NEW YORK CITY — When a group of New York City LDS musicians looking for a signal concert for their "LDS Artists in Concert" series discovered that Robert Cundick turned 75 years old this year, it seemed a perfect occasion to honor the prolific Utah composer with a concert of his works.
Brother Cundick, who is best known for his 26 years as Mormon Tabernacle organist, has composed a significant body of music.
An audience of more than 250 people expressed appreciation for that music with a standing ovation Nov. 2 at the New York New York City Stake center at 2 Lincoln Square across the street from New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The standing-room-only audience included many who were apparently not members of the Church, said Joanne Rowland, one of the concert organizers.
Grant Johannesen, world-renowned pianist and longtime friend of Brother Cundick, performed as accompanist for "Three Yeats Songs" sung by soprano Lindsay Robinson Killian, a recent Metropolitan Opera audition winner.
Brother Cundick wrote his "Sonata for Violoncello and Piano" for cellist Roger Drinkall and pianist Diane Baker. At the premiere performance in Provo, Utah, in 1995, the cellist's student, Sariah Mourik turned pages for both pianist and cellist. Now living in New York City, Sariah Mourik Johnson performed the sonata at the concert with pianist Jenny Naylor Richards, who has recently released an album on compact disc with violinist Jenny Oaks Baker.
The violin-piano duo met Brother Cundick when they programmed his violin-piano sonata for a performance in Utah. The pianist asked him at that time whether he had any piano pieces. He gave her manuscript copies of two pieces he had written as Christmas gifts for his wife, Charlotte, in 1964 and 1965. The pianist performed the second of those pieces, "Impromptu," at the Nov. 2 concert.
"Turnabouts," a four-movement work for oboe and piano written in 1964, was performed by Sarah and Scott Holden. Oboist Sarah Holden is a member of a teaching team working with members of the New York Philharmonic in its Music in the Schools program. Pianist Scott Holden recently premiered the William Wallace Second Piano Concerto with the Utah Symphony.
In 1955, Brother Cundick wrote "The Song of Nephi," a cantata for choir, tenor and orchestra, as his doctoral dissertation. The work was performed and recorded at that time by students at Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho, from his handwritten manuscript. He took the occasion of the Nov. 2 concert to commit his cantata to a computer-generated score. For the performance, Broadway conductor David Skousen, in consultation with Brother Cundick, arranged the "Song of Nephi" orchestral score for strings and piano. Brother Skousen, who conducted the work, put together a 36-voice choir, which included a number of professional singers. New York tenor Adam Russel, who spent the summer with the Searle Music Colony and the Fort Worth Opera Company, performed the title role of Nephi.
Commenting some days after the concert, Brother Cundick said: "I'd heard about the Manhattan Ward for many years and the excellence in music in the stake there, with its proximity to the wonderful schools and performing organizations that are in the area. My anticipation of what I might hear was completely fulfilled.
"For me personally, it was very rewarding to sit and listen to my own music without having to play some notes for a change — just sit back and observe the reaction of the audience. An hour of one composer is quite a dose. They seemed to be very pleased with the results, both listeners and performers."