Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, Inc.

Not in New York City? No problem. Donate the cost of a ticket to experience Rachel Willis-Sørensen's recital debut at Carnegie Hall on April 9, 2024. Your donation enables the Center to continue programming in major cities near you.

The event:

On April 9th, 2024, at 7:30pm, the celebrated soprano Rachel Willis-Sørensen will make her New York recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall as a guest of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. Willis-Sørensen is a regular at leading opera houses around the world, from the LA Opera to Opéra national de Paris. She is known for her diverse repertoire ranging from Mozart to Wagner.

At Zankel Hall, Willis-Sørensen will sing works by Strauss and song cycles by Rachmaninoff, Beach, and more. She will also give the world premiere of S. Andrew Lloyd's Amaranthine, winner of the 2022 Prize of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, an endowment created to honor the legacy of Metropolitan Opera mezzo, Ariel Bybee (1943-2018). Willis-Sørensen shares her delight in honoring the legacy of the female opera singer. She also shares her faith tradition with the late mezzo singer. She states, "It is a privilege and an honor to take the stage in celebration of Ariel Bybee, who poured all of her prodigious skill through the lens of her awe-inspiring faith. She produced world-class art in a way that I can only hope to emulate."

About Rachel Willis-Sørensen:

In 2021, Rachel signed a multi-record deal with Sony Classical. She released her debut album in April 2022, and her next album one year later. As a Sony Classical artist, she joins a catalog of preeminent musicians like Leonard Bernstein and Yo-Yo Ma. As a female artist operating in the highest-echelons of classical music she achieves a distinction that few others, particularly female singers, have achieved. Of the American soprano, Le Monde says, “...[She] has without a doubt one of the most impressive voices in the opera world.” Equally at home on the concert stage, Willis-Sørensen has performed Strauss’s Four Last Songs multiple times, most notably at Buckingham Palace for an HRH Prince Charles birthday celebration.

Though her Zankel Hall performance is Willis-Sørensen’s New York recital debut, she will return this fall to the Met to play Leonora in Il Trovatore. Like Willis-Sørensen, Bybee’s dynamic voice found a home with Met audiences, where she sang every season from 1977 to 1995 including fourteen different appearances in Il Trovatore. Bybee pioneered a path as a world-famous singer and member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Neylan McBaine, Bybee’s daughter and chair of The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, is thrilled to hear Willis-Sørensen at Carnegie Hall. She says, “This is the kind of evening my mom relished most, elevating our people and the great beauty of the human voice.”

The Ariel Bybee Endowment at the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts was established in 2021 to honor the legacy of Ariel Bybee and to foster the creation of new works by Latter-day Saint artists in disciplines that correspond to her varied career and interests in music and related arts. Each year, the Endowment will announce a call for submissions open to artists and scholars in one of nine, rotating categories: opera, dance, scholarship, art songs, youth education, hymns, visual arts, collaborative arts, and choral music. We encourage LDS composers from a variety of musical aesthetics and diverse backgrounds of identity to apply.

Learn more about the Endowment:

Download the Endowment brochure here

We invite you to learn more about recent I AM projects here .

The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts is pleased to announce the Richard Bushman Endowment for the Arts and Major Projects Fund. Richard Bushman is the co- founder and chairman of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts based in New York City.

 

 

 

Impact

Through his leadership the Center has moved from idea to impact in five short years. By establishing this Endowment, the Center seeks to honor and perpetuate the vision of Richard Bushman for years to come. Through the generous support of those who join us in honoring the life and vision of Richard Bushman, the Endowment committee will direct annual returns for the benefit of Center programs including research and scholarship, artists in residency programs, special exhibits and live performances. The Center’s ambitious new initiative will be to raise $2 million towards a survey of Latter-day Saint visual art from the beginning to the present. A multi-year project, the first step will be the publication of A Guide to Mormon Art, featuring the work of 24 of our best scholars and covering Latter-day Saint visual art from the beginning to the present.

 

 

 

 

Exhibition

The second step will be an inclusive 2025 exhibition of this art in a New York venue on Fifth Avenue near the

Metropolitan Museum followed by another installation in Salt Lake City in the Church History Museum and

the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Travel to other Latter-day Saint population centers will follow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Center for Latter-day Saint Arts

The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts seeks to tell the more global story of the Latter-day Saints through the arts. It has a three-fold mission: To display and perform art by Latter-day Saints in New York City and elsewhere; to publish scholarship and criticism about our art to reach a wider public; and to establish a comprehensive archive of Latter-day Saint arts, 1830 to the present. The organization studies, promotes and encourages artists who identify as or affiliate with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whether by faith or culture.

Growing rapidly from an annual festival to a robust organization of ongoing programming of all kinds, the Center now hosts a gallery in the heart of New York City's Lincoln Center. The Center is a nonprofit 501(c) (3) that encourages all artistic media, producing conferences, symposiums, grant projects and publications.

Richard Bushman: A Radiant Life is written and facilitated by J.B. Haws and produced by Cameron Kelly.

 

 

 

Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum - Mesa Arizona

May 10, 2024 – August 4, 2024

For the first time, the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts is curating an exhibition of Latter-day Saint art in Mesa, Arizona! Be part of bringing vibrant, contemporary LDS visual culture to the beautiful Mesa Arts Center.

Donors of $500 or more will be invited to a private reception at the Museum.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

This exhibition will showcase dozens of contemporary artists affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These creators expand upon Latter-day Saint theological and cultural concepts using visual art, objects, and film. Their objects explore ideas such as community and belonging; natural and built environments; worldmaking; peculiar “Mormon” iconography; sacred memory; and the body.

Together, these artists will demonstrate the vibrancy and complexity of recent Latter-day Saint visual culture and expand visitors’ expectations of fine art inspired by this increasingly worldwide faith.

Collin Bradford, A Burning Hope, 2021, video

Corinne Geertsen, Orbit Starter Kit, digital photo collage, 21 x 25 inches. Collection of the Artist.

Kent Christensen, Secrets of the Great Salt Lake (Triptych), 2019, oil on linen, 40 x 64 inches. Private Collection.

You can help bring this show to Mesa by donating today to Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, Inc. The Center was organized to study, promote and encourage art and artists who identify as or affiliate with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints across all mediums including music, fine art, dance, theatre, and cinema. For more information, visit the Center's website.

Materializing Mormonism: Trajectories in Contemporary Latter-day Saint Art is curated by Heather Belnap, Brontë Hebdon Patterson, and Ashlee Whitaker and presented by the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.