DEER VALLEY — Bringing a bit of summer warmth to the wintry Park City landscape, Utah Symphony & Opera has finally disclosed details of its new Deer Valley Music Festival.
"I'm thrilled to unveil plans for the Deer Valley Music Festival," CEO Anne Ewers said at a press conference at Snow Park Lodge in Deer Valley Tuesday.
In a huge expansion of the Utah Symphony's summer season — which up to now has mainly offered concertgoers pop music with aging singers and the Tchaikovsky "1812" Overture — the new festival will include a wider array of pops, Broadway, classical and chamber music, as well as light opera.
True to tradition, however, the festival will continue to close with Tchaikovsky's ever-popular overture.
"We're going from parched to a full mouth, with six events each week," Ewers said.
The festival opens July 24 and will run for five consecutive weekends. "We're opening with a gala concert dedicated to Gershwin," said Utah Symphony music director Keith Lockhart. That concert will feature guest artists Michael Chertock, piano, and jazzman John Pizzarelli. The final weekend, on Aug. 20-21, will bring Russian pianist (and most recent Van Cliburn gold medalist) Olga Kern back to Utah.
Lockhart said that US&O has put together a concert series that is set to become the envy of well-established festivals across the country. "Precedents for our festival are Tanglewood in western Massachusetts and the Aspen Festival," he said.
Lockhart said that ever since he took over the symphony's directorship in 1998, one of his goals has been to strengthen the orchestra's summer season. "I not only wanted to continue to play at Deer Valley, but also make it the focal point of our summer concerts."
The symphony will still give free concerts at regional parks in the Salt Lake Valley and will also continue to perform at the Fourth of July concert at the USANA Amphitheater in West Valley City.
Ewers said that plans for a revamped summer program go back nearly two years. It could finally be realized when the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera merged in July 2002. "It goes back to January 2002, when we first began talking about merging. At one of my first meetings with Keith, he said, 'What about a summer festival?'"
An incentive to merging the two organizations was provided by Deer Valley residents Jim and Susan Swarz, who promised $1 million toward a summer festival. "This was a great opportunity for us," Ewers said. "That provided the seed money for the festival."
US&O plans a nationwide ad campaign to promote the festival. It has hired local ad agency Love Communications to sell the festival to the rest of the country. "It will take time to see how successful we are promoting it nationwide," Ewers said. "We want to appeal to national and even international audiences.
"In the 2002-2003 summer season, we had 20,000 local people come to our concerts. With the festival, we have the potential to double that audience."
E-MAIL: ereichel@desnews.com