Utah Symphony will play an epic work, inspired by Utah's natural beauty, within view of Zion National Park

It’s one of the most challenging works in the classical canyon — a 90-minute epic work written to evoke Utah’s natural beauty, and requiring an unusual orchestral set-up. And the Utah Symphony will be performing it within sight of some of the beauty that inspired it.

The Utah Symphony announced in December that it would be performing Olivier Messiaen’s 12-movement epic “Des canyons aux étoiles …” (“From the Canyons to the Stars …”) on June 2, 2022, at the O.C. Tanner Amphitheater in Springdale, just outside Zion National Park.

“I always wondered: Why is this piece never performed in Utah?,” conductor and musical director Thierry Fischer told me in 2019. “If one symphony should symbolically own the piece in America, it’s the Utah Symphony.”

Fischer had planned to have the symphony perform the work in installments during the 2019-2020 season — but the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the cancellation of half the concerts where the movements would have been played.

Read more about the symphony’s plans for the concert, in this article for sltrib.com.