Mormoniana [CD] - Grant Johannesen and Friends

Sixteen American composers who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were invited to participate in a collaborative project initiated by Mormon Artists Group, an organization in New York City. The premise was simple: each composer was to select a visual artwork created by a mormon artist and write a piano composition inspired by it.

Together the finished compositions form a new, 16-movement concert work for the piano. The resulting score, a celebration of Mormon artists and composers, is titled Mormoniana (Mor-mo-ni-a-na). Pianist Grant Johannesen agreed to collaborate on the endeavor. He placed the finished works in sequence and recorded it in the fall of 2003 at the Assembly Hall in Salt Lake City’s Temple Square.

TRACKS

1. Women in Christ’s Line
Deon Nielsen Price

2. Fallen Angel
Gaylen Hatton

3. The Swirling World of Ersatz Earth
David Fletcher

4. Hill Cumorah
Reid Nibley

5. He Annointed the Eyes of the Blind Man
Rowan Taylor

6. The Raising of Lazarus
David H. Sargent

7. Untitled (corner grid)
Lansing D. McLoskey

8. Vision
Christian Asplund*

9. Five
Jeff Manookian

10. He Was Cut Out of the Land of the Living
Nathan Fifield

11. Exquisite Corpse
Todd Coleman*

12. 0 Winter Radiance—Lake Powell
Crawford Gates

13. The First Principle
Murray Boren

14. In Old Nauvoo
Royce Campbell Twitchell

15. An Ice Cream Between Friends
Lisa DeSpain

16. Mountains
Robert Cundick

* Performed by the composer

CREDITS

Executive Producers: Ron Simpson for Tantara Records and Glen Nelson for Mormon Artists Group

Produced by Robert Cundick and Grant Johannesen

Recorded by Jon Holloman at the Assembly Hall, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Utah, except “Exquisite Corspe”, recorded by the composer

Edited and mastered by Troy Sales

Tantara Records is an enterprise center in the School of Music at Brigham Young University, and part of the College of Fine Arts and Communications. The Heritage Series on Tantara Records was created through a generous endowment and with a charge to research, record, and distribute historically significant works by Latter-day Saint composers and artists.