Chamber music concert segment filmed at cathedral

Courtesy photo/Jeff Counts

+ Enlarge

Utah musicians from the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra practice at the Cathedral of the Madeleine for a Feb. 25 digital concert.

SALT LAKE CITY – The Cathedral of the Madeleine has been the location for many concerts over the years. Most of them have been in-person, with a livestreaming element added this year due to the pandemic. Earlier this month, it also was the site for a Grand Teton Music Festival digital chamber concert.

Grand Teton Music Festival On Location is a six-concert chamber music series by small ensembles, recorded and produced in the home cities of festival orchestra musicians.

GTMF General Manager Jeff Counts had worked for the Utah Symphony for 15 years and knew that the cathedral would be a great venue for the festival, he said.

“As a former and still part-time resident of Salt Lake City, I know the cathedral very well and have heard music in that space for many, many years now; and know that my former colleagues at Utah Symphony enjoy working there,” Counts said. “It was really an obvious choice when we were looking for a Salt Lake version of On Location.”

On Location came out of a desire for festival musicians to remain relevant to their community year-round during the pandemic. The festival orchestra draws its musicians from 64 orchestras and 47 institutions of higher learning across the country. All of the musicians featured in the Utah On Location performance are members of the Utah Symphony who are also members of the GTMF Orchestra. In what is normally its off season, GTMF has been presenting chamber music at a small church in Jackson Hole, Wyo., its home base.

“Since we’re not able to hold live events right now, I had the idea of featuring our musicians in beautifully filmed, no-audience digital performances around the country in their home cities,” Counts said.

The performers of the Cathedral of the Madeleine On Location segment are Madeline Adkins, violin; Whittney Thomas, viola; Matthew Johnson, cello; Corbin Johnston, bass; Keith Carrick, marimba; and Jason Hardink, piano. The 60-minute digital concert includes a short living program notes segment. Featured numbers are Joaquín Turina’s Piano Trio, No.2, Op. 76, William Grant Still’s Summerland, Unsuk Chin’s Piano Etude No. 4, “Scalen,” Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel and Franz Schubert’s Piano Quintet In A Major, D. 667, “Trout” – Mvts 3, 4 & 5.

Recording the performance at the cathedral was a wonderful experience, Counts said.

“Churches, especially big churches, don’t often have an acoustic that lends itself well to recording because of how reverberant the space can be,” he said, “but we found the Madeleine to be perfect for chamber music. It’s a wonderful acoustic; there’s plenty of bloom to the sound but it’s also clarity, which is rare for a big space like that. We enjoyed it very much.”

The performance was filmed Feb. 9 and 10 at the cathedral. It will be broadcast Thursday, Feb. 25 at 7 p.m. on the festival’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv7wqOPMDm0dToIhEEPRT8w and Facebook page. Recordings of the performance will remain on those sites for a year and can be accessed at any time at no cost.

Previous GTMF On Location concerts have been filmed in New York City’s St. Bartholomew’s Church, Northwestern University’s Alice Millar Chapel near Chicago and Houston’s St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. Upcoming On Location concerts will be filmed in Atlanta, Ga., and Berlin, Germany. All the concerts will be available on the festival’s YouTube channel.Counts said festival officials hope to continue the digital concert series even after pandemic conditions allow live performances again.