STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
A hundred-fifty cement trucks poured for 10 hours straight to make the underground foundation strong enough for the two columns holding the roof.
Workers brought in travertine marble from the same quarry as that used to make the Roman Colosseum and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
They constructed a stage of massaranduba Brazilian iron wood.
They had a German company design a cable system for the roof that could hold up to 110 tons of snow, and they hired a company that specializes in ship building to build a 70-foot-high proscenium arch.
They stretched a half-acre of white tensile fabric from the arch’s apex to the curved promenade behind the rear seating area.
And, 11 months after they started digging a massive hole in the ground opposite the Sun Valley Ice Rink, horns and cannons replaced the cacophony of hammers.
The travertine, which had arrived late because it was too large to go through the Panama Canal, still needed to be nailed down. But symphony lovers didn’t care as they crowded into the iconic Sun Valley Pavilion.
The Sun Valley Summer Symphony will celebrate the tenth anniversary of that moment at 6:30 tonight—Monday, July 31—as it opens its 2017 season.
It’ll kick off the evening with Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” which Music Director Alasdair Neale originally chose as a tribute to Sun Valley Owner Earl Holding, who built the Pavilion with his wife Carol. The brass section will be seated in the Pavilion’s west terrace, just as it was in 2008,
The symphony will also reprise “Hymn to the Sun,” which it commissioned composer Kevin Puts to write for the grand opening. The song is based on an ode written by an ancient Egyptian pharaoh named Akhenaten king, evoking the power of the sun. Akhenaten, or Amenhotep IV, was married to Queen Nefertiti.
In 2008 the night ended with Tchaikovsky’s “Overture 1812.” And pyrotechnic specialists had to figure out when to shoot the cannon at the back of the lawn so that those in the pavilion would hear it at exactly the second they needed to hear it.
There will be none of that tonight. This time the symphony will finish off the evening with Beethoven’s “Concerto for Violin in D. Major.”
But the piece will feature violin player Gil Shaham, who also performed at the first concert in the pavilion 10 years ago. He replaces pianist Lang Lang, who had to back out of his performance due to an injury to his arm.
“It is particularly fitting that he open this season, as he was the soloist for our grand opening concert in the Sun Valley Pavilion in 2008,” said Neale. “I can’t think of a more appropriate way to celebrate our 10th anniversary in the Pavilion.”