Young Artist Chamber Players join Cedar City Suzuki Strings for joint concert
By Sara Penny
Exceptional young musicians touring southern Utah will make an appearance in Cedar City April 14 at 4 p.m. in St. Jude’s Episcopal Church. Young Artist Chamber Players will join with Cedar City’s Suzuki Strings in performing music ranging from Copland and Paganini to fiddling. The concert is free and open to the public.
The Young Artist Chamber Players are directed by Jack Ashton, known as “Utah’s Music Man” for his exceptional teaching and performing career. In addition to playing year-round in the Utah Symphony, he taught orchestra part time for 35 years at Olympus High, his alma mater, and for the past 31 years he’s been director of the Young Artist Chamber Players, an organization he set up with his brother Ted in 1985 for the purpose of “helping good kids play the hard stuff and get better.”
“If every teenager he’s taught, encouraged, and inspired were to pick up his or her bow and start playing, you could hear them around the world,” wrote Lee Benson in the Deseret News in 2016. “And they’d sound pretty good. Especially the Young Artist Chamber kids. The elite string orchestra includes about 40 players who are accepted after auditions. Another 80 young violinists make up three additional orchestras sponsored by the organization. They meet at Highland High School once a week, honing their skills under the direction of the man who performed with the symphony for nearly a half-century. ”
Since his retirement from the Utah Symphony, Ashton has continued the Young Artist Chamber Players program, and it is a highlight of our spring to join with his students making music.
Young Artist Chamber Players selections include “The Red Pony” by Aaron Copland, “Moto Perpetuo” by Niccolo Paganini, Violin Concerto in C by Joseph Haydn, and String Quartet No. 8 for String Orchestra by Dmitri Shostakovich.
Suzuki Strings selections include “Boil the Cabbage,” “Hunter’s Chorus” by Carl Maria von Weber, and the third movement from Concerto No. 2 by Friedrich Seitz.
Suzuki Strings students from southern Utah will join the Young Artist Chamber Players for three dances from “Capriol Suite” by Peter Warlock. The Suzuki Strings orchestra has been prepared by Lindsay Szczesny.
St. Jude’s Episcopal Church is located at 70 N 200 W.
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