A Strange and Wonderful Concert
MAR 15, 2024
At the end of January I received an email from the renowned author and environmental activist, Terry Tempest Williams. It said, in part:
Dearest Jerry:
Greetings. I am thinking of you. I am taking a group of 15 students from the Harvard Divinity School to Great Salt Lake for eight days from March 9 through March 16. A film is being made by the wonderful filmmaker Erika Cohn. Geralyn Dreyfous is helping to produce it --
We are meeting with various members of our community about the life of Great Salt Lake from its ecology to the industries to how we might bring water to her to the actual poetry of Great Salt Lake.
In my mind and heart, music is key. Would you have any interest in coming to Great Salt Lake and working with the students, many of them are poets -- Can you imagine putting words with music to give a concert on Antelope Island for Friday, March 15? I just keep dreaming what we might do to be a Lake-Facing Community at this hour of need for Great Salt Lake -- and how each of us might offer her our gifts.
Forgive my lack of words -- I hope you feel the love. I admire you so much and your creative spirit and all the ways you have blessed us with your music. Might you be interested in giving a concert at the Lake? And how might we work together to create a moment of healing grace for Great Salt Lake -- and these beautiful students. We could also open it to the public.
I know this is coming out of the blue -- or the salty waters of our Inland Sea -- but I'd love to know your thoughts -- if you are interested or even have the time -- and if it is something that moves you, what ideas you might have. You are a hero of mine.
In the name of all that binds us,
Terry Tempest Williams
Terry and I have known each other since the mid-90s, when the Utah composer Phillip Bimstein composed a work for the Abramyan String Quartet (of which I was the first violinist) plus excerpts of Terry reading from her book, Refuge, which were manipulated on computer by Phillip. (The composition is called “Refuge”, by the way, and is available on Spotify and other streaming sites.)
I hadn’t heard from Terry for a few years, so I was indeed surprised to hear from her, especially about the nature of this request. Usually, planning a concert takes months of preparation. Obviously, one needs composers, music, musicians, instrumental parts, rehearsals, and a place to play! We had none of those. And we had six weeks.
I sent out an APB to two of my former friends and colleagues at the University of Utah School of Music, Miguel Chuaqui and Igor Iachimciuc, who are composers and professors composition. (Igor is additionally a player of the cimbalom, an exotic Eastern European dulcimer-like instrument.)
Basically, my message was the equivalent of throwing everything on the wall and seeing what stuck. Could you compose something (essentially overnight) to accompany poems? Could some of the students compose music? Could we improvise music to the poems when we were on the island with the poets? Could we bring a string quartet to play music about the Great Salt Lake? Anything and everything was on the table––or on the wall.
Over a period of a couple weeks, we honed things down to the following: Igor and I combined forces to compose music for a substantial 10-stanza poem called “Dear Great Salt Lake” by Raisa Tolchinsky. Since there would essentially be no rehearsal time with Raisa for this, Igor and I alternated writing 1-2 minute musical “essays” in between the stanzas, reflecting the sentiment and text of what had just been recited. The music was for violin, cimbalom, and flute, played by Igor’s talented daughter, Olivia. One day I would email Igor the score of one of my interstitial extravaganzas, and the next day he would send me his. We alternated like this over a period of a few weeks.
Terry, Raisa, me, Igor (mostly hidden), and Olivia
But one poem does not a program make! As politely as possible, I kept asking Terry for more poems. In the meantime, another composer at the U stepped forward. Matthew Russell Durrant had composed a prize-winning piece on computer a few years back entitled “Arsenic Requiem,” about humanity’s destructive incursion into the Great Salt Lake ecosystem over the past two centuries. I gave it a listen and an immediate thumbs up. The only problem: We needed to make sure we had electricity where we were performing to which to connect the computer and amplifiers.
There were two possible venues on Antelope Island. One was at the Visitor’s Center at the north end of the island. The other was the Garr Ranch near the southern tip. The Garr Ranch was a working horse ranch in the 19 th century, but in the 20 th it changed hands a few times and ultimately became part of Antelope Island State Park, which encompasses the entire island. It is now a ranch museum with several small buildings, a small ranch house, and a large, open ended barn.
One of the island’s residents
It turned out that both of those venues had electricity. I opted for the Garr Ranch because in my mind it had the proper rustic feel to support Terry’s vision of nature and preservation. But I didn’t know which of the buildings at the ranch would be the most appropriate, partly because we had no idea how large an audience we’d have.
About two weeks before the concert date, Terry sent me a brief but powerful poem entitled “Inseparable” by Nan Seymour, the poet-in-residence on Antelope Island. Miguel immediately stepped forward and provided music for solo violin which provided for pauses during which Nan would recite lines from her poem. Again, a crafty way to minimize the need for rehearsal!
At this point we had three pieces of music. Terry informed us that two of the poets would simply recite their poems, and one person would like to sing something. All fine with me. We had ourselves a program!
We felt that an audience of 50 to 100 would be ideal. At first, we worried we might get too many people, so we hardly did any promotion. But as we got closer to March 15, we thought, uh-oh, maybe nobody will want to come, especially with the potential for crazy weather that time of year. Even though it’s only an hour from downtown Salt Lake City, Antelope Island can be a very foreboding place to be if the weather acts up. So, at the end, we started promoting quite actively.
Which meant that even on the day of the concert, we still had no idea how many people would show up!
March 15 arrived. My plan was to meet with Terry and the poets a few hours in advance to get to know them and to have a somewhat relaxed rehearsal. This is the email I received from Terry the morning of the concert:
Dearest Jerry:
Writing you from Wendiver. Our bus broke down — to be fixed at 9 today, should be back to Antelope Island by 2:00 pm , mechanic coming at 9:00. You can’t make this up, phone about to die. More soon. All will be well.
Love, Terry
Uh-huh.
I got to the Garr Ranch at 1:00 p.m. to look for a place to play a concert. It was sunny and clear, but quite chilly and there was a stiff breeze. The first place I looked into was the ranch house. Indoors made sense given the weather. There were three available rooms connected by doorways. We could play in the middle one and people could look through the doorway if necessary, but the rooms were tiny, and if there was a big crowd it would be impossible, particularly given our instruments and equipment. There were a few electric outlets, but I didn’t know whether they worked or not.
The only other possibility was the barn with a dirt floor. It was large enough for a big crowd, but was totally open at both ends, so the chill wind tended to whip through. It did, however, have electricity, as evidenced by overhead lights that actually worked, plus a few modern outlets.
A unique concert hall
I managed to find someone in the office tucked away in a corner of one of the outbuildings. He informed me that the ranch house electricity had been shut down many years ago. That made decision-making a lot easier for me. The barn!
Even though it would have been picturesque for the audience to have a view of the lake and the Wasatch Mountains beyond if the musicians sat at the eastern end of the barn, we would have frozen and our music would have blown off our music stands like leaves in autumn. I managed to find a spot in the middle of the barn, against one of the walls, that kept us reasonably protected, even though we ended up performing with vests and parkas on.
One thing that you might have taken for granted by this point was that there would be seats. At 3:00, an hour before the concert was to start, we had no seats. Terry to the rescue. She had arranged for a few dozen chairs (I’m still not sure from whence they came), and she also cajoled the ranch office person to haul out dozens more.
At about 3:45, with the wind blowing and everyone running around like crazy, doing interviews, setting up cameras for filming, schmoozing with old friends, we had our “rehearsal” with the poets. Done.
Just before the concert started I mentioned to Terry that I had written a mystery, Cloudy With a Chance of Murder, about a (fictitious) concert at the very same Garr Ranch, never in a million years thinking that one would or could ever take place. I said to Terry, “I just hope this one doesn’t have a murder and a natural disaster.”
We had a full house! The concert started on time with speeches and thankyous, including Terry mentioning what I had said about my book, which drew a lot of chuckles. The performance went smoothly, with the music constantly threatening to blow off our stands, but rarely having the nerve to actually carry out its threat. And there weren’t any murders.
The poems and the music celebrated the unique wonders of the Great Salt Lake, making us mindful of the serious challenges it faces for its survival. Yes, it could dry up in a matter of years, regardless of what our politicians tell us, and that would be a disaster of profound proportions.
The concert was also dedicated to the renowned filmmaker, Geralyn Dreyfous, a dear friend to us all, who attended the concert though she is encountering serious health issues. We love you, Geralyn.
Our program (insert)
Our program (cover)
Here’s a lovely write-up we received in the Ogden Standard Examiner. I’ve mentioned quite a few names here. There were so many others who were involved in this unique project. I thank them all!
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Me, Igor, Olivia
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