Utah Symphony & Opera's new Deer Valley Music Festival isn't the first local summer music festival to include the name Deer Valley in its title.
When the Park City International Music Festival began in 1984, it was called the Deer Valley Chamber Music Festival. It changed its name in 1993.
The festival will celebrate its 20th anniversary when it gets under way July 15. Festival founder Leslie Harlow, who directs the event with her husband Russell Harlow, said that in the beginning it was the only summer classical music festival in Utah. "We pioneered summer concerts in Utah."
While today the festival exclusively features chamber music, that wasn't always the case.
"In the early years, we had an orchestra — not a chamber orchestra, but a large orchestra," Leslie Harlow said. "We also had a young artists program, and we played much of the standard repertoire, including Beethoven's Triple Concerto and Brahms' Double Concerto." Harlow said that not only was this unique to Utah, it was unique to summer festivals throughout the United States. "We were ahead of our time here. You didn't find any of this at the time at Aspen, Tanglewood, Marlboro or elsewhere."
Over the years, the Park City International Music Festival has evolved into a tightly run organization.
This year's four-week festival has 15 concerts. Most of them take place in St. Mary's Catholic Church, the Park City Community Church or in Stanfield Fine Art Gallery. But beginning this summer, the festival will also bring some concerts to Dumke Recital Hall in David Gardner Hall on the U. campus.
"We decided on Dumke because we like the intimate space," Leslie Harlow said. "We can play to a smaller, more intimate audience." Harlow concedes there is a real chance that the Park City festival will be overshadowed by US&O's Deer Valley festival. "We're the 'little' festival, because we only do chamber music," she said. "But that's only a perception. We really are a big festival, when you compare us to other chamber music festivals around the country — and we can put ours on for a fraction of what it costs (the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival)."
According to Leslie Harlow, the Park City festival's continued success lies in the fact that the musicians feel a certain loyalty to it. "There is player loyalty to the festival," she said. "And we put a lot of planning into who can come and when."
Anyone who has followed the festival knows that the Harlows eschew bringing in established groups. Instead, the festival's strength lies in bringing musicians together who don't normally perform together. "We mix people together who either have or haven't played together before. These kinds of combinations make a difference. It gives another side to chamber music. You get variety and color you don't find elsewhere," Leslie Harlow said.
The Harlows understand that another festival in the Park City area running simultaneously with theirs can be problematic in terms of getting enough concertgoers to make both feasible. It's going to depend in large part on attracting music lovers from out of state. "For both to be successful, you have to bring in people from outside Utah," Russell Harlow said.
But his wife is optimistic that will happen. "I think we'll be able to share audiences with the symphony's Deer Valley festival," she said. "Once you get people coming from outside (of Utah), they'll see that they have options. They can attend the symphony's concerts, and then discover what we're doing — and what we've been doing for 20 years now. That's the positive side to it."
E-mail: ereichel@desnews.com