Christmas is a time for traditions -- Scrooge at the Hale Centre Theatre . . . the Festival of Trees at the Salt Palace . . . and Kurt Bestor at Abravanel Hall.
Bestor's Christmas tour is already well under way. He performed last Saturday at the South Fork Ranch outside of Dallas (yes . . . the same spread made famous by the "Dallas" TV series), and on Wednesday in Portland, Ore.Saturday, he'll take his show to Idaho for a one-night stand at the Morrison Center at Boise State University, then it's back to Salt Lake for seven concerts at Abravanel Hall, followed by two more dates in Logan and Phoenix.
"The South Fork Ranch concert was a fun way to start out the season," Bestor said Monday, while he was in the middle of editing film footage for a multimedia presentation that will be part of his Abravanel Hall outings. "The concert at the ranch is in a big barn -- J.R. Ewing's barn.
"I really sweat bullets over the Salt Lake show," he said. "This is my 10th year, and there are people who come every year. I have to push myself with new stuff. I can't just skew the same old music year after year. I'm very nervous."
There will be several new things on the 1998 concert, including some surprises. (He disclosed a few but declined to reveal all because then "they won't be surprises, would they?")
Bestor also noted that he adds quite a bit of additional material for the Abravenel Hall dates -- things he probably wouldn't do in his other concerts.
What can the roughly 21,000 Bestor fans can expect this year? How about:
-- A guest shot by a popular local Celtic group called Kirkmount, a Spanish Fork trio that recently won a prize from Garrison Keillor in a folk music competition . . . for the second year in a row.
"We'll do some Celtic things together," Bestor said, noting how he enjoys working unusual ethnic instruments into his arrangements.
-- A journey through Christmases past and in other parts of the world.
"I'll even do a kind of Caribbean Christmas in honor of my recent Kurt Bestor Cruise. There were 200 people on the ship -- and I don't know if they're cruise fans or Bestor fans -- but I played several concerts on the ship. It was a nice diversion."
-- Bestor promises "some interesting choral things," which he said were part of his surprises.
-- In honor of the 100th anniversary of George Gershwin's birth, Bestor's wife, Melodie, has come up with her own arrangement of "Rhapsody in Blue," which he arranged for a full orchestra.
"It's jazzy and still classical," he said. "I performed it at a recent police chiefs convention, and they went wild."
-- Instead of a local celebrity helping Bestor and the orchestra out with their "The Night Before Christmas" encore, Bestor will just pluck someone from the audience.
-- Another new thing this year: "I e-mailed about 100 different people around the area and asked them what they would like to hear. This concert will reflect a little bit of that. I called friends and people in my fan base just to get an idea of what people like."
-- Yet another surprise will be "a unique way of fitting 'Prayer for the Children' into the program," he said.
-- The multimedia presentation, projected on a large screen at the back of the stage, will include orchestrated bits from his most recent soundtrack project, the score for "The Ghosts of Dickens' Past."
Overall, his seven Salt Lake concerts "will be about making music and taking people away from the bustle of everyday life," he said. "I just want people to lose themselves in beautiful music."
PERFORMANCES -- The Abravanel Hall concerts will be at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 11 and 12, and Monday-Thursday, Dec. 14-17, with one matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Dec. 12. All seats are reserved. Tickets are $15, $22 and $28.
Tickets are available through all ArtTix outlets, including Abravanel Hall, the Capitol Theatre and selected Albertson's stores, or by calling 355-2787.
Bestor will also perform Saturday, Dec. 19, in the Kent Concert Hall of Utah State University's Chase Fine Arts Center in Logan. Tickets for this concert, also at 8 p.m., are $15, $20 and $25. Call the USU Spectrum ticket office at 797-0305 or 1-888-878-2831 for reservations.