Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-03-18 | Page 32 | Stephens will be Given Testimonial

STEPHENS WILL BE GIVEN TESTIMONIAL Friends Arranging Concert to Be Given in the Big Tabernacle on the. Evening of April 6. Thirty-five years ago, about this time, Professor Evan Stephens first took up hia abode in Salt Lake City. He had then spent about twelve years of hi6 boyhood and young manhood at Wil-lard, Wil-lard, Utah, not only working his way through school, but in educating himself up to the high standard needed to place him at once at tho head of Utah musicians mu-sicians as a composer, couductor and teacher upon his arrival here. He had served a little more than two years teaching music at Logan and had at once reached the same place in the hearts of the people there as he succeeded suc-ceeded in doing in Salt Lake. Within a year after his arrival in Salt Lake, Professor Stephens was assigned as-signed to tho musical education in general gen-eral of young people, including the music mu-sic department of the University of Utah, having enrolled within his classes class-es more than threo thousand enthusiastic enthusias-tic members. In those capacities his labors ran and grew during the first eight years of his residence here, at w-hieh time he was given the task of reorganizing the tabernacle choir into a large choral body of from 300 to 500 members. Even then no one dreamed, unless the professor did himself, that the scope of his labors in this added capacity would take him and tho choir bodily from ocean to ocean, and their fame to all musical sections of the world. The evening of Friday, April 6, will be remembered by a host of friends, as well as by the recipient, because on that night the Stephens testimonial concert will be given in tho tabernacle.