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Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra will perform in Alpine on Monday evening.

Courtesy John Pew

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Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra will perform in Alpine on Monday evening.

Courtesy John Pew

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Billed as “a musical journey spanning 300 years from powdered wig to silver screen,” the Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra will present “Music Through the Ages” in Alpine on Monday night. The concert will present music from Bach to Copland to John Williams’ “Star Wars” score.

”We have this great music today that we hear in movies,” said John Pew, the symphony’s founder and conductor. “Things like ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Lord of the Rings’ or lots of different movies. And video games have some great symphonic music in it, but where did it all start?”

Speaking with Pew on the phone, he sang a measure or two from a “Star Wars” score mid-sentence as he explained his excitement for the upcoming concert. He hopes the popular film music will pique the interest of potential new converts to classical musical.

”That’s very exciting music,” he said. “It’s very well known, and it’s kind of loved by kids of all ages and adults. It’s really cool music. The message I’m trying to get across is, ‘This is cool music — did you realize it’s (also) symphonic music?”

And don’t think that the “Star Wars” selection in the concert is any simplified version.

”We do the real John Williams editions,” Pew said. “We don’t do some arrangement of it, we don’t do some watered-down thing. We buy the real thing and some of it’s technically difficult.”

Newer pieces like “Star Wars” are not the only ones that Pew expects will delight audiences. Music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern periods will be included, and throughout the evening, Pew will explain the surprising history of how one musical tradition led to another.

”It was very kind of New Age in Beethoven’s time with the music that he wrote,” Pew said. “We think of it as very old-fashioned, but his music was very new at the time.”

Some of the “surprising” moments in musical history that Pew mentions in the concert are quite literally so.

”One of the pieces we’re doing in the classical era is by Hayden, and it’s from a symphony that’s been called the ‘surprise’ symphony,” Pew said. “Why is it called the surprise symphony? So there’s a good reason for me to tell the story about it and how this name came about and what Hayden was trying to do. It was almost like a gag or a funny thing that he was trying to do.”

And some of the pieces that audiences will recognize as newer, Pew said, are actually as old as Bach and Jean-Joseph Mouret, leading to another moment of Pew humming along on the phone — this time, the “Masterpiece Theatre” theme music on PBS.

”If you’ve ever watched ‘Downton Abbey,’ at the very beginning, that (sings theme) you hear this music, it’s like, hey guess what? It’s just some Baroque music,” Pew said.

As the orchestra goes on a journey through musical time, part of the challenge is not only the technical sophistication of the music, but the changes in style that reflect historical accuracies, which the orchestra has set out to represent in the concert.

”When you talk about music from 300 years ago and 200 years ago and 100 years ago, styles change,” Pew said. “So when you play Mozart, you play it very differently and the way you present the music is different from when you play John Williams.”

Soprano Melissa Heath will be a featured guest at the performance. Heath has enjoyed a varied career of opera, concert and recital work. Hailed as a “soaring, sparkling soprano” with “vivacious stage presence,” her recent opera roles include Countess in Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” Nanetta in Verdi’s “Falstaff,” Micaëla in a concert version of Bizet’s “Carmen” with the Concerts at the Presidio series in San Francisco, and Gilda in Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” with La Musica Lirica in Novafeltria, Italy.

The concert will only be presented in Alpine one night, but it kicks off a three-day tour around various Utah cities — a first for the Timpanogos Symphony Orchestra.

”We’re calling it our world tour,” Pew said, “and the world to us is Tooele, Brigham City and Nephi.”

All 65 performers in the concert are set to go on the tour, which will cost the Orchestra more than $30,000 to provide travel, lodging and food for the three days. Part of that cost was raised by a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which required a long application process.

”That’s kind of a big deal for us,” Pew said. “It was a big effort. We had to write up the whole grant and describe what we were doing. It was a lot of work.”

The orchestra received another $10,000 specifically for the tour from the Bank of American Fork, which Pew said has donated many times before since the orchestra formed in 2011.

On the tour, the orchestra will perform at schools with selections from the “Music Through the Ages” concert and each night will perform a “Movie Music Spectacular” in each city. Admission to those evening concerts will cost a can of food, to be collected and donated to local food banks in each area.

”We can’t afford to go to New York or Chicago or Europe,” Pew said. “But we thought we’d start small.”

If the apparent vision and enthusiasm of the orchestra’s founder and conductor are any indication, those places may not be far off.

TIMPANOGOS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

What: “Music Through the Ages” concert

When: Monday at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Timberline Middle School, 500 W. Canyon Crest Road, Alpine

Tickets: $10 for adults, $25 for family pass up to five family members

Info:  (801) 473-5226, thetso.org