Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen

Eugene International Film Festival showed this film and I was fortunate to be in the audience, a healthy turnout for this most beautiful film. The man is one of Nature's Gentlemen, in tune to his muse. Southern California based Lauridsen is very well known and he is considered one of the modern American great composers of spiritual music. His canon of work is sublime, and the definition of sublime as spoken by one of the speakers in this well-produced bio- documentary speaks to the higher nature of understanding that few attain and understand. He is a minister and music is his message. Clearly a man of Christian faith, he makes a definitive case that belief and perseverance can lead to manifest breakthroughs in art, at the highest level, only if the artist truly accepts his creative spirit as the leading, guiding force in his/her life. "Be able to drop everything and go, when needed, to create," This films subject says.