to Youth'?" Duehlmeier says with a laugh. "In fact my biggest fear was not how well I would play, or how musically, but how I would get from backstage of the Tabernacle to the front and how to play without falling off the edge. That's how naive I was."
Not anymore. Today she, like Gladstone before her, is in charge of piano instruction at the U., where she and Gritton also co-direct the SummerArts Piano Festival and Competition. Besides the Utah Symphony, she has soloed with the Salt Lake Symphony, the Utah Philharmonia and the Boston Pops Orchestra.
As a duo, she and Gritton recently had an all-Gershwin CD released on the Centaur label and later this year are scheduled to perform at the International Music Festival in Warsaw, where they will premiere a two-piano concerto by their U. of U. colleague Henry Wolking.
"I remember when Abravanel selected me to perform," Gritton recalls of her "Salute to Youth" appearance, "it was in the Prokofiev Third Concerto, which is what I'd auditioned with. I can't believe I was this assertive, but I told him I didn't want to play the Prokofiev - I wanted to play the `Emperor.' He was silent a long time, then he laughed and said, `Sure, we'll do it.' So I not only got to play with a professional orchestra but I got to play my favorite concerto in the world."
The other three soloists on this week's concert represent the younger generation of "Salute to Youth." And two of them will be performing pieces that have meaning for them beyond these concerts.
The Handel Harp Concerto, for example, is the piece Cate Cannon Todd soloed in at Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center as a result of being named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts in 1990. The following year she made her first "Salute to Youth" appearance and performed again last November.
"I know it's given me more confidence in my playing," the 1994 U. of U. graduate says of those opportunites. "Also, I love the feeling of having an entire orchestra behind me when I perform, sharing my music with an audience. It's a real payback for a lot of practice."
For Amy Brough, it's the Mozart Oboe Concerto, the piece she soloed in when she won the concerto competition at the Music Academy of the West in 1994. That's also where she began studying with Harry Sargous, who is now her teacher at the University of Michigan. But the concerto appearance that marked a turning point, she says, was her first "Salute to Youth" in 1992.
"That was the first major musical moment that I strove for," Brough recalls, adding that it was her sister Sarah's appearance on the same series the year before that gave her the impetus she needed. "And that first moment onstage was so exhilarating. I have remembered it ever since, and ever since when I have stood in front of an orchestra I love it."
Soprano Celena Nelson had a similar experience when she first soloed on "Salute to Youth," in 1992. "I remember thinking, `Wow, this is really something I want to do with the rest of my life,' " the Viewmont High graduate says. "Then when I sang the second time, in 1994, I remember thinking, `Not only is this something I want to do with the rest of my life, but maybe it can actually be a reality for me someday."
Nelson's made a good beginning. Next month she graduates from the U. of U. with a degree in vocal performance. Last summer she took part in the Ohio Light Opera's Young Artist Program and in the fall she also spent a week in London in master classes with Benjamin Luxon.
Nonetheless, the piece she will sing at Saturday's concert is a little different from the Mozart and Bellini arias she performed on those earlier "Salutes," being "The Wind Is a Lion" from Crawford Gates' "Promised Valley." But with the pioneer sesquicentennial upon us, and the prospect of an all-American second half, we couldn't resist.
After all, as we enter our new building, and another year of "Salute to Youth," hopefully we'll be breaking new ground, too.