Singer Nathan Pacheco, a graduate of Brigham Young University’s music program, joined the students of the American Fork-based Lyceum Philharmonic at the annual Lyceum Music Festival in southern Utah this past summer. The video of their performance of “What a Wonderful World” — filmed at Zion National Park — was just released Tuesday, but has already racked up more than 65,000 views on YouTube.
The Lyceum Philharmonic, led by Kayson Brown, is usually made up of young musicians from more than 30 schools across the state who participate in the after-school Lyceum Orchestras Program at American Heritage School in American Fork. But at the Lyceum Music Festival, which takes place annually in southern Utah, the Philharmonic becomes a summer orchestra featuring about a hundred of the top 14- to 21-year-old musicians from around the country.
The 2017 festival saw students spend a week just outside Zion National Park rehearsing with Utah Symphony players to prepare a concert at the O.C. Tanner Amphitheater with Pacheco.
“Filming this video was our final event of the 2017 Festival,” Brown wrote. “We … had to jeep the orchestra, film crew, instruments, timpani and cameras to the butte you see in the video. … The real miracle was keeping a 100-piece orchestra from melting in the sun. The butte is surrounded on every side by amazing slot canyons and cliffs. It didn’t seem to matter which direction we pointed the camera — there was a beautiful backdrop and passionate young musicians giving their all.”