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Show MIA to Present Promised Valley' At June Conference "Promised Valley," the musical musi-cal play which was produced as the major production event of Utah's pioneer centennial in 1947, will be presented again this year as a feature of the 1961 MIA June Conference. The play, with book by Arnold Sundgaard and music by Crawford Craw-ford Gates, will be produced by the general board of the Mutual Improvement Associations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Latter-day Saints. The composer, Crawford Gates, one of Utah's most gifted young musicians, will be the producer pro-ducer of this June Conference festival event. The other major festival event of this year's LDS youth leadership leader-ship conference will be the traditionally tradi-tionally spectacular dance festival. festi-val. The "Promised Valley" production pro-duction for June Conference will be complete wtih a full orchestra, orches-tra, chorus and staging, Dr. Gates announced this week, and talent for the production is being recruited from throughout the Church. This musical play is a dramatic dra-matic rendition of the epic story of the movement of the Mormon pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Salt Lake Valley. Following the June Conference Confer-ence production in Salt Lake City "Promised Valley" is scheduled sched-uled to be produced in all of the stakes of the LDS Church during the summer of 1961. A simplified version of the script and musical score has been prepared. Mr. Sundgaard who was commissioned com-missioned to write the book for this musical play, is a well known New York author. He has just been commissioned by G. Schirmer Publishing Company, one of America's major music publishing houses, to' write the libretto for an operetta to be published by the firm as a feature fea-ture of its centennial observation. observa-tion. Music for this new work is . to be written, under commission by Alec Wilder. The operetta is to be for the high school age range. Prominent among his other credits are plays included in the Best Plays Anthologies for 1941, 1942, and 1943. He has written such plays as "Down in the Valley" Val-ley" and "Kitty Wake Island," which was just recently revived in an off-Broadway production. The composer, Crawford Gates, is currently chairman of the Music Department at Brig-ham Brig-ham Young University. "Promised "Pro-mised Valley, his first major Work, was readily and enthusiastically enthusi-astically received. Since, he has composed music for the Hill Cumorah pageant (Scenes from the Book of Mormon, Mor-mon, Symphony No. 2) which has been released on recording. The first pressing was released in December 1960 and has been so well received that a second pressing is currently being negotiated. nego-tiated. Dr. Gates was author and composer com-poser of the recent June Conference Confer-ence production "Praise Ye the Lord" and also composed the music for the musical play "Sand in Their Shoes" with book by Don Oscarson, produced by BYU in 1959 and 1960. |