Salt Lake City, UT: February 24th-March 2nd, 2015 - In the Land of the Mormons (ACDA)

I got the chance recently to go to the capital of Utah for a four day choral conductor's conference featuring some of the best choirs and choral groups in the world.  I took it.

The National ACDA (American Choral Director's Association) Conference takes place every two years, while regional ones take place during the off-years.  It is the big leagues for choir musicians of all types: directors at the middle and high school level, at the university level, at the professional level, at churches, in communities - everywhere.  Additionally, there are the best a cappella groups, children's choirs, men's choruses, symphonic groups - not to mention all the composers, publishers, presenters, and of course, regular ol' attendees.

And here's why having it in Salt Lake City was a stroke of genius: the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  One of the most well-known groups in the world, and they're headquartered right there, just a block from the convention center.  So, if there was any event worth traveling to Utah for, it was most certainly this.

Not to mention the scenery is spectacular.  Some shots from the plane:

I had to get up at 3:30 AM to catch that flight, by the way.  Coupled with a semi-late evening and a 2 hour time change, that was one of the longest days of my life.  That night I could barely believe that sitting in the Louisville airport having a Starbucks had been that morning.

Anyway, we got there, checked into the hotel, rode the train (which we later discovered was free...after paying for it several times...) downtown to register and pick up our paraphernalia for the conference ahead, had some dinner, then returned to the hotel for an evening of hot tubbin' and bed.

Here are some shots from around town:

Was great to have those mountains as a backdrop all week.  Kinda reminded me of Austria.


By the way, the place we had dinner at was a microbrewery.  I can't imagine thinking to myself, "hey, what I'd really like to do in this life is make beer, and I think the best place to do that is Utah, epicenter of Mormonism".  Regardless, they seem to be doing fine.  The beer I had was called the polygamy porter.

They're funny people over in Salt Lake.

The "story" of this trip would be, for the most part, very boring in re-telling, since a great deal of it was "went to this talk, then this reading session, then this concert, then another concert, then this other talk" etc.  So I'll just mention a few highlights.  The conference itself ran from Wednesday to Saturday, with concerts going on pretty much constantly, as well as talks on various subjects like how to be a better leader when you're directing a group or what hot new choral composers are emerging onto the scene and whatnot.  There was also, of course, the main showroom with all the booths set up by publishing companies and whatnot trying to sell their stuff to the conference attendees.  This was the main entrance to the conference center, called Salt Palace:

Outside...

and in.



Across the street was a mall whose food court provided lunch just about every day:

It had a really neat design, where the inside sections had a kind of stream running down the middle (with real fish), and the outside areas kind of blended into the city proper, as seen above.  Also, for some reason, the trees had lights on them.

One of the days - Thursday, I think - it snowed during the afternoon, and as I walked through one of the outdoor atrium areas in the mall, they were playing this over the mall muzak:

Soundtrack from Edward Scissorhands.  Told you, those wily Utahians are funny.

Every night, there was a sort of "main event" concert - usually a big ticket group, like the King's Singers or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir themselves.  Of course, before each and every event, they would announce the prohibition of recording the concert in any way, so I have no clips of them to show you.  I did sneak the occasional pre-concert photo, though.

Here's Abravanel Hall, where the orchestra played:

Thursday night they premiered a piece by Ēriks Ešenvalds, who I got to meet:

Stole that photo from Ethan.  Sorry Ethan.

Went to a talk he was giving during one of the morning sessions, and I noticed a really tall guy that looks familiar.  After the talk, he came over to Dr. Hatteberg, Louisville's choir director, and started talking to him.  And I was like, "hey....you're Robin Tyson".

He was like, "yes.  I am."

Robin Tyson used to be second countertenor in the King's Singers, though he retired something like four or five years ago.  But most of their most-watched videos on Youtube have him in them.  Turns out he's a manager now, specifically Ešenvalds's manager, so that's why he was there.  I said I thought he might have come to see the King's Singers.

"No, no.  I don't have to travel this far to see them."  Good point.

Let's see, what else?  There was the conducting competition (which I entered via video back in October - no, I didn't make the finals) held in Assembly Hall:

 There was probably my favorite concert of the week, the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, held in the Cathedral of the Madeline:

Friday night we got to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in the Tabernacle itself:

That was quite an experience!  Something to check off the bucket list for sure.

The Tabernacle and Assembly Hall are both in the area near the big temple, which you've probably seen:

What an imposing structure!

Assembly Hall and the Tabernacle from the outside, respectively.

The final night was a big concert featuring the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the guy who voiced Prince Hans from Frozen, and all the honor choirs from the whole week.  It took place in the Conference Center, not the Convention Center...or maybe I have those switched.  Anyway, it was a massive auditorium, with a massiver pipe organ:

It's hard to really describe the scale of this place.  Here's the view back from my seat, which was on ground level:

They said it seats 21,000, and I believe them.



Here's a sneaky shot I took at the concert's conclusion, with all the choirs and performers on stage at once, which probably totaled somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 singers:

So that was it for the conference.  However, we had an extra full day on Sunday since the flight back to Louisville on Monday was cheaper.  We set out in the afternoon to go to a different mall that I think was renovated from an old train station.  Why do I think that?  Well, one member of our group, in attempting to find a restroom, accidentally found a giant empty train depot that was one of the most resonant spaces I've ever been in.  Since the people on this trip were all choir nerds, it was obvious what would happen next:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg3lOOXwhmg

We also stood around for awhile just making chords and singing lines that would echo for like ten seconds.  It was one of those moments.  Something you couldn't plan.

Next, a smaller group of us decided to go up into those mountains we'd been seeing all week.  A local that someone in our group knew took us up to a ski resort.  We didn't know that was going to be our destination.  And we weren't really prepared for it.  Or dressed for it.  Regardless, we kind of just...rode the lift up.

Stole those from Jon.  Sorry Jon.



At the top, we walked around a bit, found a kind of bar-outpost type place, and had a beer.  Sitting around at a ski resort, in the warmth of the heat lamp, snow lightly falling around us, having a beer.  Another one of those moments.

We returned to the hotel and had dinner, which that night was delivery pizza.  Another round in the hot tub, and a little more hanging out, but we were pretty well beat by the week.  Bed soon followed.

The flight home the next day took us through Minneapolis, where the 2017 National Convention will be held.  If Salt Lake City was any precedent, then I definitely will want to go.  It was a really spectacular trip.  For any fan of choral music, I can't really recommend it enough.  It was also great having that last day, so we could see the actual city some, rather than attend events all day.  I hesitate to say our free day was my favorite, but it was definitely a much-needed component to the trip.




Also, new goal: the big fancy featured composer at ACDA 2017 will be ME.  Can I do it???  Time will tell!