The American Festival Chorus and Orchestra is pleased to present the first concert of its 2024-2025 season, A Sesquicentennial Celebration of the Music of Gustav Holst, on Saturday, October 19 at 7:30pm in the Newel and Jean Daines Concert Hall in Utah State University’s Chase Fine Arts Center.

A pre-concert lecture will be presented at 6:30pm in room FAV 150 of the Chase Fine Arts Center.

In addition to pieces conducted by music director Dr. Craig Jessop, the concert will feature two special guest conductors: USU Faculty Associate Dr. Ghyas Zeidieh and USU masters student Mitchell Kukura. The Music of Gustav Holst is presented in conjunction with the research of USU Associate Professor of Music Dr. Christopher Scheer and the Gustav Holst scholars. The program will include movements from Holst’s most well-known work, The Planets, as well as several religiously themed shorter works and “Ode to Death,” which is widely considered his most beautiful choral work.

“We are excited to celebrate this sesquicentennial year of Holst’s birth with some of his most beloved choral and orchestral pieces,” said Craig Jessop, music director. “We know you will be transported to other-worldly places by this incredible music.”

Dr. Ghyas Zeidieh, the guest conductor for the concert, is a passionate educator, conductor, and cellist and currently serves as the conductor for the Northern Utah Youth Chamber Orchestra and as music director at the Cedar Rapids Community Orchestra in Iowa. He earned his Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Iowa, as well as degrees in Music and Dentistry from the Damascus Conservatory and University. He has played with many orchestras in the Middle East and throughout America and can be heard on several Syrian film scores on the cello.

The music of Gustav Holst is marked with a unique quality of concise music making, and it is said that he gets to the very heart of the music, seeming to look right inside his listeners’ hearts “with an acute spiritual vision.” His use of unconventional time signatures, bitonality, rising and falling scales, and ostinato, as well as his experience as an instrumentalist and orchestra member sets his music apart from other composers. A memorial at Chichester Cathedral is inscribed with text from his Hymn to Jesus: “The heavenly spheres make music for us.”