christian asplund

Students and faculty from the School of Music will explore the themes of two current BYU Museum of Art (MOA) exhibitions — “Windswept” by Patrick Dougherty and “Where the River Widens” by Danae Mattes — during “Nature Transformed: Musical Experience at the MOA, a concert on Thursday, March 7, at 7 p.m. The event will feature three original compositions performed by their respective composers: “Wave Lapse” by Asher Bay, “Fire Festival” by Scott Nelson and “Woven” by music professors Steve Ricks and Christian Asplund, known by their stage name Ricksplund. Ricks sees the concert as an “intersection between different art forms.” Each piece will feature the artists’ interpretation of an aspect of nature through electronic music. “Wave Lapse” layers live audio from museum patron members and video to comment on the layered complexities of Mattes and Dougherty’s work. Similarly, “Fire Festival” will include video representations of the natural world, including fire, and pair them with live electric guitar and pre-recorded sounds. Ricks says the complementary juxtaposition of the electronic music pieces and Mattes and Dougherty's exhibits was not coincidental. The artists’ approaches to their respective pieces is similar to how electronic music is created. “I’m taking natural sounds and changing them into something else, something unexpected,” said Ricks. “Mattes and Dougherty also took something natural and put it into an artificial space. This inspires people to think about nature and creativity in a new way.” Ricks and Asplund’s piece weaves together Asplund’s viola with Ricks’ use of a MIDI controller pad, which allows him to trigger and control sounds, including their speed, pitch and volume. “It’s like an orchestra in a box, where the orchestra can play any sound you could imagine” said Ricks. The finished product “Woven” features interlocking lines and patterns to create rich textures that reflect the surfaces in Mattes and Dougherty’s work. For more information about the concert, visit the MOA’s Facebook page.

The second annual festival held by the Mormon Arts Center will take place June 28-30 at Columbia University in New York City. The festival will help fulfill the Mormon Arts Center’s mission to display, perform and promote Mormon art. More than two dozen events will be featured, including a keynote address by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. BYU faculty and staff presenting at the festival include Christian Asplund from the School of Music, Amy Easton Flake from the College of Religious Education, associate librarian Trevor Alvord, Marin Leggat Roper from the Department of Dance, Lance Larsen from the Department of English, Jeff Parkin and Kelly Loosli from the Department of Theatre and Media Arts. The presenters will be joined by fellow Mormon artists from “Angola, Argentina, Canada, China, Kuwait, Spain, and across the United States,” according to Mormon Arts Center co-director Glen Nelson. A full list of events can be found here. A highlight of the festival will be a piano recital by professor Scott Holden from the School of Music. The performance, titled “A Century of Mormon Music,” will be held at the new recital space Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall. Holden will also perform a recital on BYU’s campus on June 26. Visit the Mormon Arts Center for more information.

Music Professor Christian Asplund spoke about and demonstrated nontraditional sacred music at December’s Faith and Works series lecture.

Professor Asplund will address audiences on “Sacred Music and the Punk Rock Ethic”