The world wasn’t the same when the Utah Symphony initially returned after a six-month hiatus.
The classics were still the classics — the symphony performed Tchaikovsky and Bach and Beethoven in the fall of 2020. But in a year when a deadly pandemic and calls for racial justice loomed large, the symphony wanted a new voice onstage.
After the death of George Floyd, the symphony reached out to a rising Black composer named Quinn Mason, commissioning a piece that would reflect on Black Lives Matter and celebrate progress, but also take a look at what remains to be done.
Still in the COVID-19 lockdown, a handful of symphony musicians recorded the new work from their homes and released it online. But in late September, when Abravanel Hall was once again open, the symphony debuted the piece to the public.
“Immediately after the first performance I had someone in the audience who absolutely believed that performing arts is not where we should be exploring those topics,” Steven Brosvik, the president and CEO of Utah Symphony | Utah Opera, recently told the Deseret News. “And I had a person on my other side saying, ‘Thank you for bringing this piece to us. Thank you for bringing this message forward. We all need to be talking about this.’”
At that moment, as he took in the varied responses to the piece, Brosvik said he was reminded of why the arts need a full recovery in a post-pandemic world.
“That’s what live arts should be doing for us, and we have a responsibility to keep moving art forward,” he said. “The arts bring people together — every single piece that we play, whether it’s a piece written 300 years ago or a piece written last week. And like one piece, or love another, that gives us something to talk about, to live through together.”
After about 30 performances in the fall, the Utah Symphony had to shut down due to a rising number of COVID-19 cases. But now, the switch is once more turned to “on.” The symphony has concerts starting this weekend and extending through at least the end of May. And beyond that, there’s a 2021-22 lineup of guest artists eager to perform at Abravanel Hall.
From his office in downtown Salt Lake City, Brosvik can hear the symphony warming up. It’s the first official rehearsal in months. He knows COVID-19 could have another flare-up and that the symphony isn’t out of the woods yet. But as he listens to the musicians rehearse and glances at the fleshed-out schedule for the 2021-22 season, he can’t help but take it all as a sign that this time, maybe just maybe, the arts are farther along on a path to recovery.
How the Utah Symphony is recovering financially
Brosvik joined the Utah Symphony several months into the pandemic. It’s an unusual time to take on a position that involves getting to know your donors and community at large — a time when live performance has virtually disappeared. But even still, in his six months as CEO, he can already tell this much: Utah is above par when it comes to supporting the arts.
Utah’s arts and entertainment industry reported a $76.5 million revenue loss in 2020, according to a report released by the Utah Cultural Alliance. This past year, the Utah Symphony has been able to remain financially afloat primarily through funding — including from the CARES Act, ZAP funds, a challenge grant through the Eccles Foundation and contributions from donors.
“We’ve had unbelievable support from the federal government, the state and the county through the CARES Act funding,” Brosvik said. “Utah really took the CARES Act funding seriously and they made sure that the arts organizations were getting support as well. That did not happen in every state. It makes Utah special.”
Additionally, a number of patrons have already renewed season subscriptions, and staff and musicians “took a pretty significant pay cut,” Brosvik said, adding that the organization was able to maintain everyone’s health insurance.
“We will be fine this year,” Brosvik said. “We really worked hard to reduce expenses to minimize how much it costs to run the organization through this year. But everyone’s been willing to do it, to make sure that we’re still here as we come out of this.”
Next season, though, will be a bigger challenge.
Brosvik wonders how long CARES funding will continue. Going into the new season, he wonders if all of the usual patrons will return right away. He figures it’ll take some time before everyone is comfortable returning to a concert hall. Will symphony donors who made extra contributions over the past year be in a position to make their regular contributions going forward?
“There are some really large unknowns going into next season, but we felt it was really important to try to be as excited and optimistic as we could as we made the decision to launch and go forward.”
How the Utah Symphony is recovering musically
On March 23, the Utah Symphony musicians finally returned to the Abravanel Hall stage for rehearsal.
Rehearsals in March 2021 look a lot different than they did in March 2020. The string players wear masks, and all of the musicians are now spread far apart on the stage. Although it’s a bit more “impersonal,” violinist Barbara Scowcroft said it’s more than a fair trade-off to be able to perform once again for a live audience.
“I’m very grateful for the audience that we have, because they’ve been very patient and very loyal. We’re nothing without our audience,” she said. “We’ve kind of been thrown off balance, because no one in the world is prepared, really, to be isolated and not do what they love to do. So just the hope of coming back is really what sustained us.”
Starting March 25, the Utah Symphony proceeds as it did during its successful albeit short-lived run last fall, with a number of safety measures in place. The symphony has performances scheduled through May 29. The Deer Valley Music Festival summertime concerts are — for now — still a go. And then there’s the robust schedule for the 2021-22 season.
The return of the symphony comes at a time of heightened awareness for the arts — when theater and live performances and concerts have largely been stripped away during the pandemic.
Scowcroft said she’s been “thrilled” by the number of people she’s heard talk about missing the arts over the past year.
“Because you want to be relevant,” she said. “And what can we do coming back? We can broaden our listener base by playing obviously the great traditional music, but also compositions from the underserved and the unnoticed. … Just really be more open, more graciously presenting our diverse world in a classical form.”
Several programs in the symphony’s upcoming season will highlight works from lesser-known and modern-day composers. Brosvik hopes it helps create healthy dialogue just as the Black Lives Matter piece did last fall. Going forward, he would also like to continue providing streaming and on-demand options that have become so valuable during the pandemic.
But for now, the focus is on bringing live music back to the concert hall — and making sure audiences know that for the foreseeable future, the symphony has returned.
“I do think there’s going to be demand for what we do and maybe fresh and renewed excitement about it,” Brosvik said. “It’s then up to us to take that and make sure we can help perpetuate it.”