Mormon Artists Group – A Motley Vision

A conversation with Luisa Perkins about her short novel Prayers in Bath

cover of Prayers in Bath

Luisa Perkins was kind enough to indulge me in a conversation about her novel Prayers in Bath, which was published earlier this spring by Mormon Artists Group.

But first here’s the back cover blurb to provide some context for our discussion:

After several attempts at in vitro fertilization, Ted and Julia Taylor are out of money and out of hope. In an attempt to shake herself out of her depression, Julia accepts an internship on an archaeological dig in Bath, England. When she finds an ancient scroll while working in the sewer connected to the Roman baths, she sneaks it back to her flat, translates it, and discovers a secret previously lost in the shadows of legend. But her new knowledge poses significant risks, and the repercussions leave her career, her faith, and her marriage hanging in the balance.

And now on to our conversation…

WM: So I really liked Prayers in Bath, Luisa. I want to talk about it, but I also very much don’t want to spoil too much of the plot for other readers so we’re going to talk around it a bit instead of diving into the text itself. On your author website, you reveal the initial germ for the novel. Could you expand on that a bit? What came after the two initial ideas of a Mormon woman as the main character and curse tablets in the hot springs of Bath? Was there a particular image or sentence or scene or additional theme or idea that arrived next? Or to put it another way: what were the next layers of sediment that settled down as you built the bedrock of the stream of the novel? Also, what was your reaction to that first glimmer of ideas?

LP: Well, that is hard to talk about without dropping a lot of spoilers, but the William Blake poem/hymn and its allusions to the Glastonbury legend were the next big pieces of the puzzle.

As I started building Julia as a character, I knew I didn’t want her to be what some might expect a Mormon woman character to be. She’s not from Utah; she’s a convert; she doesn’t have kids. And I wanted her to question some of the things that I question: how do we navigate the tension between personal revelation and institutional revelation? What about the tension between faith and knowledge? What do we do with a character (like Nephi) who feels inspired to break a commandment?

I also think a lot about all the scriptures we don’t have. I teach early morning seminary, and one of the things I try to teach my students is how and why to cherish the scriptures we do have–but there’s so much we don’t know. And I often wonder when we’ll get more scriptures, when we’ll have an outpouring of knowledge of the magnitude of the Kirtland years. My grandfather once quoted someone to me–I don’t know whom–and said we wouldn’t get any more scriptures until we knew and lived the ones we already have. So I guess it’ll be a little while.

My reaction to thinking about all these questions in the context of my new characters was excitement. I did a lot of very diverse research before I settled into the plot the book has now. It’s a short book, but it took a long time to write, to feel like I’d gotten it right.

WM: Short is usually more difficult than long because you have to do the work to reduce the story. You said it took a while to settle into the plot. It’d would have been very easy to take the core elements of the story and blow it out into a much larger and/or more melodramatic plot. I like that you didn’t do that.

Another thing I found interesting is that Julia and Ted, the married couple at the center of the story, are academics. Ted comes from pioneer stock; Julia is a convert. They struggle with fertility. Setting aside their individual personalities and, as we find out later, some plot reasons for these attributes, I think there’s something very interesting about layering those three experiences onto a fictional Mormon couple. What did you find interesting about that particular combination?

LP: I love Ted. He thinks he’s very progressive, but his self-conception gets challenged pretty strongly by the events of the book, and he realizes he’s more a product of his upbringing than he’d like to think. I think most self-aware adults go through that struggle at some point. As for Julia, we need more convert stories. There are so many more converts or children of converts in the church today than there are people with pioneer ancestry. It would be great if our books reflected that. As for fertility, I pictured, Julia joining the church and wanting to buy into the dream of the Ensign cover family–but having a hard time with it for a lot of reasons. She’s an outsider, but then in the story, she becomes a very particular kind of insider. I like that kind of reversal.

WM: I hadn’t thought of Julia in terms of the reversal that happens in relation to Ted, but that’s definitely one of the things I responded to. Getting more specific: I think that infertility is something that could use more attention from Mormon artists (and Mormon culture in general). I really responded to Emily Adams’ essay/poetry collection For Those With Empty Arms and was sad but also strangely happy that it turned out to be one of the elements of Prayers in Bath. What other kinds of works would you like to see that deal with infertility?

LP: I’d love to read more fiction and non-fiction about adoption. As Mormons, we have this huge culture of symbolic adoption in the gospel. The realities of adoption can be very tough. But in any circumstance, families are hard, families are crucibles. Our ancestors had to deal with infant mortality rates and a rate of mothers dying in childbirth that I simply cannot imagine. But maybe they look at us, with the seemingly ever-increasing rates of infertility, and are similarly astonished.

WM: Modern Mormons sometimes pay lip service to the idea that our times are just as challenging for us as their own times were for the Mormon pioneers. But it’s usually cast in terms of “they had to face super difficult physical challenges, and we face super difficult spiritual ones”. But I’m pretty sure they faced spiritual challenges too. And we face physical ones—they’re just not quite the same ones (at least for those of us who live in first world countries).

Switching gears: there’s a “Mormon expats hosted by bemused but game local Mormons Thanksgiving dinner scene” in the novel. I had a couple of moments on my mission in Romania of awkward-but-charming attempts to celebrate American-Mormon holidays. What’s your favorite traditional Thanksgiving dish? What’s your favorite non-traditional Thanksgiving dish? What was the most memorable Thanksgiving dinner abroad experience you have had?

LP: My favorite Thanksgiving dish is stuffing with gravy. But it has to be my mother’s recipe, or I won’t eat it. I’m kind of a fascist about our Thanksgiving menu, but I haven’t heard anyone complaining.

My favorite non-traditional Thanksgiving dish is carrot soup. My second favorite is a course of French cheeses. I’ve never eaten Thanksgiving dinner abroad, but the first time I had Thanksgiving with my husband’s family, it felt like I was in a foreign country. My mother–in-law is Swiss, from the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and my husband’s family grew up having very traditional French dinners–several courses spread over several hours.

So my husband’s family’s Thanksgiving turned out to be this perfect amalgam of French and American cultures. The meal started with this amazing, creamy, rich, pureed carrot soup. Then came the recognizable course–the turkey, gravy, stuffing, green beans, mashed potatoes, and cranberry. (I took it as a sign from heaven when my mother-in-law’s stuffing turned out to be nearly identical to my mother’s.) Then came the salad course, and then the cheese plate, and then finally, the pies. Oh, and fresh apple cider from a local farm throughout, served in wine glasses. We were at the table for five hours, and I felt like I was in heaven. Lively conversation, fantastic food. And that’s how I’ve done Thanksgiving–or any holiday meal–ever since.

Um, obviously, I’m very into food.

WM: Same here. All my conversations eventually end up on the subject of food, fashion or narrative art (books, TV, film).

Okay, let’s get to a core AMV topic: Prayers in Bath is almost perfectly calibrated to appeal to me and my half-baked theories about Mormon literature but because of that very fact, it’s hard to categorize generically. I suppose one could simply give it the “contemporary literary fiction” genre label, but that sidesteps the fact that there are elements to it that go beyond mundane realism. For one thing, it treats its supernatural element seriously. That is, Julia is a believing Mormon character, which means she seeks for and receives revelation from the Holy Ghost, which an LDS reader will see as simply realism while non-LDS readers will see it as non-realism. And yet other genre categories/labels commonly used don’t fit either. It’s not magic realism [for readers wondering why not, see my AMV series on Mormon magic realism]. It’s not paranormal fiction in the way that term is used for horror/urban fantasy/weird fiction. I’ve used the term Mormon folk realism to describe creative works that take Mormon doctrine (and especially Mormon folk doctrine) at face value and extrapolate from there. But I’d say that Prayers in Bath doesn’t even quite fit that because whatever is supernatural about it is well within the borders of current Church doctrine and practice, albeit a somewhat unusual/unique manifestation of it. There are, certainly, versions of this novel that could have put you more solidly in any number of genres. What parameters and/or influences and/or inclinations influenced how you calibrated your approach to the genre of the novel? And how did genre labels factor into discussions with Mormon Artists Group on how to position the novel?

LP: When Gideon Burton teaches my novel Dispirited at BYU, he calls it “spiritual realism.” I thought that was pretty genius and have adopted it to explain most of the stuff I write, including Prayers in Bath. It may not be PC to admit it, but Orson Scott Card’s Alvin books had a big influence on me. His folk magic is just one step removed from a lot of stuff that we as Mormons believe and witness. A story I wrote just came out in the latest issue of Sunstone, and I have another one coming out in a Segullah anthology soon. They’re very much in the same spiritual realist vein.

WM: Excellent. I look forward to those stories. Whether we call it Mormon folk realism or spiritual realism or something else entirely, it’s a type of Mormon fiction that I very much enjoy reading and writing because it takes LDS doctrine and experience seriously but does so as a matter of theme and aesthetics rather than sermon or personal essay, and there’s something about that translation to the idiom of fiction that gets at aspects of the Mormon experience that I, personally, don’t find anywhere else.

Okay, next question: what was your initial reaction to seeing the four works Jacqui Larsen created for Prayers in Bath? How awesome is it that she incorporated the words of William Blake?

LP: First of all, I was over the moon when Jacqui agreed to join the project. Her work is amazing. So before she turned in the pieces, I had high hopes. She exceeded them, to say the least. I wish I could have afforded to buy all four originals from her, but I am delighted that the color reproductions in the limited edition turned out so beautifully. The Blake poem/hymn is one of my favorite things, ever. I’m pretty anti-patriotism; I feel like it’s idolatry and does no one any good. But when people sing “Jerusalem,” I choke up every time.

WM: We should all have more Blake in our lives.

So. It’s impolite to ask about sequels, but I’m very curious about this: do you see yourself returning to the characters of Prayers in Bath? Or if not the characters, this style of fiction? Why or why not?

LP: I don’t see myself returning to Ted and Julia, but I won’t rule it out. But this style of fiction is generally what I want to be writing. I’m in an MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts right now, and my professor this semester has strongly encouraged me to write stories that only I can write, to draw on deeply personal experiences. Maybe that’s self-evident for other writers, but it was not for me. I grew up reading a lot of English literature and British fantasy, so in a way, Prayers in Bath is a little bit of a literary homecoming for me.

But another thing I love is how these days, it’s more common to see fantasy and magical realism set in this hemisphere. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “There is the dearest freshness deep down things,” and that can’t be true just for England. There has to be magic everywhere. I live in Southern California now, and I’m trying to find the beauty and magic here and write about it.

WM: You know, in my early days of participating in discussion about Mormon literature, I railed against all the stories set in small Mormon corridor towns. But now I’ve written six or seven stories set in Southern Utah. And the majority of them have some sort of weird or magical element to them. There’s something about place and magic that’s a beguiling combination. I didn’t read a lot of British fantasy, but I remember first reading Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising as a young boy and feeling like I was reading about home.

Last question: what’s the one thing (and it could be anything) that you’d like to see happen in Mormon fiction over the next year or two?

LP: The same thing I’d like to see in Mormondom in general–more faithful questioning. How will we ever get answers if we don’t ask questions? But also, a greater inclusiveness. The concept of “own voices” is a big deal in the writing world these days. Mormons need to have their own voices, but it hopefully won’t all be the same voice. Are there any Mormon writers in Guatemala or Ghana or Bulgaria? I have no idea, but I’d sure like for us to find them if there are.

WM: Amen to that. Thanks, Luisa!

Field Notes on Language and Kinship

I’m indulging in some shameless self-promotion, but only because what I’m promoting is a fruit of my work on Fire in the Pasture and speaks to the publication of Mormon literature (especially via collaborative effort) and my continued promotion of Mormon poets, poetries, and poetics.

Yesterday morning via his Mormon Artists Group e-newsletter, Glimpses, Glen Nelson announced the publication of my single-author book. Here’s what he said:

Mormon Artists Group is pleased to announce the publication of
Field Notes on Language and Kinshipby Tyler Chadwick
artworks by Susan Krueger-Barber

A landmark publication appeared in 2011, an anthology of contemporary Mormon poetry. It was an ambitious undertaking that, it can be argued, is among the most important books on Mormonism to appear in the first years of the century. Unknown to many, even inside the Church, Mormon poets have recently become regular contributors to the leading poetry publications in the country. Their poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Poetry, The Iowa Review, The New Republic, Slate, The Southern Review, among many, many others. The award-winning anthology, Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets, presented 82 poets’ new works in its 522 pages.

The editor for Fire in the Pasture was Tyler Chadwick, a young scholar and poet from Idaho. After the publication of the anthology, Mormon Artists Group approached Chadwick to write a book to answer a simple question: Why does poetry matter to you? He responded with Field Notes on Language and Kinship. It is Mormon Artists Group’s 24th project.

The book is a direct response to the works in Fire in the Pasture. Chadwick reacts to them in several ways, as a scholar, memoirist, essayist, and poet. Field Notes on Language and Kinship is published as a two-volume edition. The anthology, Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poets, is rebound in hardcover; and Chadwick’s original volume is bound as a companion work, covered with hand-pounded amate barkskin papers from Mexico’s Otomi Indians and brown Japanese Asahi silk. The two are presented in a slipcase. A commercial paperback is also available from Amazon.com.

One of Chadwick’s sources of inspiration is visual art, and Field Notes on Language and Kinship includes eight artworks created especially for this project by Susan Krueger-Barber. Just as Chadwick’s text brings multiple disciplines of literature to bear, Krueger-Barber’s works are multi-disciplinary, mixed media works. Each of them combines photography, painting, and collage (using fragments torn from a copy of Fire in the Pasture). The publication is limited to 25 copies, signed by the artists and numbered.

To read excerpts from Field Notes on Language and Kinship, to explore the original artworks, and to acquire the book and/or the artworks, visit our website.

Continue reading “Field Notes on Language and Kinship”

Mormons at the Met

I’ve long wished that opera spoke to me on more than a purely appreciative, intellectual level. I wish I could say, like Glen Nelson, that

for me opera is serious business. I have always responded to it viscerally.

Of course, he has an advantage, having grown up with opera, whereas I have to learn opera. And the best way would be to attend operas. Which I can do locally, but holy smokes opera is expensive. If opera dies, this will be the reason: that the uninitiated have to spend soooo much money to become initiated. So I suppose the nouveu riche looking for cultural acceptance will join the club, but the poor will stick to novels and Saturday-morning cartoons. Continue reading “Mormons at the Met”

song/cycles: music and poetry

In yesterday’s post, I introduced Song/Cycles from New York’s Mormon Artists Group. Today we will read an excerpt from a roundtable discussion from the contributing composers (available in full at the front of the book).

But before we get to that however, residents of Utah should remind themselves that “on Monday, November 8, a performance of all six works from . . . Song/Cycles . . . is free at 7pm at the Orem Public Library. Performers include Darrell Babidge, Clara Hurtado Lee, Ruth Ellis, Brian Stucki, Doris Brunatti, and Marilyn Reid Smith. For additional information, contact 801.229.7050. Works to be performed are: Mary Keeps All These Things (Harriet Petherick Bushman/Susan Howe), Notes (David H. Sargent/Elaine M. Craig), Seven Sisters (Murray Boren/Glen Nelson), Sudden Music (Lansing McLoskey/Javen Tanner), The Dead Praying for Me (Daniel Bradshaw/Lance Larsen), and TÃ¶chterliebe (Charis Bean Duke/Will Reger).”

* * * * *

How did you come to select the poetry for your composition? Tell us the story behind the collaboration with your poet. Continue reading “song/cycles: music and poetry”

song/cycles

Mormon Artists Group is at it again. In case you didn’t hear about their latest release, it is poetry set to music. The poetry is of high quality (some of them, I will admit, are among the best poems I’ve read in the last few years) and the music also ranges from the good to the excellent. The fancy limited goose-eggshell edition has sold out but the $19.95 paperback is still available.

(Sadly, the paperback does not come with a cd and so you can only read the scores. If you are someone like me, this is simply inadequate. Fortunately MAG gave me the opportunity to listen to the music anyway and while the current recordings are blemished by coughs and suchlike, the inherent loveliness is generally intact. If you live in Utah, you will have the opportunity to hear the songs live NEXT WEEK. [See below.] In the meantime, I highly recommend that you inform your potential purchase by listening to the samples available at mormonartistgroup.com.) Continue reading “song/cycles”

Two more contests, Dialogue, and more

Kent posted last week about the Marilyn Brown Unpublished Novel contest. It’s a good contest, but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hit the deadline unless you already have a novel in the drawer. So here’s two more contests to consider entering (after you finish your Monsters & Mormons submission, of course) plus some other things worth checking out…

Sunstone writing contests

The deadline is Oct. 31*. Winners will be announced no later than Feb. 28, 2011. Full details on Sunstone’s Facebook page. One of the great things about this contest is that it includes a prize for short-short story (less than 1,500 words) in addition to short story (fewer than 6,000 words). I heartily applaud Sunstone’s commitment to the short-short form.

LDS Film Script Contest

The LDS Film Festival has also announced its contests, and this year there will be a Feature Script Contest. R. Don Oscarson has also put up $600 in prize money (three scripts will win $200 each). Scripts are due Nov. 15.

AMVers in Dialogue

Dialogue has been very good to AMV-associated folks the past few years (and I guess you could say vice versa). I’m pleased to report that S.P. Bailey has two poems in the Fall 2010 issue, which also features reviews of Jonathan Langford’s novel No Going Back ( Amazon ) and Theric Jepson and co’s collection The Fob Bible ( Amazon ).

Narratives of Family exhibit

Art History student Emily Larsen and BYU faculty member James R. Swensen have curated the exhibit “Nature and Nurture: Narratives of Family” for the B.F. Larson Gallery at the Harris Fine Arts Center. Here’s what Emily says about the exhibit: “The exhibition … explores the complexity of familial relationships through the art of ten artists with connections to BYU or Utah (8 of the 10 are BYU alumni). The exhibition features the art of well known LDS artists such as Brian Kershisnik and Lee Udall Bennion as well as lesser known LDS artists.” It runs Oct. 5-28 so if you are in the area, do check it out.

Poetry in song from Mormon Artist Group

Song/Cycles is the latest project from the NYC-based Mormon Artists Group. Featuring the work of 6 LDS poets (including Lance Larsen) set to music by LDS composers, the project comes in both a limited edition and a trade paperback. The limited edition version includes audio recordings of performances of the song cycles.

*This post originally had the deadline as Oct. 15 for the Sunstone contests; it’s actually Oct. 31.

A review of The Island of Bali Is Littered With Prayers

A review of the Island of Bali Is Littered With Prayers

I hesitated for a few weeks before reading The Island of Bali Is Littered With Prayers (Amazon). I already knew Jeremy could write, and, in fact, I have tried to recruit him to AMV over the years. I knew that we shared a certain sensibility that could perhaps be described as a interest in melding, or at least co-locating, the core of Mormon praxis with the avant garde, post-whatever, and insistently yet calmly artistic. And I knew that I very much liked the excerpt I had posted at AMV when the limited edition hard bound copy of the book was published late last year.

But all that somehow fades when faced with the book itself, the slim paperback volume with the vibrant red cover that arrived with a handwritten return address. What if it isn’t good? What if it is good, but I have nothing to say about it? Silly considerations, of course, especially when you get the book for free without committing to a formal review. And once the hesitation slid away, all there was to do was just read the thing. Which I did.

So here’s the deal: The Island of Bali Is Littered With Prayers is a marvelous case study in how to capture in a piece of creative nonfiction a meaningful cross-cultural experience. It’s also a lovely book to read.

There are a few reasons for that.

1. The goal of the experience itself was not manufactured for the purpose of writing the book. Jeremy goes to Bali because he wants to start a gamelan group [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan ] at BYU. That goal supplies the narrative with a forward movement, which then frees him from indulging in travelogue and chronology, although the book proceeds roughly chronologically.

2. Jeremy is less of a tourist and more of a student, but as a student he’s both a novice (at gamelan) and an expert (a PhD-ed musicologist), which means that he can approach his writing with authority, but also wonder and humility. That leads to a very pleasant tone to the prose. Unlike many travel writes he is not preening or pretentiously keening or trying to chock full us with insights and breathy observations derived from the exotic.

3. There is a lightness yet sincerity to the cultural observations fueled by the genuine camraderie of the endevaor. And yet, for all the felicitious coming together over the joy of music and performance, Jeremy doesn’t gloss over the points where the cross-cultural joy turns foreign, even puzzling. This is the importance of the chapter that relates the funeral and cremation of the King of Ubud.

4. Jeremy writes well about music — about sound, instruments, rehearsal, performance — and does so in a way that helps readers sink in to both the theoretical and metaphorical explorations of sound (and the physics of it) and the physicality that goes in to the actions that create music. Add in the socio-cultural dynamics of both acquiring the skills to lead a gamelan group and then the actual starting of one at BYU and it’s obvious that there’s a real command there of writing about music. I very much look forward to his forthcoming book on La Monte Young.

5. Finally, I very much enjoyed the deft touch Jeremy takes with the cross-cultural Bali/Mormon moments. He doesn’t lay it on too thick. He doesn’t try to extrapolate out any grand conclusions (although he does have moments where he tries to explain to the reader and himself how the Balinese really understand art as it relates to ways of living). The focus really is on creating a Wasatch Front-based gamelan. That there are a few felictious moments of Mormon intrusion in to the endeavor is almost incidental, but also enriches the whole thing. Good stuff.

FTC Note: this review is based on a gratis review copy of the paperback sent to me by the author.

I hesitated for a few weeks before reading The Island of Bali Is Littered With Prayers (Amazon) by Jeremy Grimshaw (which is now out in paperback). I already knew Jeremy could write, and, in fact, I have tried to recruit him to AMV over the years. I knew that we shared a certain sensibility that could perhaps be described as a interest in melding, or at least co-locating, the core of Mormon praxis with the avant garde, post-whatever, and insistently yet calmly artistic. And I knew that I very much liked the excerpt I had posted at AMV when the limited edition hard bound copy of the book was published late last year by Mormon Artists Group (also see my interview with Jeremy about the book).

The Whitney Awards, Irreantum submissions and an Angolan artist

A quick look at the Whitney Awards

By now, I’m sure all of AMV’s readers have seen the announcement of this year’s finalists for the Whitney Awards. Congratulations to AMV’s Jonathan Langford for being selected as a finalist in the General Fiction category. He is also eligible for the best novel by a new author award. Full disclosure: I am not a Whitney voter. I believe Theric is. I don’t know if anybody else associated with AMV is. Updated disclosure, 3/21/2010: Rob Wells convinced me to be a Whitney Awards voter. I will be for sure voting in the Speculative Fiction and Historical Fiction categories. It is also quite likely that I will be able to finish reading the novels in the General Fiction category, as well.

I’ve compiled a quick breakdown of who published the finalists. It’s a pretty decent mix, actually: Continue reading “The Whitney Awards, Irreantum submissions and an Angolan artist”

An interview with Mormon musicologist Jeremy Grimshaw

Yesterday, I posted an excerpt from Jeremy Grimshaw’s new book The Island of Bali is Littered with Prayers, which is available from Mormon Artists Group. Younger denizens of the Bloggernacle might not recognize Jeremy’s name, but he started an excellent blog focused on Mormon culture called Orson’s Telescope way back in February, 2004. He brought sharp writing and humorous commentary to the mix and I became a major fan. Sadly, but understandably, he had to shut the blog down just a little over a year later to focus on his dissertation. The attempt at discipline must have worked because now he’s an Assistant Professor of Music at BYU. In the following interview, we talk about his new book, his work on Mormon minimalist composer La Monte Young (which AMV has featured before), and a couple of other topics.

So last the Bloggernacle was really aware of Jeremy Grimshaw was when you shut down your excellent blog Orson’s Telescope to focus on your dissertation. Catch us up briefly — how did you get from there to where you are now?

I completed by Ph.D. in musicology with emphases in American experimental music and world music. Out of grad school, I taught for two years at Denison University, a small, wonderful liberal arts college in central Ohio. I never really anticipated returning to Utah, at least not so quickly, but some curricular changes at BYU resulted in the creation of a new position. Next thing I knew, I was in Provo.

Some of our newer AMV readers may not be familiar with your work. Can you re-explain your studies and analysis of the work of La Monte Young?

Although his is not a household name, except perhaps in certain circles, La Monte Young is one of the most important American composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. As an central figure in the New York scene of the 1960s, he curated a famous experimental concert series at Yoko Ono’s loft, collaborated with Andy Warhol, was a mentor to founding members of the Velvet Underground, and became the patriarch of the minimalist movement in music. He became known for such works as his monumental 6-hour composition for alternately tuned piano, The Well-Tuned Piano, and the ongoing electronic installation known as the Dream House, which he created with his wife, the visual artist Marian Zazeela. Brian Eno, the electronic composer and producer for Talking Heads, U2, and David Bowie, calls him “the granddaddy of us all.”

An excerpt from The Island of Bali is Littered with Prayers

Last week Mormon Artists Group announced the availability of a fine edition version of BYU Assistant Professor of Music Jeremy Grimshaw’s The Island of Bali is Littered with Prayers, an account of his trip to the island to study gamelan music and subsequent efforts to start a gamelan orchestra in Utah. I’m pleased to bring you the following excerpt from the book. Tomorrow I’ll post a Q&A with Jeremy.

The fine edition version is limited to 25 copies and costs $125. You can purchase it (and read more about it) at http://mormonartistsgroup.com/ (for some reason the website doesn’t do direct links to its pages — so click on “Works” when the page loads and then The Island of Bali is Littered with Prayers). Other editions of this title may become available in the future. Mormon Artists Group fine editions almost always sell out so if this does interest you and is within your means, act quickly.

From the section on unpacking the gamelan instruments when they arrive in Provo.

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When the instruments arrived, I couldn’t help but notice that the unpacking party was a kind of music of its own: a polyphonic chorus of hammering, the groan of boards being forced out of square, nails squealing at the pull of crowbars. The twenty-one crates, some of them as big as refrigerators and all of them sturdy enough to protect their heavy, precious cargo on the nine thousand mile, three month- long journey from Bali, Indonesia, to Provo, Utah, put up quite a fight before giving up their contents. Continue reading “An excerpt from The Island of Bali is Littered with Prayers”