Arts Council Blog

We’re so lucky that every summer, the Utah Symphony decides to call Park City home for their Deer Valley Music Festival. For the last seventeen years, the symphony orchestra has paired with world-class artists to bring us beautiful music in a stunning, outdoor setting.

Last week, the Arts Council had a chance to catch up with Brian Richards, the executive director of Mountain Town Music. Even throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Brian and his team are doing everything they can to foster, support, and create live music in Park City and Summit County.

Local singer and songwriter, Alicia Stockman, is headed to Nashville to record her first full length studio album. If you’re a local, you might recognize Alicia, who played around the Park City, Salt Lake, and Heber areas with her band, Bonanza Town, for many years. Since going solo, Alicia has been featured at the Rockwell Room, Urban Lounge, Utah Arts Festival, Park City Songwriter Festival, and toured through Texas and in Nashville.

In 1997, The Utah Conservatory was created and exists still to this day. It’s a studio, serving as a music school, that encourages students to express themselves through sound. Directors, Debra Cook and Aaron Mitchell, stress that the studio is a place where artists can come to gather, and is a place where love and effort are some of the most important values. The Utah Conservatory stands apart from other music schools because the Conservatory operates even though they experience virtually no financial gain.

Music is intricately woven into the fabric of Shannon Runyon’s life. Raised in Michigan to a “musical family,” Shannon grew up singing with her siblings and spent her high school years singing with a traveling youth choir and in school musicals. Falling asleep to the lull of her dad’s fingers on their piano is one of her favorite childhood memories.

Bassist, Derek Frank, is new to Park City and just dropped an album on September 18th. Here’s why you should listen. It’s not his first solo album, but it is his first release in 11 years! It's called “Eleven Years Later” and the idea is not a new one, but Derek usually spends most of his year traveling and touring with other artists. He said, “When all my live shows got cancelled back in March due to the pandemic, it became apparent that writing and recording another solo album would be the best use of my time. As for genre and style, I can best describe it as ‘eclectic instrumental groove music’. It has elements of Funk, Jazz, Blues, Southern Rock, and seventies soundtrack music. Production-wise, it’s very organic and vintage-sounding… It has an overall seventies vibe to it, which is exactly what I had in mind when I was writing the songs.”

The Summit Community Gardens is a place to experience the peace and tranquility that a garden holds, but this is not any ordinary garden. They host dinners in the Garden every other week accompanied with live, local, music performances.

The Summit County Public Art Advisory Board, Mountain Town Music and the Utah Symphony | Utah Opera are excited to present Art Pianos for All Pop-Up Community Concerts featuring artists from Utah Symphony | Utah Opera. These performances will be in surprise locations around Summit County and will be recorded and available on Facebook Live. The goal of this concert series is to bring accessible, high caliber music to our community using the Art Pianos for All program in a safe way.