Krystin Anderson

A spring breeze is blowing through the Utah Valley Symphony, bringing with it new music, new opportunities and bittersweet changes.

"It's very beautiful and [there is] a lot more room," said Signe Gillum, concertmaster of the symphony, "but my heart is with the [Provo] Tabernacle because we've been playing at the Tabernacle for so many years."

The symphony will play its final concert of the season next week, which for Gillum also will be the last she ever plays with the musical group she shared her talents with for 47 years.

"It's a big part of my life. I've been in music since I was a baby, so it's just like eating and breathing," Gillum said. "It's been a great experience ... but now I have another dimension I need to approach and take care of."

Conductor Bryce Rytting said other changes are expected by the time the fall season begins, including auditions for new members this summer.

The concert, beginning Tuesday and running through May 1, also will be the first time the Utah Valley Symphony has played two of the most famous orchestral works: Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring" and Felix Mendelssohn's "Fourth" or "Italian" Symphony.

"They're so well loved. They're so popular and so many musicians have a real affection for both of those pieces," Rytting said. "It was just so astonishing that somehow we'd missed them in our programming -- so I decided to do a kind of 'save the best for last' thing and program them for our final concert."

Appropriate for the changing seasons, both pieces are examples of "exoticism," a style of music, Rytting explained, in which a composer writes about a faraway place or situation different from the one he is in.

Like a student itching for the start of summer, Mendelssohn and Copland wrote about the prospect of warm, sunny days and wide-open spaces in the pieces Rytting said he tries to allow to speak for themselves.

"I'm always just asking the music what it wants, how it wants to be sounded, how it wants people to hear it," Rytting said.