FLASHBACK 1991: J.P. Gabellini provides a preview of the Utah Arts Festival. 

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In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.

Title: ‘91 Utah Arts Festival
Author: J.P. Gabellini
Date: Jun. 25, 1991

In honor of John Paul Brophy

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Downtown is the heart of any city, and never does Salt Lake City’s beat as strongly as when the Utah Arts Festival provides the excitement.

Hot on the heels of summer’s official start (the solstice, for any of you non-astronomy types), the annual event celebrates its 15th anniversary with this year’s edition—one of the largest and longest-running festivals in the West, and for the first time awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts this year for “nationally significant programming.” Judging from the burgeoning attendance since its inception in 1977, with nearly 90,000 enthusiasts taking in the sights and sounds last year, the five days and nights of art in all its forms is a real crowd pleaser.

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“Fine Art, Serious Fun” is the theme of 1991, and the grounds and streets surrounding the Triad Center again will be packed with an array of displays and activities to please all tastes for both those pursuits. Street performers will stroll through the area, kids will be intrigued by “Fantastic Apparitions” in the Children’s Art Yard where they can participate in myriad art projects and have their faces painted, and festival-goers can try their hand at the creative process for a diversity of arts and crafts at the Demonstrating Artists Stage.

Food arts will tempt the appetites from 21 different booths, and many of Utah’s finest writers will feature their works in the Literary Arts booth. Over 80 booths house the wares of the Visual Artists, and 24 artists have participated in “Exhibition 1991: Contemporary Craft and Sculpture” in the Union Pacific depot.

Environmental art interacts with the landscape through the three large billboards titled “Detour” (next to the viaduct, appropriately noting the venue change of the Plaza Stage to the other side of North Temple due to the construction of the new Jazz arena), and A Company of Four will present the Special Project “Theatre of Consequences” each night in the Salt Lake Hardware Building.

The Utah Symphony will premier Utah composer Henry Wolking’s commissioned work, “Forests,” and with “Art in Public Places” the Festival has commissioned for the first time a piece of art that will be a gift to the city—five artists will present their proposals to the public, and festival patrons are encouraged to vote for their choices.

Of course, it’s the performing artists, filling the air with the strains of music from noon ‘til midnight, who make the Festival ring with vitality. The extensive slate of local musicians reflects the wealth of talent in our own backyard.

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As this abbreviated list indicates, every genre is represented: the variety of jazz sets by the Mark Chaney Band, the Tulley Cathey Band, Mike Crandall and 3 Other Guys, the Jay Lawrence Sextet, the Jazzbros, Vicki Veltri and Company, the Salt Lake Good Time Jazz Band, the Underpaid Professors, Amnesia, Orquesta Pachanga, Dial 900, and Danger Probe; pop rock sounds by the Boxcar Kids, Bryan Butz and Turning Point, the Id, the Bel-Airs, and the Saliva Sisters; acoustic, Celtic, and bluegrass from Fire on the Mountain, the Oquirrh Ridge Drifters, Beth McIntosh, Diane Diachishin, Musica Reservata, and Southwind.

Rhythm and blues comes from the Tempo Timers; Liz Draper blends country and rock; My Sister Jane lays down folk and funk; Potencia 5 plays spicy salsa and Latin; Crossroads belts out funk and soul; and classical is delivered by the U. of U. Percussion Ensemble, the Todd Woodbury/Tully Cathey guitar duo, the Gina Bachauer Competition winner, the Intermountain Brass Quintet, Marjorie Janove, and the Utah Saxophone Quartet. Ethnic music is also on tap from Hiro Chhatpar & Ensemble, and the Zivio Ethnic Arts Ensemble.

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That “nationally significant programming” is represented by an outstanding collection of national headliners. Laurie Anderson may well be the biggest coup, her internationally recognized style of performance art never before heard here. “O Superman” brought Anderson her first hit in 1980, and her ‘83 seven-hour, multimedia event “United States” is the work with which she found her greatest acclaim. Two recent albums, Mister Heartbreak and Strange Angels, add to the luster of her shimmering career (but who knows what sort of performance she’ll bring here?!).

As part of the seminal New Grass Revival, banjoist Bela Fleck pushed the envelope of bluegrass. Now with a new direction in jazz, Fleck has put together the Flecktones, a quartet he fronts with pianist Howard Levy, and Roy and Victor Wooten playing drums and bass. Formed as the result of a “Lonesome Pine” PBS television special, the group has a self-titled debut album that draws on Fleck’s deep love of the music of Chick Corea and Charlie Parker, as well as combining elements of the playing he still does with Sam Bush, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer in the Strength in Numbers band.

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Chris Proctor packed up his guitar and left his Utah home to make a name for himself in Los Angeles. The superlative acoustic artist, a national fingerpicking champion, has been playing all over the country for the past 10 years, from the Telluride Acoustic Festival to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. Proctor’s third release on Flying Fish Records is the beautiful Steel String Stories.

Laurie Lewis has made a name for herself in the world of bluegrass with her multi-faceted talents of singing, songwriting, and playing fiddle, guitar, banjo, and bass. Four well-received albums on her own, along with an all-female release called Blue Rose, have given deserved exposure to Lewis and her band, Grant Street, and the stylistic range also covers old-time country, swinging torch songs, and contemporary folk ballads.

Concentrating on original songs, Lewis’ works have been recorded by both country star Kathy Mattea and Patsy Montana, who made her “Cowgirl Song” the unofficial theme song of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.

If it weren’t for Hermeto Pascoal, neither Airto Moreira and Flora Purim nor Chick Corea’s Return to Forever band would have come to the world’s attention. Pascoal is a legend in his native Brazil, where he is considered the “father of Brazilian jazz.”

Pascoal formed his group Quarto Nuevo with Airto on percussion in 1966, his multi-instrumental abilities on flute, keyboards, saxophone, accordion, and bass clarinet as well as an uncanny talent for composition setting new trends.

Pascoal’s discography of 12 albums includes work with Miles Davis, and with his Group (which has been together 18 years) he played the First International Jazz Festival in Sao Paolo with Corea, John McLaughlin, and Joe Farrel.