Rob Gardner: Mormon Composer
Rob Gardner is a composer, conductor, and producer.
Gardner was born in 1978 and grew up in Mesa, Arizona. His mother required him and his eight siblings to play an instrument from fifth grade through high school. He played the trumpet and in eighth grade, started singing. His seven-member a capella group, Two Five Nine, recorded five albums and toured the United States. After serving missions and attending Brigham Young University, the group recorded three more albums.
While on his mission in the France Bordeaux mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he wrote "He Is Jesus Christ" at the request of his mission president. While at BYU, he translated it into English and performed it numerous times at BYU and in Provo with volunteer orchestras and choirs. From this effort, he and others formed the nonprofit Spire Music Company. He primarily composes sacred music oratorios ("Joseph Smith the Prophet," "Lamb of God,"—both recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra—"Saints and Pioneers"), but has composed film scores and musicals ("Blackbeard," "The Price of Freedom," and "12 Princesses").
His albums include Cinematic Pop Live, We Must Sing, Lamb of God, The Missionary Hymn Project, The Price of Freedom, and Blackbeard. He helped found the group known as Cinematic Pop. The group appeared on television's "America’s Got Talent" and received a standing ovation.
Gardner earned his bachelor’s degree in management and entrepreneurship from BYU and did graduate work at the University of Southern California in the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program.
More on Lamb of God
A special concert film of Gardner's Lamb of God will open exclusively in theaters on March 12, 2021. The following excerpts about the genesis of the oratorio appeared in the Deseret News in May 2016 and was reprinted in LDS Living in February 2021.
- In November 2009, Rob Gardner emailed a proposal to the London Symphony Orchestra. He wanted to compose and conduct an oratorio about the last week of the Savior’s life, and he knew that if he could involve the London Symphony Orchestra, which he considers the best in the world, he could compose the work he envisioned.
- The idea for the proposed project came to Gardner while he was serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the France Bordeaux Mission from 1996–1998. Gardner entered the mission field with a broad range of musical experience, having performed in an a cappella group during high school and composed music for his school's orchestra. Despite Gardner’s best efforts to keep his musical abilities a secret, his mother made sure his mission president knew.
- Gardner’s mission president, Charles Cuénot, a native of France, understood the difficulty missionaries in the area faced in getting people to listen to their message. In an effort to help the missionaries find more people to teach, President Cuénot started hosting musical presentations in various areas around the mission before Gardner was ever called to serve there.
- Approximately six or seven months after Gardner arrived in France, President Cuénot asked him to compose an original piece. Gardner told his mission president that he would rather not because he just wanted to be a missionary, but President Cuénot insisted. Gardner finished writing the piece a few months later, and the following Christmas, his composition about the life of Christ was performed for audiences throughout the mission.
- “It was really amazing because at that point I had been out about a year and a half and had barely gotten into a handful of doors, . . . and here we were with a captive audience every night,” Gardner said. “It was pretty incredible for all of us beat-down, weary missionaries to get to sing about Christ around Christmastime and share that message, so it was pretty neat, but I was a little reluctant at first.”
- Still, it bothered Gardner that his composition was only able to spend 10-12 minutes on the Atonement and the end of the Savior’s life. He knew there was so much more to the story. Upon returning home, Gardner didn’t immediately begin composing, but his desire to write more about this part of the Savior’s life was always in the back of his mind.
It was not until 2009, when Gardner was four months into a yearlong graduate program in scoring for motion pictures and television at the University of Southern California that he felt he could no longer put off the project he had considered for more than ten years.
“I realized that I needed to kind of drop everything and write it because I kept telling myself, ‘I need to be a better composer because I want it to be amazing, and I want it to be worthy of the subject matter,’” Gardner said. “I had lots of concepts for it, and finally I just said to myself, and this is kind of a good lesson for life, ‘I’m never going to be a good enough composer’ . . . I’m always going to look at others and admire what they do, and if I wait to do something until I’m the best or until I’m actually good, it’s never going to happen. I’m just going to put it off until I die, having done nothing, so I just said, ‘OK, I’ll do it now.’”
- Gardner, who had no connection to the orchestra and says he simply had the “audacity” to ask, sent an email to the London Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra responded, agreeing to record with Gardner in June 2010. Gardner dropped out of his graduate program and devoted himself to completing the work. As he began to write, he discovered that Christ's life was about much more than just one man, and the story became one about others’ relationships with Christ.
- “It’s about Christ, but it’s really about Peter and Mary and Martha and all of those people and their relationship with Christ,” Gardner said. “And when that thought occurred to me, it just started writing itself because that’s something we can all relate to, trying to have a relationship with the Savior. It’s hard to relate to the Savior’s experience because of who he is and what he went through, but it’s easier to relate to Peter and Thomas, who we see as human and having failings, who overcame those, and to see how that goes was a lot more compelling to me in teaching how the Atonement works and not just what the story is.”
- The finished product, composed in just six months, became known as “Lamb of God,” an oratorio that has been performed throughout the world. The oratorio explores the last week of the Savior’s mortal ministry.
(To read the entire article on the Deseret News website, click here.
