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Stories
Saturday Morning Cartoons
In June at the Festival, one of the sessions will feature three prominent animators who will show and talk about their work. All are connected--as faculty or alumni--to the BYU Center for Animation, which has become a successful developer of student talent and a pipeline to important studios. Many of their graduates have gone to major studios including Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Blizzard, etc.
How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?
That's the old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. And if you are the concert pianist Scott Holden preparing for an exciting recital as part of the 2018 Mormon Arts Center Festival, the answers are: discover and then practice. It had long been a dream of mine to have elite Mormon performers tackle our culture's best music and put it on display in the world's best concert venues. I reached out to Scott Holden and asked whether it might appeal to him to prepare a recital of Mormon composers' works. I knew what a big ask it was. Although Scott plays quite a bit of contemporary music, this would require discovery of many composers and their best music.
The New Look
Allyson Chard, our managing director, began a conversation with the Design Lab at Brigham Young University. Each year, they take on an organization and develop a brand identity through graphic design. In October 2017, we learned that they wanted to work with us to rebrand the Mormon Arts Center. Allyson's background is in advertising, and she spearheaded the relationship, which included preparing an extensive Creative Brief on the Center. She met with the students and Doug Dearden, the class advisor on next steps.
Olá. Eu sou Hildebrando de Melo
We are pleased to announce that the Mormon Arts Center has granted its first artist's residency to the painter and sculptor Hildebrando de Melo. The residency will consist of the Center bringing Hildebrando from his home in Luanda, Angola to New York City to create ...
And the Winner Is...
On November 1, 2017, the Mormon Arts Center issued a Call For Submissions to approximately 25 LDS composers. We invited them to create a proposal for a new work to be premiered at the Festival in June, 2018. Specifically for a family concert, we wanted a new ...
Into the "Studio"
I grew up with fiction, with movies and picture books and a fascination with the sharing of what life is like for other people. True stories, untold stories, wild and crazy stories: all of them interest me. So when I was asked about the possibility of starting a podcast series ...
You Gotta Read This...
It's not published yet. I'm reading the manuscript of a book that the Mormon Arts Center will publish in June. It's a tremendous accomplishment by author and film historian, Randy Astle. This book will cover the complete history of Mormon film ...
Our Checketts to London
A little while ago, we received an email from David Checketts, one of our executive board members. He announced that he and Deborah would be entering the Missionary Training Center in June ...
And Sometimes It Just Doesn't Work Out
Richard Bushman had a brilliant idea: "Let’s use the gorgeous St. Paul’s Chapel in New York," he said to me one day, "for a concert during the Mormon Arts Center Festival in June." He told me about their famous Aeolian Skinner organ, but he warned, “They don’t let just anybody play that instrument.” ...
A Teaching Blizzard
The emails began flying about 1:30 a.m. I was still awake. I had spent the previous couple of months fine-tuning a speech I was asked to give at the Mormon Arts Center Teaching Conference at the University of Utah in January ...
Gearing Up for the 2018 Festival
Behind the scenes, many people have been working on the plans for the 2018 Mormon Arts Center Festival. It is shaping up to be an amazing three days. The Festival will be held at the historic Italian Academy on the campus of Columbia University in New York City ...
After/Words
Immediately after the Festival, the participants, presenters, art, and artists went home. We organizers took a week or so to catch up on sleep. And then we went right back to work. We felt energized, and if anything, the positive feedback fueled our ambitions to develop additional ideas for the future ...