(lively music) - American West Symphony and Chorus provides a lifelong outlet for musicians through concert performances and educational community programs.

And here to talk about the upcoming 35th anniversary concert is conductor Joel Rosenberg.

Hi, Joel, welcome.

- Thank you for having me, Mary.

I first wanna start by thanking all the members of the American West Symphony and Chorus for giving their talent, their time and their devotion to the orchestra for 35 years.

They're the ones who deserve this credit for that.

And the mission of the organization has been to expand the arts and entertain and we're hoping to do that on these two concerts.

First by a performance of Zoltán Kodály's "Háry János Suite," which employs a very interesting instrument named the cimbalom.

It's a trapezoid instrument with strings and the player sits with mallets and plays them.

And there is a virtuoso cimbalom player right here in Salt Lake named Igor Iachimciuc.

He's a professor at the University of Utah and we're very honored to have him.

He's played all over the world.

And secondly, we have a lovely piece for chorus and our chorus master is named Ljuba Kelly.

She's educated in Russia.

She's a wonderful person and she's going to be performing and conducting a piece by Ola Gjeilo from Norway named "The Ground."

And the theme of this piece is calm and peace after a difficult journey.

And Gjeilo, interestingly, has drawn his inspiration from Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny.

And his music is lush and very cinematic.

So I think the audience is really gonna like this concert and it's gonna be rounded out by Brahms, Rossini and some Shostakovich.

- Boy, you've got a great lineup and yeah.

It sounds like the one piece is just what we need right now too, you know?

- Right, yeah.

- Yeah, so very exciting.

- And our president, Charlotte Jordan, has held us together all these years and she owes our thanks to her.

- All right.

Well, thank you Joel, and congratulations on 35 years.

- Thank you, thank you.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming concert with the American West Symphony and Chorus, March 18th and March 24th at 7:30 PM.

The first one at the Good Shepherd Church and then at Libby Gardner Hall, americanwestsymphony.com.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

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