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Show Symphony Celebrates 4,500th Performance The Utah Symphony celebrated another landmark Tuesday, April 17: its 4,500th performance. The orchestra played for Ballet West's production of "Swan Lake." Ballet Bal-let West's guest conductor was Varujan Kojian. THE UTAH Symphony's first season in 1940 consisted of five concerts. It took 26 years to reach the 1,000th performance. The next 18 years brought an additional 3,500 concerts. A pre-concert reception and celebration was held at Capitol Theatre, home of Ballet West, Maurice Abravanel, Music Director Direc-tor Laureate of the Utah Symphony, Sym-phony, and William Christensen, founder of Ballet West, cut a festive fes-tive cake in honor of the achievement. achieve-ment. THE UTAH Symphony gives over 260 performances each year, and according to Music Director Joseph Silverstein, no orchestra in the country performs more. Those 260 concerts involve a great deal of variety. The orchestra plays a subscription sub-scription series in Symphony Hall, in Ogden, Provo, and Logan. It performs pops concerts at a number of locations including Symphony Hall, Snowbird, the ZCMI Mall, and the Salt Palace for "Symphony on Ice." Concerts for school children number from 60-70 per season, and are given throughout through-out Utah. TOURS HAVE taken the orchestra orches-tra to 21 foreign countries and across the United States. This year travel included Nevada, Idaho, and California. As with the performance per-formance of "Swan Lake," the orchestra also provides music for productions by Ballet West and the Utah Opera Company. Other performances include chamber concerts, youth concerts, matinee rehearsal concerts and new audience series concerts. SPECIAL CONCERTS are also interspersed throughout the year --this --this season has included Victor Borge conducting the Utah Symphony, Sym-phony, the Cookie Pops Christmas concert, Irish Night and, in May, Danny Kaye will appear with the orchestra as guest conductor and comedian. |