I received an email from Scott Holden recently. He is immersing himself in new music for his Carnegie Hall recital in June, "A Century of Mormon Music." He told me about his reaction to learning a work by Arthur Shepherd, "From a Mountain Lake." Years ago, I had heard about the piece from my friend, the late Grant Johannesen, who was a friend of Shepherd's and thought very highly of his music.

I didn't anticipate that doing a podcast would be such an emotional thing. But when you're talking to people who really open up about their lives--and that includes bad times as well as good times--you can't help walking around in their shoes for a while. 

We love getting emails. Sometimes we hear from friends, audience members, and potential patrons. Sometimes we hear from artists who want to know more about us and how they can participate in our activities. Finally, we sometimes hear from people who like what we're doing and they want to be part of it in some way.

Twice a year, the Mormon Arts Center Advisory Board gathers together for a meeting. A little over a month ago, we had a standing room only crowd to discuss developments of the Center. The Church History Museum in Salt Lake City graciously hosted it. Most arts organizations view their boards are primarily fundraisers. While they share their opinions about this or that decision made by artistic directors, they perform institutional roles to maintain governance and compliance, primarily. We see our Advisory Board a bit differently. We really seek their input. And we listen.

In 2014, Dominican artist Guillo Carias reached out to American (and Mormon) jazz pianist Stephen Anderson to perform with a group of elite musicians from the Dominican Republic at the Jazzomania Jazz Festival. They had such a great time that they decided to continue working together. Anderson, who is also a composer, traveled throughout the Caribbean to document and discover local jazz. But instead of covering their music or simply doing arrangements of the works, the group of seven musicians-- Sandy Gabriel, Guy Frómeta, Guillo Carias, Carlos Luis, Jeffry Eckels,Juan Álamo, and David Almengod--encouraged him to absorb their music and then create his own compositions that all of them could play together.

I recorded a new podcast this week. The software I'm using to mix it is GarageBand on my iMac. It's all going smoothly except for one problem: I'm having a terrible time with Siri. I can't get her to leave me alone.