Press Information
Salt Lake Tribune - October 15, 2006
Theme and variations --- vision and venues -- a modest proposal for improving downtown
Theme: As the city plans for the future, smaller venues, (200 to 300 seat upscale performance spaces), showcasing the area's best local musicians will invigorate downtown. The world class musicians are here. We host a steady stream of visitors year round. Let's put the area's finest musicians downtown where the hotel guests can find them, turn on the spotlights and, to borrow a phrase from Michel Legrand, 'watch what happens.' Why not consider downtown something like a music mall? We have the anchor tenants: The Utah Symphony and the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra on Temple Square. Missing are the boutiques, the smaller, more intimate spaces. We don't have celebrity, but we have excellence. Put excellence where people can find it. This will require vision and venues. We need to plan now for the spaces and venues.
Vieve Gore Hall at Westminster College is a good example of what I envision: 280 seats, a beautiful stage, a grand piano, sound and lighting systems. But it is not downtown.
Nevertheless we are proving the validity of our argument in this hall one concert at a time. Excellence in the Community was founded to close the experiential gap between what our top musicians know is possible and what their fellow citizens imagine. World class talent? I hope doubters say, prove it.
Come and see. Once a month we prove our point: the area's best musicians are a world class resource. A common response to our events is amazement. People comment on their expectations being dramatically exceeded. They also mention their surprise that they could live in the area and be unaware of the depth of the local talent.
The French have an expression, 'The presentation is half of the taste'. Reformulated for this discussion, architecture sets the expectations. We have world class musical talent, not diamonds in the rough, but polished jewels all along the Wasatch Front. Take them out of the sock drawer. Put them in settings worthy of their talent, turn on the lights and downtown will sparkle.
For example: The Salt Lake Jazz Orchestra is a world class big band, dazzling not only locals but the big names they back up at the SL International Jazz festival. It would be nice to hear them more than once or twice a year. Synthesis Big Band just returned from a successful European tour. It would nice to hear them more than once or twice a year. Two world class big bands all dressed up, well rehearsed and no where to go.
But not just big band. Sophisticated jazz, we've got it. Bluegrass, we've got it, Celtic, we've got it, western swing, we've got it, gypsy swing, we've got it, French cabaret, we've got it. Singers to rival or surpass those on Broadway, we've got them. Do we have the vision to find a way to put all that talent and variety in front of the tourists and business travelers?
Renaissance kings and princes realized it was to their strategic advantage to attract and keep the best artists. Modern movers and shakers will come to see that a vital resource is underestimated, underused, undervalued and right under foot. Isn't one of the key aspects of management the effective use of resources? Why not be known as a center for world class music? In significant numbers the world class musicians are here. As plans are made for the future we hope local excellence will find its place. Places. Downtown. To skeptics I repeat 'come and see.'
Jeff Whiteley was a street musician in Paris, the leader of Lark & Spur, and the founder of Excellence in the Community. He can be reached at excellenceconcerts.org.