Excellence in the Community Inc

Excellence in the Community started in the streets and metro tunnels of Paris. I was a street musician there with a Utah singer with an exceptional voice. Our act, Lark & Spur, stopped traffic and soon ended up on radio and television in France. The mistake was returning to Utah. Talent that could garner attention and make its way forward in Paris, found little or no response on its home turf. What happened? The talent was the same, but the audience was different. This experience has led us to conclude that whereas in France many are culturally oriented to recognize quality in the arts, in America, as a famous Washington Post article, Pearls Before Breakfast, suggests, many take their artistic cues from the media. Utah is far from large media markets. Consequently few Utah artists have marketing budgets, record deals or publicists. But that doesn't stop them from pursuing excellence. Utah has a deep and diverse talent pool that chooses to pursue artistic accomplishment in Utah. At the top level the artists are dazzling. However, the performance opportunities are not always commensurate with the talent. Utah musicians do perform, but generally as background music. Our concept was to give the best Utah artists a professional stage, sound, a spotlight and some publicity. In 2005 we put on a concert featuring the same singer who had done well in Paris. That event sold out. We have since put on over 130 concerts and raised over $350,000, all of which has gone towards our central focus: creating performance opportunities for Utah musicians. Our three areas of emphasis are: concerts in downtown Salt Lake City at the Gallivan Center; concerts in rural Utah; and concerts in schools. A few years ago we took acclaimed Celtic harper Cynthia Douglass and her group, Waking Erin, to Duchesne. During the day her group performed for high school students. In the evening they performed for the whole town. This event was a collaboration between Excellence in the Community and the Duchesne Arts Council. I was there for the evening performance. Cynthia Douglass and Waking Erin put on a great show with harp, fiddle, dancers, cello, whistles, piano, vocals and percussion. Standing ovation at the end. One man commented to me, with tears in his eyes, 'I've never heard a harp before.' I said, 'oh, yes. You don't hear a Celtic harp very often.' I had misunderstood his comment. 'I've never heard any harp before.' Another man commented to me, 'Nothing like this has ever come to our town.' I left Duchesne thinking I needed to work harder, to raise the money to take musical events of this quality throughout the state. A few months later I called Cynthia to hire Waking Erin for another engagement. Her response shocked me. 'There was so little demand for our music, I couldn't keep the players together. There is no more Waking Erin.' Certainly our communities are diminished if talent is not recognized and put to use. Excellence in the Community works to raise the visibility of Utah's best artists. We give them performance opportunities and invite the public. We take presentations into schools. Recently the Gallivan Center asked us to establish our concerts at their venue. Since December 2011 we have produced a concert a month at the Gallivan Center, always featuring Utah's top musicians, and a wide range of musical styles. Recently Salt Lake City leaders asked us to consider expanding our series from monthly to weekly concerts. We embrace this invitation but we have to raise the money to do so. Our concerts are free to the public and we rely on contributions, grants and sponsorships to cover the costs. The talent is here to make a Salt Lake City a music town on par with cities like New Orleans, Austin, Chicago and San Francisco. Lacking are venues, opportunities and perceptions. We address these issues We use to quality music to enhance communities and to demonstrate the high quality of life we enjoy in Utah. We call our program Music to Match the Mountains. We use to music to enliven downtown Salt Lake City, to bring artistic excellence to rural Utah and to inspire school children. With your help we can accomplish more. To be specific, we are working with the Gallivan Center on a program of weekly big band swing dances, starting in May of 2013. These events are in addition to our monthly concerts. Your help is needed to move this project forward. Join the cause. We promote artistic excellence and seek to put it to more productive and visible use in towns and schools throughout the state.