Utah Symphony & Utah Shakespeare Festival Present
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Utah Symphony collaborates with Utah Shakespeare Festival for "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Narrators from the Utah Shakespeare Festival will join the Utah Symphony and guest conductor Nicholas McGegan on a magical journey through Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
They will present this collaborative work on Friday, February 25 and Saturday, February 26 at 8 p.m. in Abravanel Hall. Narrators include Utah Shakespeare Festival founder Fred Adams, the festival’s new artistic directors Brian Vaughn and David Ivers, and Kymberly Mellen, a regular festival performer and theater professor at Brigham Young University. The orchestra will also be joined by Utah Opera Ensemble Resident Artists Angela Theis and Kate Tombaugh, as well as the women of the Utah Symphony Chorus.
In addition to “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the program will include Haydn’s Symphony No. 59 in A Major and Handel’s “Music for the Royal Fireworks,” all of which were initially intended to serve as background music for various subjects and later became more frequently performed as stand-alone works.
Tickets for the evening’s performances start at $15 and can be purchased by calling (801) 355-ARTS (2787), in person at the Abravanel Hall ticket office or by visiting www.usuo.org. Students can purchase discount tickets with a student ID. Season ticket holders and those desiring group discounts should call (801) 533-NOTE (6683). Ticket prices will increase $5 when purchased the day of the performance.
McGegan and Utah Symphony Vice President of Artistic Planning Toby Tolokan will present a free pre-concert lecture each night, 45 minutes prior to the start of the performance in the First Tier Room of Abravanel Hall.
Artist Bios:
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| Nicholas McGregan |
Nicholas McGegan is loved by audiences and orchestras for performances that match authority with enthusiasm, scholarship with joy, and curatorial responsibility with evangelical exuberance. The London Independent calls him “one of the finest baroque conductors of his generation” and The New Yorker lauds him as “an expert in 18th-century style.” Through twenty-five years as its music director, McGegan has established the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra as the leading period performance band in America - and at the forefront of the 'historical' movement worldwide thanks to appearances at Carnegie Hall, the London Proms, and the International Handel Festival, Göttingen where he has been artistic director since 1991.
He has been a pioneer in the process of exporting historically informed practice beyond the small world of period instruments to the wider one of conventional symphonic forces, guest-conducting orchestras like the Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra and Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, Toronto Symphony, and Sydney Symphony, the New York, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong Philharmonics, the Northern Sinfonia and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as opera companies including Covent Garden, San Francisco, Santa Fe and Washington. Born in England, McGegan was educated at Cambridge and Oxford. He was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for 2010 “for services to music overseas.” Other awards include the Halle Handel Prize, an honorary professorship at Göttingen University, and an official Nicholas McGegan Day, declared by the Mayor of San Francisco in recognition of two decades' distinguished work with the PBO.
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| Fred C. Adams |
Fred C. Adams founded the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 1961 with his late wife Barbara Gaddie Adams. Under Adams's guidance, the Festival has grown from a budget of $1,000 and 3,276 paid admissions in 1962 to the upcoming 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2011 with an anticipated attendance of over 130,000 and an annual budget of $6.5 million. The Festival is considered one of the most prestigious theatres in the United States, as evidenced by the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, which the Festival received in June of 2000. Adams is the consummate theatre professional. He is part teacher, part actor, part director, and a friend and mentor to those who work with him. After 42 years as the Festival director, he spends much of his time crafting the future for the Festival as he meets with artists and administrators to ensure the artistic integrity of the Festival’s plays, educational offerings, and numerous peripheral activities. During the past decade he has focused his energies on the completion of the New $32.7 million Shakespeare Theatre. Adams has received numerous awards including the 2010 Burbage Award from the American Shakespeare Center for a lifetime of service to the International Shakespearean theatre community, the 2010 Governor’s Award from the Utah Humanities Council, and the 2000Utah Theatre Association's Lifetime Service Award.
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