Two Horn Sections, One Hillside: Trombone Shorty Brings New Orleans to Deer Valley
If the Utah Symphony's festival is Park City's summer at its most composed, the Deer Valley Concert Series is the same lawn cutting loose — and this Friday it goes all the way loose. On Friday, Aug. 14, the Snow Park Outdoor Amphitheater hosts Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue with St. Paul & The Broken Bones, a double bill so combustible it should come with a fire permit.
This is the headline booking of the Concert Series, which Deer Valley produces in partnership with The State Room Presents and which brings touring heavyweights to the same grass bowl the orchestra plays. Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews is New Orleans royalty — a bandleader who welds brass-band tradition to funk, rock and hip-hop until the seams disappear — and Orleans Avenue is one of the tightest live units working. Pair that with St. Paul & The Broken Bones, the Alabama soul juggernaut fronted by the gale-force Paul Janeway, and you've got two horn-forward bands who treat a stage like a dare. Nobody is sitting on their blanket for this one.
The timing is almost comically good. The night before, Thursday, Aug. 13, the free Canyons Village series closes its heavy hitters with Miles Nielsen & The Rusted Hearts on the Forum stage. So the back half of this week is a two-night, two-mountain crash course in how Park City does summer: free roots-rock at the Canyons on Thursday, marquee New Orleans-and-Muscle-Shoals firepower at Deer Valley on Friday.
For the record-keepers: as of the season announcement, Trombone Shorty's night was the only confirmed Deer Valley Concert Series show, with the resort promising additional dates later in the summer. That makes Aug. 14 not just a great show but a scarce one — the touring-headliner slot of the summer on that lawn.
Why it matters: the Concert Series is how a resort proves it can host more than an orchestra — that the same infrastructure built for Beethoven can turn on a dime and host a second-line. A town that can do both, back to back, on the same grass, is a town with a real venue, not just a pretty view. And a hillside full of people losing their minds to a New Orleans horn section is the sound of Park City remembering it knows how to party.
Bring the blanket. You won't be on it long.
Sources: Deer Valley Music Festival, Deer Valley Concert Series set lineups (Park Record); Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue x St. Paul & The Broken Bones (AXS / The State Room Presents); Canyons Village Summer Concert Series (CVMA)