Music, Music, Music

Hello everybody. In the months leading up to the Mormon Arts Center Festival, some of the people working on it will jot down some behind-the-scenes action. I’m up first.

One of the events that I’m most excited about is a concert in Riverside Church’s exquisite space, Christ Chapel. The chamber music concert is being curated by Ethan Wickman, the executive director of the Barlow Foundation for Music Composition at BYU. We’re very happy to announce that the performers of the concert will be the illustrious Deseret String Quartet (Alex Woods, Monte Belknap, Claudine Bigelow, and Michelle Kesler).

The Quartet is working up a program of Mormon composers’ works. I sat down with Ethan when he was in New York in November for a concert of his own music downtown, and I gave him a listing of 147 works for string quartet by Mormon composers. (I’m sure there are more; but that’s what I could find.) These works date from 1905 to, well, yesterday. It’s gonna be great to see what the Deseret String Quartet and Ethan come up with. But frankly, in that gorgeous space, anything will sound heavenly.

Glen Nelson