By Noel Case

| The Salt Lake Tribune

For a few kiss-blowing moments, Jasmine Weiss felt like Justin Bieber.

The ninth-grader from Orem’s Lakeridge Junior High had just finished playing a movement from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Piano Concerto No. 4 at Libby Gardner Concert Hall when she received some adoration from the crowd.

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"We love you, Jasmine," a group of fifth- and sixth-grade boys called out. Soon, Weiss was receiving requests for autographs.

The performance came during the third annual Youth Music Festival, which drew about 2,000 students from schools across the Salt Lake Valley to the state’s capital for a series of concerts.

Becky Durham, executive director of Utah Chamber Artists, helped organize the event in partnership with Art Works for Kids and the R. Harold Burton Foundation. She considers music as valuable to a child’s education as any academic subject.

"When it comes to appreciating music, people who don’t think the same and don’t necessarily have the same values can come together and feel a sense of community," Durham said. "It’s a part of their soul that they need to express. It’s important to learn what you need to get through life and earn a living, but this is a part of you that is essential."

The festival — which served children in third through seventh grade — offered a tiny bit of stardom for Weiss, who competed against 20 applicants, ages 11-15, for a solo slot. After performing at each concert during the two-day event, Weiss was presented with a $500 scholarship.

"There are so many wonderful young musicians in Utah who worked very hard to get there," Weiss said. "I felt honored to have been chosen."

Of course, that honor didn’t come without work. Weiss practiced three to four hours a day in the months leading up to the concert.

Other featured soloists at the concert included Nora, the piano-playing cat whose sultry, key-caressing YouTube performances inspired Lithuanian composer Mindaugas Piecaitis to compose his "surprisingly tender," in Durham’s words, CATcerto.

Percussionist Bailey Stewart got plenty of smiles out of his young audience with his typewriter solo in Leroy Anderson’s "The Typewriter." In contrast to Weiss, he practiced the typewriter only about a half-hour a day. But the typewriter, of course, was only one of many instruments he played at last month’s concerts.

"They really like that piece," Durham said, "but we sometimes have to explain to them what a typewriter is."

During the two-day festival, students participated in conducting the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 35. They conducted the piece using a mapping system developed by Susan Kenney, a professor of music education at Brigham Young University. A month before the concert, Kenney taught her techniques to teachers in a workshop. Those teachers then practiced with their students.

"They walked into the concert very prepared," said Barlow Bradford, artistic director of Utah Chamber Artists. "The idea is for them to start to understand that music is motion both physically and an internal kind of motion. They learn that all things external come from within. If they can tap into that, they can tap into many other types of disciplines."

Annette Hatch Nichols, a fifth- and sixth-grade special-education teacher at Salt Lake City’s Roosevelt Elementary who attended the event with her students, said one of her students called the experience one of the greatest of his life. Another student, who initially didn’t want to go, asked about attending next year when boarding the bus to return to school.

"Allowing these kinds of experiences opens up their world unlike anything they have ever known," Nichols said. "Just before we walked out of the building, I shouted, ‘Who wants to go to college?’ Every hand shot in the air with a cheer, ‘I do!’ It was a positive, upbeat, wonderful experience."

closeup@sltrib.com