When director Casey Jarman founded the Twilight Concert Series, he hoped it would become an integral component of the Salt Lake City community. Since then, Twilight has evolved from a music-lover gathering to a concert event drawing a wide demographic of people.
“It started very small, 26 years ago, when I was given $10,000 by the [Salt Lake City] Arts Council after I pleaded with them to start an evening concert series. They said, ‘Here’s $10,000, do the best you can.’ So it started at the Salt Lake Art Center. It was very modest with local and smaller bands, and it has grown from there,” Jarman says.
While many changes have occurred since Twilight’s beginning days, the series tries to stay true to its mission statement of bringing enjoyable sounds from an assortment of music genres to Salt Lake City.
However, when looking at the new Twilight compared to the original concert series, the contrast is shocking. Morgan Joy Goodfellow, senior in behavioral health and science, prefers the mellow vibes projected from Twilight’s early years.
“I was maybe nine or 10 years old. I used to go with my mom and her friends, who were in their mid-thirties at the time. Gallivan Center was the place to be. It was a totally different format, and people could bring in coolers with their own alcohol,” Goodfellow said. “Maybe it was because I was really young, but I remember the majority of people were adults, as in my mom’s age. It wasn’t a weird teenage thing like it is now.”
Goodfellow believes Twilight, with its stream of big name headliners, has become a social gathering — to her, socializing has taken precedence over the musical scenery.
While Twilight’s staff photographer Dave Brewer recognizes the emphasis on socializing found at Twilight, he also believes music admiration is prominent at its third location, Pioneer Park. In fact, he can map out Twilight’s hangout areas and can pinpoint where the music listening occurs.
“People who are interested in the music and the dance party, they are towards the stage on the east side … It’s a great access spot,” Brewer says. “If you don’t care about the music and are looking to meet some cute girls or cool guys, that’s on the west side of the stage, a little further back.”
One of the main reasons Jarman switched from the intimate setting of the Gallivan Center to the wide-open space of Pioneer Park was to expand Twilight’s demographic. He recognized that bringing in big names from different styles of music welcomes a diverse and larger crowd.
“When I go out to introduce musicians, I see a huge difference in the crowd from show to show,” Jarman said.
This year’s Twilight concert series swooped up a distinctive listing of musicians. From the folk sounds of Belle and Sebastian to the synthesized echoes of MGMT, the series welcomed a plethora of attendees fitting different stereotypes.
Here is a recap of the more notable shows from this year’s Twilight Concert Series.
Flaming Lips: Musicians are known for having inflated egos. At Twilight’s show on July 25, Wayne Coyne’s god complex was in full swing. As the band’s front man, Coyne is known for his lavish fashion sense and ability to awe the audience. Both he and his inflated ego were elevated on a mirrored apparatus — his pedestal raised him above his fellow band members and segued his mission to become star of the show and highlight the band’s distinctive style of psychedelic music.
Though Coyne appeared somewhat egotistical, it was evident his self-opinion was well earned. The band’s admirers proved this. Fans, reflecting Coyne’s fashion sense with painted faces, advertised their admiration for the 30-year-old group. Once the Flaming Lips hit the stage, audience members went wild, although some seemed confused about the baby doll cradled in Coyne’s arms.
Alongside Coyne’s shock factor tactics, the concert offered other amusing festivities. Going into the third song, black confetti blasted towards the audience, painting a picture of birds swarming in the sky. It felt as if Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” had meshed into the concert’s scene. In addition to the confetti omen, the Flaming Lips’ presented one of the best light shows of Twilight history.
Kid Cudi: While Kid Cudi’s stage presence can’t be ignored, spectators’ attentions were not drawn to Cudi but to the rowdy behavior of the crowd at the Aug. 22 performance. Packed with throngs of people, Cudi’s audience turned into a spectacle of its own, which helped fill the 45-minute gap between the opening artist King Chip and Cudi.
During the break from music, people scaled up trees and jumped into the audience, eventually crowd surfing to the front of the stage. Fights could be spotted in the flock of over 40,000 people, and tiny girls, dehydrated and suffocating, were grabbed from the masses and brought to the first aid tent.
Finally, Cudi took center stage. The short and skinny figure shouted lyrics from popular songs like “Just What I Am” and “Up and Away.” As rain poured down on the audience, the voices of screaming fans — most notably a girl from the first row — overpowered the boisterous thumping of the bass.
From the screams of swooning teenage girls to the jumpy enthusiasm of the hip-hop artist, the show represented Cudi’s ability to connect to his listeners. Encouraging people to keep the peace and not push, Cudi spread messages from the stage to the audience. However, the background screen flashing images of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. symbolized the contrast between spectators’ pushy attitudes and Cudi’s theme of peace and tolerance.
Empire of the Sun: Empire of the Sun’s performance on Aug. 29 was less of a musical show and more of a stage gimmick. Draped in futuristic garbs and marked in drastic stage makeup, the group’s members took watchers to an alternate universe — a world of star-studded landscapes, electronic noises and metallic-costumed pilots, also known as dancers.
While the band is not from another galaxy, it does hail from Australia, and this Australian duo knows how to dazzle audience members. With multiple wardrobe changes and a posse of skilled dancers, Empire of the Sun offered more than music at the second-to-last Twilight event. However, at the concert, Empire of the Sun seemed more focused on performing its outer space presentation than playing music.
 
Twilight Concert Attendance Per Show
Belle and Sebastian, Blitzen Trapper
July 18
15,000
Flaming Lips, CSS
July 25
21,000
Tha National, Sharon Van Etten
Aug. 1
19,800
Grizzly Bear, Youth Lagoon
Aug. 7
10,500
Erykah Badu, THEESatisfaction
Aug. 8
19,800
Ludacris, TWO 9
Aug. 15
33,000
Kid Cudi, King Chip, J Godina
Aug. 22
41,000
Empire of the Sun, Alpine, Jesse Walker
Aug. 29
14,000
MGMT, Kuroma
Sept. 5
25,000