Music Festival starts this week

The Park City and Salt Lake City Summer Music Festival opens its 23rd season this week. Formerly known as the Deer Valley Music Festival, this is Utah's oldest summer chamber-music event and one of the oldest continuously running summer festivals in the country.

This year's seven-concert event runs Thursday through July 23. And anyone who has gone to these concerts in the past knows that festival directors Leslie and Russell Harlow always bring some of the best chamber musicians from around the country to the mountain resort. "Each festival is unique," Leslie Harlow said. "You won't find these combinations of musicians anywhere else, and audiences will be getting some of the best chamber performances anywhere."

Opening the festival Thursday will be guest artists Manuel Ramos, violin; Armen Ksajikian, cello; and John Jensen, piano. They will be joined by local players Leslie Harlow, viola, and Monte Belknap, violin.

The Harlows are careful about who they invite to perform. Many of the musicians have been coming to the festival for years. "It makes for some wonderful dynamics," Leslie Harlow said. "The players always want to come here. That makes a big difference. Because we all want to be here, we play with great conviction."

This will be Ksajikian's second time in Park City. The associate principal cellist for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ksajikian is also in constant demand as a studio musician for movies and has a number of solo credits on recent major releases.

He's also an avid chamber musician, whenever he gets the time for it. Harlow enjoyed working with him last year and asked him to return this summer. "Armen is

wonderful to work with. He's fun, and he has great enthusiasm and limitless energy."

Belknap, who teaches at Brigham Young University, also made his festival debut last year. "I enjoy Monte's playing," Harlow said. "He has great style. He's my kind of player. He plays romantic phrases and does some beautiful things on the violin."

A former concertmaster for the Illinois Symphony, Belknap earlier this year played the complete Beethoven violin sonatas in recitals both in Salt Lake City and in Provo, with BYU colleague and pianist Barbara Allen. They'll be recording the entire set of 10 sonatas in August, and the CD is expected to be released either at the end of this year or the beginning of next.

The program that's scheduled for Thursday is about as varied as one would expect from the Harlows. The concert will open with Beethoven's Piano Trio in D major, op. 70, No. 1 ("Ghost"), and Martinu's "Three Madrigals" for violin and viola, and end with Shostakovich's Quintet for Piano and Strings, op. 57.