(upbeat music) - NOVA Chamber Music Series opens its season with a dynamic concert featuring works by Rachmaninoff, Mozart, and Utah composer Bianca Quigley.

Artistic director Kimi Kawashima is here to tell us more.

Hi!

- Hey, Laura.

- It's good to see you, - Yeah.

- It's always good to have you back.

The fall season is kind of fun, because the new concert seasons start up, and NOVA is one of those, and you're just telling me it's starting its 48th season?

- Yes.

I can't believe it.

- It's been around a long time.

- Yes.

- And there's something about Utah performing arts organizations that people just love them, and they seem to be really successful.

Tell us a little bit about NOVA and what makes it different.

- I think NOVA's special just because of the incredible performers that we get to feature on all of our concerts.

I mean, every year, it feels like there's more and more great musicians who are moving to Salt Lake and to Utah, and we love featuring them in these interesting concerts of chamber music, of new works alongside classics of the canon.

- Yeah, so something for everyone, something to maybe draw people in who are more familiar with classical music and introduce them to new music, and that chamber music setting is nice, too.

It's more intimate, right?

- Exactly, yeah, and I think the September concert does just that.

- Tell us about that one.

- Yeah, so we're featuring really one of the most beautiful works for chamber music by Sergey Rachmaninoff, his piano trio, "Élégiaque," which inspired the concert title, and then we also have some songs, he wrote an incredible array of songs featuring, we'll be featuring Soprano Jin-Xiang Yu, and then those were alongside newer works by, as you said, Utah-born composer Bianca Quigley.

It's a really interesting quartet that she was inspired taking a walk one evening, and she heard some sounds, and she realized they were tree frogs, so that's the start of this quartet, and then another really evocative work by North Carolina composer Brittany Green that was inspired by the Sufi poet Rkm+.

- Oh, that sounds amazing.

Well, thank you so much.

If you would like to learn more about NOVA Chamber Music Series and their concert season coming up, you can buy single tickets.

You can get a season package.

The September concert, though, "Elegies and Romances," is on September 21st at 3:00 PM at Libby Gardner Concert Hall.

Go to novaslc.org/concerts.

That's novaslc.org/concerts.

I'm Laura Durham.

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