Photo By Keith Garner | U.S. Army soldiers perform a military concert at the John W. Gallivan Utah Center in...... read more read more
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Published: May 18, 2026 By Keith Garner, Utah National Guard
SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Army National Guard’s 23rd Army Band took center stage Saturday at the Gallivan Center, drawing a crowd of Salt Lake City residents and veterans for the annual Armed Forces Day concert — an evening that carried added weight as communities across the nation began marking America’s 250th anniversary. The free outdoor performance ran from 5 to 7 p.m. at 239 S. Main St., where attendees spread blankets across the grass amphitheater. Two of the band’s combos opened the evening: Duck and Cover, the funk ensemble, and Article 15, the rock combo, warmed up the crowd before the full 23rd Army Band took the stage for the patriotic program. The band names carried their own inside humor for the military crowd. Article 15 refers to a non-judicial punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice — the disciplinary action a commander can impose on a soldier without a full court-martial. Duck and Cover nods to the Cold War-era civil defense drill that instructed civilians to drop and shield themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. Both names are the kind of reference that draws a nod from anyone who has worn a uniform. The 23rd Army Band anchored the evening alongside the Choral Arts Society of Utah’s 100-voice Master Chorale — an auditioned community choir founded and directed by Sterling Poulson, who also served as the evening’s music director and host. The chorale, a fixture of Utah’s civic music scene since 1997, has performed on stages from Carnegie Hall to the Kennedy Center. Together they worked through a program that balanced tradition with something new. Bob Lowden’s “Armed Forces Salute” drew recognition from veterans in the crowd, and the concert closed, as tradition holds, with John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The emotional centerpiece of this year’s program was “These Are the Stars: A Tribute to America’s Heroes,” a newly commissioned work by Cache Valley composer Robyn Butterfield Buttars, orchestrated by Grammy-nominated composer Kurt Bestor. The piece draws from Buttars’ own family history — her grandfather served in World War I and learned by mail from Belgium that his first child had been born months earlier; her father served in both World War II and Korea before retiring as a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. Soloist Dianna Bowler performed the work, its premiere timed to Salt Lake City’s Armed Forces Day celebration.
The 23rd Army Band has been a fixture of Utah’s civic and military landscape for more than a century, having marked its 100th anniversary during the 2024 Armed Forces Day concert at the same venue. Saturday’s performance continued that legacy before an audience that included active service members, veterans and families from across the Salt Lake Valley. The Gallivan Center’s outdoor amphitheater provided a fitting backdrop — the band positioned below a large American flag, choir risers behind them and the downtown skyline beyond. For the 23rd Army Band, Saturday represented another entry in a long record of public service through music — one concert in a tradition that has made Armed Forces Day in Salt Lake City a fixture that residents have come to expect each spring, and this year, something the nation’s broader commemoration made feel a little larger than usual. — 30 —
| Date Taken: | 05.18.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 07.13.2026 15:58 |
| Story ID: | 569719 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 37 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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