Utah Chamber Artists fill cathedral with crystal tones

This year’s edition of the Utah Chamber Artists Collage concert is unusually personal for artistic director Barlow Bradford. The program honors the memory of his mother, Dorothy, who died last year, with a mix of the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms she loved, juxtaposed with 21st-century compositions her son believes she would have loved. His solo piano performance of a Brahms intermezzo was one of the emotional high points in Monday’s performance, the first of two in Salt Lake City’s Cathedral of the Madeleine.

The other high point was “Bridges,” a new work by Christopher Bradford — Barlow’s son and Dorothy’s grandson — that closed the program. “Bridges” skillfully incorporates choir, percussion, string orchestra and seven crystal singing bowls. The bowls — beautifully illuminated from below by Christopher Dance, and struck and stirred by Utah Symphony percussionists Keith Carrick, Eric Hopkins and Michael Pape — played a unifying role throughout the evening, introducing the 16th-century chant that opened the concert and tying together several of the ensuing selections, which unfolded in a ribbon of sound from throughout the church. Human and crystal voices blended to particularly gorgeous effect on Galina Grigorjeva’s “Spring Is Coming.” But the bowls achieved full potency in “Bridges,” filling the space with a feeling of peace as the choir sang, “More must learn the healer’s art.” The work closed with a miraculous near-minute of silence, as the crowd sat in holy community in the dark cathedral.