I attended the premiere showing of Red Rock Rondo in Springdale, Utah, and came away hoping everyone involved felt rewarded for their efforts.

How often does an audience applaud during a television show? How often have you wanted to? This audience was moved to respond and applaud time and again as the song cycle delighted us and we embraced the experiences of others, the small extraordinary histories found in Zion Canyon's communities.

We don't always recognize the events in our lives as worth celebrating. Not every place will be admired. But isn't it wonderful when we do take the time to focus on people, in the their places, and recognize ourselves in our own surroundings, in the Zion of our own making.

Most of us have a place that's special to us. For many, our home community is precious—people form strong attachments to place. Some places become famous—like some people. Some places become preserved—or perverted in the name of preservation (but that's another subject—not the point of this discussion).

Every now and then, someone manages to capture the essence of our odd attachment to place, and celebrates it. Red Rock Rondo is a celebration.

One might expect a television production to showcase the land—the place—itself. Wouldn't that satisfy our expectations? A visual expanse, a musical background. But the land is there—you can go see it. You can photograph it—paint it—draw it—remember it—describe it. Find it on the internet—in an atlas—or on a rack of postcards anywhere within a hundred mile radius of its location.

But what are we celebrating? It's not just beauty—majestic landscapes—realization of earthy creation so impressive that the visual experience is a solar plexus blow when we break out on a vista, momentarily indescribable, and our breath catches—along with our power of description. Not just that—but what we experience there. What happens in this place?

People live here—that's what. A place is for living—a crucible for the stories of lives.

Red Rock Rondo tells stories. Phillip Bimstein listened to some of the stories of Zion's communities and with an infusion of musical enhancement, gifted them back to the tellers, and shared them with the rest of us.

The music is as diverse as the landscape and the stories. The involvement of all the musicians in this song cycle creates a rare and wonderful blessing for anyone willing the listen. The empathy for the tales demonstrated by everyone involved in this production makes it even more special than simply recognizing the value of the stories. It realizes the interaction of ordinary folks with their community and demonstrates the extraordinary way that community encompasses us all.

Jerry Brooks added that two "bits of verse infiltrated" her thoughts as she considered the Red Rock Rondo experience. The first is from Dylan Thomas' "A Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London," and she notes it is "taken far out of context" but that they are some of her favorite lines, anywhere:

...
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
....

The other bit of verse she mention is from Henry David Thoreau's "Inspiration":

....
I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore.