Luminous: Conversations On Sacred Arts

 It's rare that one encounters a soul so vastly creative, and so clearly attuned to the things-that-are. Helena Tulve's diverse compositional oeuvre finds its common thread in that attunement. She expresses herself with warmth and with precision. Our conversation begins on the subject of the Jesus Prayer and takes right off from there. 

 Kim Haines-Eitzen adds to a rich body of work with her most recent book, an exploration of the desert soundscapes that may have shaped the lives and writings of the ancient desert ascetics. We talk about this, and more, in a conversation I recorded from my forest hideaway in Estonia. 

In his art and in his thought, George Kordis articulates his ideas with breathtaking clarity. And he is one of the world's great living iconographers. Enjoy this conversation, recorded in front of a live audience at St. Vladimir's Seminary.

 Mona Arshi brings all of herself to her poetry: her background as a human rights lawyer, a family lineage deeply embedded in the poetic, and a keen observation of the world—with a commitment to recognize and subvert patterns within that observation. All this makes her a very special interlocutor on her artistic medium. 

 Aidan Hart works in multiple media—painting, sculpture, carving, mosaics—to create liturgical art of stunning beauty. As an author and speaker, he also reflects deeply on the nature of the sacred arts, stemming from a profoundly theological vision of creation. Our Luminous conversation, recorded in his studio in Shropshire, visits all these places. 

This special episode of Luminous is a tribute to Fr Ivan Moody—composer, scholar, musicologist, conductor, who impacted so many people and constituencies with his musicality, erudition, warmth, and infectious joy. With guests Alexander Lingas, Peter Phillips, Ivana Medic, Svetlana Poliakova, and Maria Takala-Roszczenko.

 Vesper Stamper writes books for some of the most discerning and important audiences: young adults. And others, but it's this audience that informs much of our conversation. Her illustrations are as clear and articulate as her writing, and together we are swept up into a narrative of history that means everything. 

This conversation with award-winning poet Nicholas Samaras is a reminder of what life can be like when we listen, pay attention, and hear the musical lyricism of the world. This is at the heart of poetry, and his in particular.

On this special episode of Luminous, our host talks with two students in the MA Program at the Institute of Sacred Arts. This is an opportunity to meet two exceptional people, and to hear about the work and ethos of our Institute!

Apart from our enjoying the arts, even being spiritually uplifted by them, the sacred arts are carrying a message, even a “teaching” that we can attune ourselves to receive. Today's guest is herself attuned to this, among other dimensions of the arts, which she teaches, writes about, and practices herself.

 One of the leading lights of sacred choral music in the world today, Alexander Lingas has so much to offer in a conversation about music from many times and places, East and West, and its unique power in conveying the sacred. 

 "What does Tim Patitsas mean by his refrain of “beauty first?” That's one question that made me want to talk with him. We go there. And many other places. As one does, with a thinking, reflective person who has listened to people of wisdom from within and outside the traditional fold." 

Fr Maximos is Professor of Patristics and Orthodox Spirituality. A summa cum laude graduate of Holy Cross (1987), he completed his PhD in Patristics and Historical Theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (1993), after which he taught at Hellenic College and Holy Cross (1993-1998). In the fall of 1998, he was invited to join the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, where he was Professor of Patristics and Orthodox Theology from 1998-2004. Responding to a life-long calling to the monastic life, he resigned his position at Harvard and was tonsured a great-schema monk at the Holy Monastery of Simonopetra, where he lived from 2004-2011. He was subsequently invited by Archbishop Demetrios to return to Holy Cross, where he has been an outstanding teacher, rigorous academic mentor, and prolific scholar. His publications include five books, more than fifty articles (many of them of monograph-length), and a dozen translated volumes. His current research project is a first-ever critical edition and English translation of the Life of the Virgin by the tenth-century Byzantine writer John Geometres.Fr. Maximos teaches courses on the theology of the Church Fathers, including St Basil the Great, St Gregory the Theologian, St Dionysius the Areopagite, St Symeon the New Theologian, and especially St Maximos the Confessor, on whom he is an internationally recognized specialist. His research interests focus on the Patristic and Byzantine interpretation of Scripture, the Philokalia and Orthodox spirituality, the study of Byzantine manuscripts, and the theological study of Byzantine art, icons, and iconography. Fr Maximos' interest in the arts began with a program of study at the School of Visual Arts in New York City (1979-1980), and he currently works as a consultant for American filmmaker Terrence Malick, including work on Malick's most recent film, A Hidden Life, which is based on the real-life story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector during World War II, who was sentenced to death and executed. He was later declared a martyr and beatified by the Roman Catholic Church.Fr Maximos has twice held fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University's Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington, D.C. (1992-1993, 2000-2002); he was the Inaugural James Rubin Visiting Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem (1991-1992); and a Visiting Professor of Patristics and Byzantine Literature and Consultant to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (UCLA, Irvine, 2001). In 2003, he was invited to teach Orthodox Theology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris; and in 2016, he served as a Visiting Professor of Byzantine Literature at Harvard University's Department of the Classics (2016). He is a member of numerous international theological societies, and serves on multiple editorial boards, including Analogia: A Journal of Theological Dialogue; and Harvard University's prestigious Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library series.

 Nun Katherine Weston, an Orthodox Christian monastic, is a pastoral counselor and trauma specialist in private practice. For some 15 years, she has been addressing topics central to the basic human experience, integrating an Orthodox Christian worldview with perspectives from current psychotherapies. In addition to racial identities, topics have included loneliness, shame, anger, anxiety, attachment dynamics, and racial reconciliation. 

 Matt Hinton, documentary filmmaker, rock guitarist, and burrito legend — for all these contributions, each so excellent, the world is a better place with him in it. Join us in our conversation about art, sacredness, and his films. 

Victoria Emily Jones graduated from UNC–Chapel Hill in 2010 with a BA in journalism and English literature and a minor in music, and she has done some postgraduate coursework in worship and the arts at Regent College in Vancouver. Now she works as an editorial freelancer and pursues independent research on Christianity and the arts, with a special interest in visual art that engages with biblical narratives, especially from the twentieth century onward and/or from non-Western cultures. Victoria serves on the board of the Eliot Society, an Annapolis-based nonprofit that promotes spiritual formation through the arts, and as curator for The Daily Prayer Project, which publishes cross-cultural liturgies, music, and art for the Christian year. She is a member of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA) and a contributor to the Visual Commentary on Scripture. From 2015 to 2022 she served as assistant editor of ArtWay, a Netherlands-based web publication that encourages Christian engagement with historical and contemporary art; she continues to write “visual meditations” for the site (see list below).Based on the work she had done through her blog The Jesus Question (the precursor to Art & Theology), Victoria was selected in 2016 to participate with a small group of scholars and artists in the two-week Calvin College seminar “Bodies of Christ: Visualizing Jesus Then and Now,” led by Ed Blum, coauthor of The Color of Christ. Racialized representations of Christ remains one of her ongoing topics of inquiry.Victoria also leads the Art and Theology blog (https://artandtheology.org/) and is active on social media (Instagram) at: @art_and_theology

 On this special episode of Luminous, our previous guests suggested for us their chosen musical selections that evoke the sacredness of the season. The result is a beautiful and diverse, and often surprising playlist of Christmas music. Our gift to you. 

Andrew Gould's designs for churches and other buildings, as well as for furnishings within churches, are exquisitely beautiful. But they are more than that. His vision of sacred art and architecture sets the bar very high—heavenly-high—which is exactly where he thinks it should be.

 A world-renowned artist and great pedagogue, Bruce Herman speaks eloquently about what art is and what it means to him, notably at this time in his life: newly retired, and with a surprising loss of hearing. 

 A legend in the word of Christian Contemporary Music, John Michael Talbot's songs have been the soundtrack for the spiritual life of more than a generation of the faithful. Moving increasingly into a quieter, cloistered life, he reflects with clarity, insight, and delight, on his work and on the sacred arts.

Artist-theologian Julian Davis Reid has performed and spoken worldwide, and has released albums both solo and with his band, the Ju Ju Exchange. Having worked with Chance the Rapper, Jennifer Hudson, Peter CottonTale, and Derrick Hodge, he brings his music and life to the service of the Church, and of people seeking rest among the noise.

Pamela Smart is fascinated by how art works on us, on the totality of our selves. That means she is interested in aesthetics, anthropology, and art history. All of these come together in her studies of the Rothko Chapel, a space that has had a visceral effect on countless visitors seeking stillness.

Dr Hernandez, Mescalero and Warm Springs Apache, is involved in establishing and preserving community archives, as well consulting with museums and community nonprofits. Her experience, in her life, faith, and work, yields profound and rare insights.

Bissera Pentcheva is one of the rare art historians who reaches across disciplines: visual art, architecture, sound. This allows her to speak all the more meaningfully about art as it is actually experienced, by human beings in totality of the sensory world. We talk about her award-winning work with the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana, as well as her recent projects that study sculpture within the play of flickering candlelight.

Laurie Anderson is a living legend in the world of the arts. Her career, spanning from the late 1970's right up to the present day, has resulted in a vast oeuvre of meaningful and impactful art across a wide array of media. Fascinating, brilliant, and ever attuned to the spiritual (she has been increasingly involving her Buddhism in her work) she represents the essence of what we hope for with the Luminous series: substantive but free conversation around the arts and the sacred.

Adrienne Williams Boyarin writes on religious material in medieval poetry, but she's also been at the forefront of the important conversation on bringing religion back into the study of the humanities. Her expertise in literature and her commitment to exploring Jewish Christian relationships within it, her interest in the written lives of the saints and in the relationship between religion and academia—make for Luminous conversation.

Mark Shapiro is a major figure in the New York classical music scene, as music director of Cantori New York as well as several other award-winning ensembles—all of which extend his impact to the national and global scale. Apart from the precision of his work, he is known for his thoughtful and trailblazing programs, his repertoire drawing on sometimes hidden gems of great beauty. Add to this his fluency in a wide diversity of topics and interests.

Jamey and Lee Bozeman formed the new wave band Luxury decades before they became Fr. James and Fr. David, Orthodox Christian priests. The band's journey is told in a must-see documentary, but this conversation teases out some of its implied themes of art and the sacred: how they navigate life in the studio and the concert venue—and at the altar.

Tõnu Kõrvits has for some decades been a rising star among Estonian composers—one can now say that the star is decisively risen, and shines with the ethereal light of his lush and compelling work. Another episode recorded in the field—this time in the heart of Tallinn, Estonia.

Kaupo Kikkas is one of the most compelling photographers working today. Centering on portrait as well as fine art photography, with predilections for the American Southwest, the Amazon rain forest, and Lapland, as well as for musicians and their instruments. He is deeply reflective, and highly articulate about his craft and his vision.

David Bentley Hart began his storied career as theologian and public intellectual with a book called The Beauty of the Infinite, a game-changing and definitive foray into theological aesthetics. His most recent little masterpiece is Roland in Moonlight, a reverie about his philosophical mentor, who also happens to be his dog Roland. We have a lot to talk about.

When a Nobel Prize-winning physicist begins to speak of the universe as “a work of art,” don't we want to ask him whether the universe itself could be numbered among the sacred arts? And whether he thinks there might be an Artist? Frank Wilczek is brilliant and engaging, with a talent (and commitment) to making complex concepts understandable for the rest of us.

Susan Ashbrook Harvey is one of the foremost scholars in her field of Late Antiquity (with a focus on Syriac Christianity). Two of her particular areas of interest and expertise make her an especially fascinating guest on Luminous. One is her study of fragrance (her book Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination is a classic), and the other is women's voices in Syriac liturgical singing.

Fr Ivan Moody is a world-renowned composer, conductor, scholar, author. His music often draws on ancient chant traditions and then takes off into new directions, at once consonant with the past and building on it into timelessness. Listen to this conversation among deeply informed friends.

Tobi Kahn is a painter and sculptor whose work has been shown in over forty solo exhibitions and over sixty museum and group shows. For twenty-five years, Kahn has been making miniature sacred spaces he calls "shrines." Steadfast in the pursuit of his distinct vision and persistent in his commitment to the redemptive possibilities of art, Kahn has explored the correspondence between the intimate and monumental in paint, stone, and bronze.

Dn Haig Utidjian is one of the foremost figures in the world of Armenian musicology, as well as in several other fields including Czech composers. A gifted and much-sought-after conductor, an educator, a scholar/author, he is a delight to talk with on many aspects of sacred arts.

Paul Barnes is a force of nature. His music, and his insights about music, pour out of him, with beauty. His longtime collaboration with Phillip Glass has left an indelible mark on both of them. Our conversation on Luminous is full of that ebullient energy. 

A conversation with one of today's most brilliant and creative minds on creativity and holiness, through icons, poetry, fiction, monasticism, and so much more. 

Rob Saler, an exciting and highly attuned theologian and culture maven, talks with Peter about the ways in which culture and theology learn from each other. Inevitably they focus on his favorite band—Radiohead, on whom Saler has authored a recent book.

Christina Maranci is one of the world's foremost scholars of Armenian sacred art. She has played an inestimable role in the display and understanding of the arts of the Armenian Church—which dates back to the fourth century. She and Peter discuss the sacred arts, how these can properly be displayed in a museum, how churches become consecrated, and a host of other great things.

Gavin Bryars is one of the leading experimental composers of his generation. Among his diverse and prodigious repertoire, his best known work remains the process composition Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, a stirring work of cumulative power. We talk about this and all his work, and whether the word “spiritual” may be applicable.

Gary Vikan is one of the most renowned figures among art historians as well as in the world of museum curation. His bold, exciting, but also sensitively conceived exhibits of Byzantine art are among his great achievements during his storied tenure at the Walters Museum. He's also a great friend of our work at the Institute of Sacred Arts.

Metropolitan Savas, one of the most culturally and intellectually engaged and curious people I know, talks with me about finding the sacred within the arts—especially in the oeuvre of Bob Dylan.

Lisa DeBoer is an art historian, who since 1999 has been teaching at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. She is the author of The Visual Arts in the Worshiping Church — something sending us into far-reaching conversations about the use of the arts in different denominations.

Scott Cairns—poet, educator, and just a supremely wise dude, talks with Peter about how poetry works. But also about how the poetic can function throughout spoken and written communication.

One of the most influential, innovative, and inspired choral conductors and educators in the world, James Jordan has so much to tell us about the sacred relationship between conductor and singer, and more than that: about the human being with the other.

Shawn Wallace is many things—a master of the jazz idiom, a pedagogue, a social commentator, and a man of deep faith. Finding himself an Orthodox Christian, he has brought the rich and beautiful musical legacy of black gospel music with him, showing us all how big the tent can be. We talk about that project, and learn much about his origin story—including the origin of “Thunder.”

Richard Viladesau is one of the masters of the field of theological aesthetics. His work has centered on philosophical theology, in particular the question of how we know God — and really how we know anything. He is interested too in the concept of revelation, both in Christian and non-Christian traditions. In recent years he has become known primarily for his contributions to the field of aesthetics, theoretical and historical. He has been on the faculty of Fordham University since 1988, and is author of numerous important books, including a monumental five-volume series with Oxford University Press, on how the passion of Christ is depicted in the arts.  Our conversation goes many fascinating places, including a broad expansion of what “aesthetics” actually is. 

On a special episode of Luminous, we feature a six-way discussion on the experience of African American Orthodox Christians and the encounter with existing musical traditions in the Orthodox Church.Co-sponsored by the world-class vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and our own Institute of Sacred Arts, we brought together some key voices to help identify some bridges. A typical experience of Orthodox Christian liturgy will often bear stronger or weaker traces of Byzantine, Slavic, and/or Middle-Eastern church-music traditions. What happens in North America, especially for people with no particular ties to those cultures and their aesthetics? That question has been raised for more than a century for thousands of Western converts; it is raised in a particular way for an increasing number of African Americans bringing themselves and their histories to the Orthodox Church. What resonates, and why? What kind of exchange is possible?