Starstruck in Cedar City

By Bryce Christensen

No one will ever mistake Cedar City’s Heritage Center for an astronomical observatory.   It looks nothing like Palomar or Mauna Kea.  And yet on the night of April 12th, there was Harold Shirley--president of the Orchestra of Southern Utah (OSU)--telling the music lovers gathered at the Center for an OSU concert that to understand their evening’s musical experience, they needed to consider the astounding new telescope technology recently highlighted in Cedar City’s Daily News.  For, Shirley explained, during the evening’s concert, they were about to “ascend to the heavens with music.”

Truly celestial, the evening’s performance--dedicated to the theme “Glorious Galaxies”--lived up to everything Shirley promised in his welcoming remarks.  Indeed, in the evening’s first number, Part II of John Williams’ soundtrack for the Star Wars Epic,  listeners traveled at light speed to “a galaxy far, far away,” there to relive the cosmos-traversing adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo as they battle the ominous Darth Vader and his legions of stormtroopers.  Though it has been more than four decades now since this science-fiction melodrama first burst onto the cinema scene, OSU director Xun Sun and the musicians under his light-saber baton instantly dissolved time and space as they once again transported the audience to Tatooine, Hoth, and Yavin 4.   Under Sun’s energetic direction, the orchestra recaptured much of the brio of the soundtrack symphony that originally infected millions with such an impelling sense of cosmic mystery, of Imperial threat, and of Rebel triumph that they left theaters in 1977 unconsciously humming Williams’ composition for weeks and weeks thereafter.  Yes, the Force was with OSU on this night.

No far-flung galaxies, no Millennium Falcon, no Death Star, no jumps to Hyperspace in the evening’s second number: Verdi’s La Donna è Mobile from Rigoletto.  Indeed, listeners in the audience might well have supposed that the theme of galactic exploration had given way to merely terrestrial concerns as they caught the first notes of this beguiling canzone in which the Duke of Mantua reflects on the fickleness of women (with comically obtuse refusal to acknowledge his own licentiousness).  But as they realized the vocal strength of the soloist, Matthew Clegg, they quickly recognized that right there in front of them on the stage was that most marvelous of astronomical wonders: a star, and a rising star at that.  A graduate of Southern Utah University now studying voice at the University of Nebraska--Lincoln, Clegg brought to his rendition of the Verdi composition and the two numbers that followed all the brilliance of a new Alpha star-- a new Sirius or Canopus.  

The astral luminosity of Clegg’s singing grew even more intense in “When I Consider the Heavens,” a number especially commissioned for this concert.  Composed by Canyon View High School’s vocal director, Alex J. Byers, this number explored the human challenge posed by cancer, plumbing its in extremis pathos while also venturing to the summits of the faith this often-lethal disease calls forth in its sufferers. Interpreting the text Byers had deftly woven together from a handful of Psalms, Clegg seamlessly moved from passages of shocked dismay, to measures of plaintive pleading, to ascents of transcendent hope.    As members of the audience listened to Clegg’s masterful delivery of Byers’ artistically radiant composition, they recognized that were actually experiencing an empyreal conjunction of two first-order stars. As composed and sung, the deftly modulated words from Scripture piercingly reminded listeners that the Heavens that ultimately matter most are not those of Sci-Fi Fantasy.

Though the star shining most astoundingly during Byers’ number was Clegg, cellist Nina Hansen deserves favorable mention for her superb instrumental solo during this selection.  Lyrical, sonorous and pure, it was a solo to remember. 

The kind of hope that carries distressed humans toward the stars persisted in the final number before intermission:  Graham and Loveland’s “You Lift Me Up.”  Made famous by a stirring rendition by Josh Groban, this number afforded Clegg a final opportunity to shine--and shine he did, accompanied with irresistible energy by the orchestra.  Before Clegg left the stage, listeners--rising in a spontaneous standing ovation--honored him as a star from very high in the firmament.  Appropriately, OSU Director Xun Sun summoned Alex Byers to the stage for his share in the warm applause.

After the intermission, Xun Sun and the orchestra again launched into outer space as they performed three movements--Mars, Venus, and Jupiter--from Holst’s The Planets.  Suggestive not  of the TIE fighters and Star Cruisers evoked by Williams’ Star Wars score, Holst’s music summoned the mythical gods and goddesses for whom the planets visited were named.  As they delivered first the brooding intensity of Mars, an intensity that erupted into violent dissonance, and then the irenic harmony and serenity of Venus, and finally  the genial and frolicsome warmth of Jupiter, Sun and the orchestra once again demonstrated their astonishing musical versatility and their consummate virtuosity.  The collective achievement was impressive.

But while the members of the orchestra were demonstrating their exceptional musical skills, concert-goers witnessed an unexpected and richly entertaining complementary manifestation of gymnastic skill: four gifted female acrobats from Aerobatics Performing Arts executed dazzling maneuvers choreographed to mirror the mood of the music.  During Mars, the audience marveled at the sheer energy of all four acrobats performing on four aerial rings, two on each side of the stage.  During Venus, the acrobats completed more elegant solo maneuvers as the spotlight moved from one side of the stage to the other and then back again.  And during Jupiter, pairs of acrobats--one on each side of the stag--amazed by climbing, tumbling from, and riding aerial silks.  Imaginative and innovative, the fusion of orchestral and acrobatic artistry gave concert-goers fresh reason to applaud a community orchestra that constantly explores new ways to delight its patrons.

No one leaving the Heritage Center after the concert could question the decision of Cedar City’s Chamber of Commerce to honor the Orchestra of Southern Utah as the city’s Organization of the Year nor the verdict of St. George’s Indy in naming the orchestra as the region’s Music Organization of the Year.  Concert-goers could also fully understand why the Dixie and Anne Leavitt Foundation chose to underwrite this concert--and who would not feel deeply grateful that the generosity of this foundation made this galactic musical adventure affordable?

The only sadness concert-goers felt as they left the concert-hall-cum-galactic-observatory was that, as the last concert of this season, this concert marked the end of musical adventures until fall.  Fortunately, the experiences of this season--on earth and in the stars--have kindled very high hopes for the 2018-2019 season!