Mormon Artists Group

January 17, 2003 - Nearly three years ago, I sat in the chapel at Lincoln Center for a chorus rehearsal. We were preparing for a concert at Carnegie Hall presented by the church members of this area. It was a beautiful event, conducted by David Fletcher, with a very large chorus (nearly 200, I recall) and soloists from the Metropolitan Opera, Juilliard, and so on. As we discussed various announcements, a chorus member asked aloud, “Why aren’t we performing any music by LDS composers?” The response, which came quickly, was that none of the LDS composers’ music is any good. The comment got a big laugh, and we continued the rehearsal. But I couldn’t concentrate. How could someone say such a thing, and further, why did everyone laugh at the response? Surely it wasn’t true.

I had collaborated with several LDS composers on opera, art songs, and sacred music projects, and I loved the music. I very much wanted to be able to rebut the joke with a list of ideal compositions to replace our scheduled Faure Requiem, Barber Agnus Dei, etc., but I could not. Either there really was no music of value in the LDS catalog, so to speak, or everyone else was as ignorant as I. Right there and then, I made a promise to myself: I would learn the compositions by LDS composers and do what I could to promote them.

Last summer, I had another epiphanic moment. After a recital in Inwood’s chapel, a young Juilliard pianist approached me and asked whether I knew the piano concert works of any LDS composers that she might be able to program in upcoming recitals. She said that she was very eager to play music that she suspected could engage her spiritually, but obviously, those LDS composers were not on the curriculum at Juilliard. By then, I had heard of some important works that then she sought out, and I went off to research every listing of scores by LDS composers in every public and private library in town.

Armed with a list of more than 100 composers furnished to me by the Barlow Foundation, the principal benefactor of Mormon composers, I began to compile the titles, dates, call numbers, scoring, length, size, duration, premiere dates, and anything else in the card catalogs. I found choral works, symphonies, operas, ballets, chamber works, art songs, musical theater works. The list grew and grew in tandem with my excitement.

Ultimately, I gathered fifty pages of LDS works. Mormon Artists Group decided to publish our findings in a small catalog. I contacted Grant Johannesen, whose piano performances I had heard throughout my life, and asked if he would write a cover letter to accompany the publication. As it turns out, Grant has played the works of LDS composers throughout his career and even commissioned and premiered important works. He agreed to draft a letter but also offered to contact a philanthropist on our behalf to subsidize the publication, “Musical Compositions by LDS Composers in New York City Library Collections.” A very welcome check arrived soon afterward, and our catalog was sent to 200 educators, critics, composers, performers, recording producers, radio stations, and libraries free of charge.

One of the happy consequences of the researching was a new awareness of the composers. I had heard of Gates, Cundick, Boren, and the NY composers, but I was startled to find a large community in California, another in the Northeast, some in the south, and composers in Mexico, Spain, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Germany, England, South America, and so forth.

In dribbles and drabs, I began to hear the works of the composers, and later, as they started emailing and phoning me, friendships grew. They had similar stories to tell although they came from disparate places and even generations: they were serious composers who thought of themselves as extremely devout Mormons, and yet were aware that the church had little place for their music and knew of them, nearly, not at all.

At the same time my conversations with performing artists were equally frustrating. They knew only the compositions of LDS composers thay they heard from the Tabernacle Choir or from their composer friends. Even the composers themselves were in the dark. I asked some composer to write for me a list of their favorite LDS compositions; they couldn’t do it. They had no exposure to it. There were no recordings (or very few self-produced CDs), few performances, and seemingly, little interest. And yet, they all wished that the LDS community was aware of their music. One composer told me that at Harvard where he was studying, everyone knew him as the LDS composer and yet he couldn’t even get his ward choir to perform one of his works…and he was the choir director!

Our catalog was published in late 2002, and I began to investigate the possibilities of engaging multiple composers and performers on a new project. It occurred to me that the plight of the unknown composer is similar to that of the LDS painter. They are fascinating and undiscovered. I devised a plan that would require each of a number of composers to select an artwork by an LDS artist, compose a short piano piece inspired by it, and then have the music put in some order, like an LDS version of “Pictures at an Exhibition.”

I asked Grant Johannesen whether he might be interested in playing the work eventually, and then, after he showed his enthusiasm, I drafted a letter to 16 composers whose works had most intrigued me as I researched Mormon music.

I then asked Michael Hicks to contribute an essay about Mormon music to the volume and asked Valerie Atkisson, an artist in New York whose work based on her genealogy is superb, to create an original artwork for the project. I planned to bind the score, essay, art, and recording into a volume and sell it as a limited edition publication.

On paper it looked pretty impressive, I suppose, and all the composers signed on immediately. Only one composer (who had too many commissions outstanding) declined the invitation. We set the end of May as the deadline for scores to be finished, and within two months, I received four beautiful scores by Robert Cundick, Reid Nibley, Gaylen Hatton, and Royce Campbell Twitchell.

June 28, 2003 - Yesterday, I spent three hours at the Park Avenue apartment of Grant Johannesen. The occasion was a first hearing of all 16 piano pieces that together will comprise our project, Mormoniana. I hope I can be forgiven for being very nervous. As the works arrived, I had been attempting to play each of them, and my anxieties were centered on Grant — would he like the music? Would the styles of writing that are very contemporary pose problems? Was it too much music?

The 16 pieces total nearly 100 pages. I also had my doubts that so much new music dumped on someone all at one time would be unattractive.

The scores themselves are representative of several generations of American composition styles. The composers hail from California (Rowan Taylor and Deon Nielsen Price), New York (David Fletcher, Royce Campbell Twitchell, Nathan Fifield, and Lisa DeSpain), Massachusetts (Lansing D. McLoskey), Iowa (Todd Coleman), Salt Lake City, Utah (Crawford Gates, Robert Cundick, Jeff Manookian, Gaylen Hatton), and BYU (Christian Asplund, Murray Boren, David Sargent), and Reid Nibley who is currently serving a mission in Canada.

It had pleased me that the music was so diverse. Some of the music had hymn-like straightforwardness; other music was lush and romantic; some compositions were angular and mentally rigorous; some music was playful and joyous; a few of the works explore sound landscapes that are eerie and mysterious. And some of the music is flat-out showy. Or at least, that had been my initial reactions. How would Grant react?

I sat on the straight-backed, 19th century chair in his living room facing an 8-foot Steinway. He zipped through the music with a confidence of a great artist who has premiered the works of Poulenc, Bartok, Faure, Milhoud, Carter, Copland, Sessions, Chavez, and the list goes on and on. The technical difficulties that caused my fingers to crash into each other like drunken sailors when I played the music posed no such challenges for him. And although he was basically sightreading a good number of the works, he colored the music, shaped it, and obeyed the dynamic markings like someone who knows a work intimately. This was especially striking during readings of the very modern work which, in most pianist’s care, become robotic, if speedy. Suddenly these works, some of which were obviously written on a computer program and presumably are unplayable by the composers themselves, breathed as real music.

I am not qualified to say whether the pieces are good. I suppose that few people today truly are experts in musical theory. But repeatedly, it was obvious that the compositions worked. They were highly evocative, They arrested my attention. I felt transported by them. That a couple of the works have almost nothing on the page and can still create such a glowing mood is nearly miraculous. I guess what I mean is this, the first hearing came as a great relief and a tantalizing portent of future joys.

November 11 - During the summer, I spent most of my time in the hospital. My seven-year old daughter Kate had an operation to remove a large brain tumor. It was a difficult time for all of us. I communicated my situation to the collaborators because I wanted them to know why I was less responsive to their letters and calls. What supportive and generous people! They wrote such sweets letters to us and encouraged us to keep our faith strong. They reported that Kate was in their prayers. And in each communication sinch July, each begins by asking about our little girl whom none of them as ever met.

Our project which has come to be titled “Mormoniana” continues swiftly. Grant called in August to say he was ready to record the works. It caught me by surprise because the full score ran to nearly 100 pages, and he had told me he hoped to have it learned by December. I asked for his preferences regading a recording venue and instrument. He said that he especially likes the old German Steinway grand at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square.

Unfortunately, I knew that to be a problem because Temple Square is more or less closed off to commercial proejcts like ours. Still, I remembered that Bob Cundick had once offered to be an advocate for us if necessary, and I called him. After explaining the situation, Bob was very quiet. He said, “Give me a couple of days to see what I can do.”

I believe he called the next day and presented a plan that would allow us to record in the Assembly Hall with the Steinway Grant requested, and with Grant’s preferred recording engineer, Jon Holloman. The arrangement would be that the recording would be under the auspices of Tantara Records at BYU and their Heritage label with whom Bob works. So far so good. Tantara would fund the recording if they were allowed by us to become a co-producer on the recording.

The recording session took place on September 9. The entire work was recorded in a single day. Most of the works were played only once. What Grant was trying to achieve was a sense of live performance, with all the inherent danger that implies. I have the first edit of the recording now. It is an impressive accomplishment. It simply could not have happened without the guidance of Bob Cundick and the assistance of Tantara’s staff.

Meanwhile, I have enlisted the help of D. Fletcher to produce the printed materials. In addition to being a fine composer, D. is very talented with the computer programs necessary to take 16 disparate scores–each with its own style, format, and size–and create a unified-looking volume. It has been a lot of work. I go to D’s home weekly and edit and review the scores. I sit down alongside D and several hours later, I stand up, stretch, and return home. It is highly detailed, focused, work. We hope to have everything ready to send to the printer by the end of the year.

January 1, 2004 - We are still at work on the score. It is difficult and slow going. Meanwhile, Valerie Atkisson has nearly finished her print which is a wild compilation of different methods of musical notation throughout history. She also created a drawing that we will be using on the front cover, embroidered on the silk bookcloth. There are many challenges ahead, not the least of which is the amount of time it will take me to bind all these books.

I will admit that it has been occasionally discouraging. Everything takes longer than I’d like, and it costs more than I wish.

March 16, 2004 - The book is now at the printer. It was gratifying to review the printer’s proofs last week and give the thumbs up. The last three months have been filled with a multitude of details: “Let’s move the top line of music on this page up one sixteenth of an inch,” “Can we brighten the yellows in this painting a bit?” “Shouldn’t that hyphen be in an italic font?”–many, many details, most of which matter almost not at all. But our feeling is this–when will we ever get another opportunity like this one? Do it right.

The process of creating a book like this is something like baking bread, but in this recipe, all the ingredients are improvized. We found the brown silk bookcloth we wanted, for example, but we didn’t have a plan regarding how we could put the title on the cover. One evening, my wife Marcia said, “I’ve got it, why don’t you embroider the title onto the cloth?” I immediately phoned my mother who excels at all things having to do with sewing, and she enthusiastically agreed to help.

Initially, we thought she would do the work herself, but she located a commercial embroiderer (whose services are routinely putting corporate logos on baseball caps and t-shirts). They were interested in attempting a new process, so we slowly evolved an image that we could both agree upon. Valerie designed a delicate watercolor image, and we superimposed the title over it. The art was digitally scanned and then the embroiderers assigned each color a thread spool. Much had to be manipulated, a piece of thread can’t be shaded. But the width and density on a line is alterable. Artists are very precise about color choices, so ultimately we had to go to a fabric store, buy the exact colors we wanted, and ship them off–12 spools of thread.

I was especially pleased the day I took the sample embroidery and mounted it onto bookboard. Suddenly, I realized how the finished cover would appear, how three-dimensional it would be. The fun of the process is a discovery of what might happen. I had always thought that artists had a finished picture in their minds before even beginning, but another satisfying method is to jump into a project with people whose sensibilities you trust, and explore.

May 5 - For the last month, my dining table has been stacked high with the components of the book. I sew the unbound sheets together into a book of eight signatures, then I glue, add mull, silk headbands, and endpapers. To get a book that far takes an hour or two. Then I assemble the case which consists of boards, spine, and the bookcloth. It’s a lot of gluing. I am aware that the books, when they emerge from the bookpress, are imperfect–one has a spot of glue on the cover, another has an endpaper with a stubborn wrinkle, and so on. But I keep reminding myself that these are handmade objects.

The biggest ordeal to date has been the process of getting 25 copies autographed by all the collaborators. I sent the page spreads to the group. It took nearly a month to travel from New York to Utah, California, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Canada.

In the last year, a few of the collaborators have had severe physical challenges. When I saw their signatures, it became apparent that for them, even the act of writing their name is a strenuous, draining, painful activity.

After a full month of working all day, every day on the binding of the books, I have completed 87 regular and 16 autographed copies. The original prints will arrive next week (they will be tipped in last), and the CDs arrived from Tantara last week.

We plan to send the prospectuses out next week when the prints get here. All of the composers have given names of people they would like to receive the marketing materials. Some of the composers gave only the names of family; others are very good at networking, and they supplied hundred of names.

We will send 200 prospectuses, which I printed at home, individually. Then we will wait to see what the response is. If things go well, we will publish a commercial edition as well.