John Williams Urges Salt Lake City Council to Preserve Abravanel Hall

The iconic hall's future is uncertain following a proposal to develop a new sports and entertainment district in the city's downtown area

The renowned film composer John Williams has written a letter in support of Abravanel Hall, the home of the Utah Symphony.

Questions have arisen over the hall's future after the Salt Lake City Council announced a plan to revitalize the city's downtown area. In partnership with the sports franchise Smith Entertainment Group, which owns the Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club, the council has proposed a sports and entertainment district that includes the land on which Abravanel Hall stands.

Opened in 1979, the hall seats 2,800 people, and its facade is iconic within Salt Lake City. It is named for the conductor Maurice Abravanel, who led the orchestra from 1946 to 1978 and built it from a community ensemble into a fully-fledged professional orchestra.

Williams described Abravanel Hall as a "crown jewel" in the cultural life of Salt Lake City, with "elegant design and splendid acoustics," and adding that it is an "iconic landmark."

"I knew Maurice Abravanel, whom I admired greatly both as a person and as an artist, and I’ve been privileged on many occasions to conduct in his namesake concert hall in Salt Lake City, where I recorded my musical theme for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games with the Utah Symphony and your magnificent Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and where I conducted the Boston Pops Orchestra on several visits to your great city," Williams wrote in a letter, according to Fox 13 News.

“It is the home of the Utah Symphony, unquestionably one of our country’s finest orchestras," he added. “In our fast-moving technological age, great music performed by world-class orchestras before live audiences is a vital thread that binds us to our cultural past and to our collective future. This simply wouldn’t be possible without temples of music like Abravanel Hall.

"I urge you to preserve and protect this artistic treasure."