
🗓️ THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17 | 7:30 PM
📍BROWNING CENTER AT WSU
Utah Symphony’s Holiday Pops Extravaganza returns to Ogden for a night of full-chorus carols, a Broadway voice, and a sonic “Sleigh Ride.” It is the kind of December evening you tell friends about all season, the one where everyone ended up singing along, where you leaned forward when the sleigh bells started, where a carol kept humming in your head on the walk to the car.
The program is stacked with the music you already carry with you: carols, Leroy Anderson classics, Nutcracker excerpts, and a singalong that turns the hall into a room full of voices. The Utah Symphony Chorus joins the orchestra for the occasion, adding the one thing a recording can never quite capture: the weight of 100 voices in the same room at the same moment.
Broadway’s Mamie Parris (Cats, Wicked, School of Rock) takes the mic for the featured vocal spots. She brings a theater performer’s feel for a story, so when the lights come up on a ballad you know, it lands with weight. And yes, there is usually a visit from a red-suited guest the kids will remember longer than the drive home.
This is the program that starts a tradition. Short on pretense, big on familiar music, and built for first-time orchestra audiences as much as for season subscribers. Pair Utah Symphony Holiday Pops in Ogden with dinner out and you have a holiday outing, not just a concert night. Choral society members, Broadway fans, and the friend who says they never go to the symphony all end up in the same room for this one. That is the point.
