When words just aren’t enough, there’s music. A language all its own, it needs no translation because it speaks directly to the soul.
Leslie Harlow can be heard here playing her viola alongside her husband, clarinetist Russell Harlow, and pianist Michael Gurt. It’s from Brahms’ Opus 91. Its full title, Russell said, translates into “Longing.” It’s a piece they arranged together that he said highlights Leslie’s talent.
“She had a tone that was really quite unique. You know, a lot of people play and they somehow don't let their inner selves come out into that sound. But Leslie had this thing, she had this desire to create a sound that came from deep within her,” her husband, Russell Harlow, said.
Leslie Blackburn Harlow was born in 1953 in Lubbock, Texas. At 10 years old she started playing viola and her love for chamber music blossomed. She attended Texas Tech University and upon graduation earned a spot with the Oklahoma Symphony as associate principal viola.
After a couple of years in Oklahoma, Leslie headed to New York to study at The Juilliard School.
She was passionate and driven, and friends say when she set her mind to something she went for it.
Pamela Jones is a professor at the University of Utah School of Music and has played with the Harlows since 2009. She recalled how Leslie would nonchalantly tell the story of how she went to Juilliard.
“She's just like this force of nature, like, with her level of creativity. She's just one of those people that was super creative and energetic and passionate about what she envisioned and just went after it. And I admire that,” said Jones. “I mean, you know, she told me a lot about her life. And she just said, ‘You know, I decided I wanted to go to Juilliard, so I did.’ She had a thing she wanted to do. And she just did it.”
After graduating, Leslie moved to Salt Lake City and began playing with the Utah Symphony. It’s where she and Russell met and fell in love.
“We were playing at that time Beethoven's 9th Symphony. So we always considered that our song,” said Harlow. “Beethoven's 9th is our song.”
In 1984, two years before she and Russell met, Leslie Harlow founded the Deer Valley Chamber Music Festival. The festival, now known as the Beethoven Festival, is Utah's oldest classical music festival. It started as a summer festival but quickly grew to include year-round events. Now in its 40th year, the Beethoven Festival has presented over 850 chamber concerts, many of which featured famous soloists from around the world.
Sue Neimoyer is a professor of music composition and music history at Brigham Young University, Idaho. She got to know the Harlows when she was the music director at Park City Community Church in 2016. She said it was the way Leslie connected to the music that made her an artist others wanted to collaborate with.
“It was just an absolute pleasure to play with her. The music was real conversational, musically speaking, which happens when professionals are really good at what they do, and aren't so carried away with their own wonderfulness that they don't listen to anybody else,” said Neimoyer. "So just the kind of person she was was displayed in the way she played.”
Playing chamber music to an intimate group was Leslie Harlow’s passion and as people learn of her passing, Russell said, he’s learning just how large an impact her passion had on this community.
"What Leslie would say, she loved to say this, 'A symphony is a public address. Chamber music is a personal letter.'"
No funeral services will be held but three memorial concerts are expected to be scheduled. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Park City Chamber Music Society.
