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Kurt
Bestor's Prayer of the Children
by
Maurine Jensen Proctor
For
more than a decade Kurt Bestor's film scores, television themes,
compositions and carols have found enthusiastic listeners. His credits
include more than 30 film scores and more than 40 themes for national
TV programs and commercials. It is Bestor's music that has introduced
Good Morning America, NFL Monday Night Football, and ABC's Sunday
Night Movie; he has scored TBS's Wild! Life Adventures and the IMAX
film Great American West, and he won the Outstanding Film Score
Award at the New York Film and Television Festival for his music
for PBS's A More Perfect Union. Bestor was also awarded an Emmy
for his collaboration with Sam Cardon on the original music for
ABC's coverage of the 1988 Winter Olympics. For thousands throughout
the western U.S., a Kurt Bestor concert has become a traditional
part of Christmas.
Kurt
Bestor and special guest singers perform Prayer of the Children.
In an
interview with Meridian's editor, Kurt shared the man behind the
mystique.
It was a dark,
spare Christmas Eve in Yugoslavia when policemen pounded on the
door of the missionary apartment where Elder Kurt Bestor lived.
Without specifying their offense, the officers took the frightened
missionaries to jail, and they spent that night which had always
been magical at home, in a cell shivering and wondering what was
going to become of them. The silence of that night was interrupted
by the pounding of their hearts. It wasn't until morning they found
out the reason for their arrest. They had forgotten to register
their presence in the town.
It was only
one unique moment in a mission far different than Kurt had imagined.
Called to Yugoslavia where missionaries mostly planted those proverbial
seeds, Kurt gave piano lessons and sometimes performed, made friends,
and hoped for baptisms. The Church didn't have materials in the
language, and Belgrade had only two members. "I don't know if I
was planting seeds or digging ditches," Kurt said.
"It was difficult,
very lonely," he continued, "and I didn't get much mail from home.
At one point about six months into the mission, I became so completely
discouraged that I wanted to quit. Just before I called the mission
president to tell him, I went behind my house, knelt down, and said
a prayer. The answer to my prayer wasn't some big amazing thing,
but a sure feeling came that I was doing what the Lord wanted me
to do. That's all I needed to know. I didn't baptize anybody on
my mission, but it felt good to know I had the Lord's support.
Later Kurt
scored a biographical film on the life of President Hinckley and
was moved that the prophet, too, had come to a point in his mission
when he was discouraged. During the production, someone suggested
that they leave that part out, but President Hinckley insisted it
stay in. "I was grateful," said Kurt.
A Heart for
the Children
Yet Kurt's mission marked him in a way that he could never have
foreseen at the time. Later when war broke out, and Yugoslavia splintered
into warring factions with Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians hating
and butchering each other, Kurt's heart was aching. What came to
him-- haunted him--were the faces of the children he had known.
"Those children
didn't hate anybody," he said. "They didn't care about who owned
the land, or who had the power or the money. These are adult neuroses.
They just wanted to have a mom and dad and a place to play."
Creating
the Song
Without any thought of performing it, but with a need to express
his frustration and love, Kurt sat down and wrote a song-a song
he assumed would be just for himself. He called it "The Prayer of
the Children." The lyrics were simple, the music an expression of
the intensity and pleadings in Kurt's own soul:
Can you hear
the prayer of the children,
On bended knee
in the shadow of an unknown room?
Empty eyes
with no more tears to cry,
Turning heavenward
for the light.
Crying Jesus,
help me to see the morning light-of one more day!
But if I should
die before I wake, I pray my soul to take.
It goes on.
Kurt describes children "aching for home-for something of their
very own. Reaching hands with nothing to hold onto/ but hope for
a better day." Despite its private soul-yearning, a piece spun from
his heart not for money, but for need, Kurt did perform the song,
and then watched it take off with a life of its own, hitting a nerve
with audiences he could never have predicted.
The song is
performed every day somewhere. Web sites are dedicated to it. Kurt
performed it at the recent millennial UN Summit; it was sung at
the Columbine funeral for the slain high school students. It was
adopted by the Methodist church who purchased 10,000 copies of it
to pass to members.
Washington
D.C. Temple
Recently, with
only a keyboard and a microphone which multiplied his voice, Kurt
sang it for ambassadors from many nations at the new auditorium
at the Washington D.C. temple visitor's center. The occasion was
the illumination of the Christmas lights at the temple-a celebration
of light-at which "The Prayer of the Children" was a highlight.
Kurt asked the ambassador from Bosnia to stand; he told the ambassador
how much he loved the children of his country, and then he sang
the song with its melody that lingers over the soul. The ambassadors
in the audience, representing several lands and several religions,
were united in that moment in a spirit that was palpable. Who does
not respond to the idea of the prayer of pleading children?
Kurt said,
"I feel like the proud parent of this song which has done so well,
but there is a lesson in it for a lot of us. Anything that glorifies
God has this life of its own-especially when it comes from that
heart-felt, deep, preexistent part of us."
Kurt's Childhood
From his earliest childhood, Kurt hated conflict. "When anybody
got in a fight in school, I'd run around the corner so I didn't
have to be there," he said. "Life's just too short to have negative
feelings."
That same sensitivity
spilled over into music. Kurt's mother made a point of music in
the home. It was natural. His dad played the trumpet, his mom the
French horn, and he started taking piano lessons at age 7, but he
didn't like to practice. Instead, he liked to "play around" on the
piano. His mother took him aside and said, "Kurt, why don't you
play me a sunrise?" He wasn't sure what she meant so she explained
that he should play what a sunrise looked like to him.
"I did it,"
he said, "and it must have sounded terrible," but his mother had
ignited something that still marks Kurt's music. One of his defining
characteristics is that Kurt creates musical parallels to visual
images. His current thirst is to write music about the great and
sacred mountains of the world.
Playing the
sunrise was all the invitation Kurt needed to begin "Bestorizing
music,"-taking a piece or a line of melody and re-creating it into
something of his own. At his famous Christmas concerts, he asks
audience members to name Christmas carols which he then takes off
on in an imaginative flurry of new directions. In high school he
played trumpet in a jazz band and was already creating original
music for musical groups at school.
Joining the
Church
Something else was happening in high school, too. This good
Catholic boy was regularly attending seminary in Provo, Utah. It
came about so naturally. In 1966, his father had taken a teaching
job at BYU as the swimming and diving coach. The teaching position
was chosen over one in New Mexico, because the family stopped in
Provo and thought the mountains were incredible. They didn't know
much about the Latter-day Saints.
As soon as
he started going to school, however, he quickly became aware of
the Mormons, mainly because the girls didn't want to date him. "I
didn't understand this whole idea of the one true church. I understood
that there had to be one true God, but going to different churches
to me seemed about like choosing a different-colored shirt." What
enticed Kurt to seminary, he jokes, was probably a cute girl, but
he was impressed with the plan of salvation. Other than that, everything
about the gospel seemed like a lot to know. "Mormons paid 10% of
their income and they went to Church two times on Sunday," he laughed.
"It wasn't a good sale."
Yet, Kurt's
friends persisted. He was invited to all the Mormon activities and
went. His family received lots of cakes and cookies on Monday nights.
"I'm sure our family was the discussion of many a PEC meeting,"
he said. "We were dry Mormons. Nobody thought of us as non-Mormons.
My Mom taught Utah History at the jr. high, and told her students
all about the miracle of the crickets and the seagulls. Still, I
made it all the way through high school being absorbed in the LDS
culture without letting any of it get inside of me. "
Then the summer
after he graduated from 12th grade, he toured, playing
trumpet, with the Johnny Whittaker show. "Everybody on the show
was a Mormon except me," Kurt said. "They used to call me Bishop
Bestor. It was in Modesto that it finally hit me that I wanted to
join the Church. It had been coming line upon line, precept upon
precept all those years."
Kurt called
his parents to tell them the news, unsure what to expect since his
mother was a stanch Catholic. To his surprise, she said when he
got back they'd all take the discussion together. They had already
had some..
On October
2, 1976, Kurt's entire family joined the Church, with a stake center
full of people gathered for the services, all feeling they had had
a hand in bringing the Bestor's into the gospel. "So many people
were there, they had to call in different groups for each baptism,"
Kurt said.
Kurt
Bestor
A Sense of
the Spiritual
Kurt's music is not necessarily religious, but it springs from
a profound sense of God's goodness. He is aware that music has an
awesome power to be a salve for a wounded world, and for him it
is worth all the creative sacrifice when he feels the synergy between
himself, the audience and God.
"I can sit
down and write notes, but for me to really write music, I have to
hold hands with something out of this world. Haydn used to get dressed
up to compose his music. When people asked him why, he said, 'Because
I'm communing with God today.'" I feel that. I have to have that
same spirit you feel in the temple, otherwise it has no power. If
you look, for instance, at Prayer of the Children in an analytical
way, the words aren't Shakespeare. It is just a bunch of words and
notes, but I never perform it that it doesn't bring a spiritual
response. It is real. I have had too many e-mails from people about
it not to know there's something spiritual about it. I did write
the piece, but something more has touched it.. I was in pain when
I wrote it, and that little moment in time is recaptured again and
again every time I perform it.
"I was listening
to Bach the other day," Kurt said, "and it occurred to me I was
listening to something alive. He wrote something with some emotion;
he died, but every time somebody hears the music, it is like a resurrection.
"It makes me
kind of scared sometimes. When I am up there singing, I could manipulate
people's feelings if I weren't careful. The particular talent that
I've been blessed with needs to be used for the building of the
kingdom, and that's why it works. I have to continually remind myself
where I got the talent from and how it needs to be used."
The Creative
Life
The creative life is not an easy one. Kurt's hobby is reading
biographies about composers. "I used to get depressed when I read
them," he said. "It seems to me that every composer has a lot of
difficulties in their lives. Perhaps it is because you have to be
crazy to be a composer."
If not crazy,
at least have the ability to work like crazy. When Kurt travels,
he composes in his hotel room and takes room service. Currently
on his platter, he is scoring a feature film, doing a project for
the Olympics and performing in eight concerts in December. He chose
to make this a light year. Last year he did 15. While juggling this
work load, Kurt admits frankly that this is not the Middle Ages
when a rich patron supported artists. They have to support themselves-and
if you have impeccable standards-that means you have to work hard
and always have an eye on creating the next project by putting together
an idea with a financier and a distributor. That is not an easy
job for someone whose music as he says, "appeals to the NPR crowd."
It is only
after years of producing music that has scored with listeners that
Kurt says he can write the music he wants and be assured he will
make a living with it.
The Importance
of Being Humane
The same sensitivity that rushes out of Kurt into music compels
him to service as well.
The little boy
who ran from fights on the playground grew up to be someone who
spends his free time as an activist for humane causes. Two or three
times a month he does benefit concerts. He serves on the boards
of several charities like Karl Malone's foundation for kids.
He believes
in being an activist in the Mother Theresa sort of way. "I want
to reach out to people who are hurting whether they are in or outside
of the Church. Too often," he complains, "we make lasagne for anybody
in the ward who is sick, but let a nonmember down the block starve.
Before I was an American, I was a child of God. I don't care if
a person is in Cuba of North Viet Nam, I want to reach out to them.
There are too many bulldozed trees, hurting children, extinct animals."
One of Kurt's
favorite charities is arts in education. He says, "One of the ways
to get people to start thinking about social causes and think about
each other is to temper their spirits with the arts. It is not coincidental
that the humanities has human in them. If people are in choirs together,
they probably won't be shooting each other. If they paint in a classroom,
they probably won't paint graffiti. I want to help people see beautiful
things. If they can think of things that are praiseworthy and of
good report, then they won't do ugly things like destroy God's creations."
Perhaps he
understands pain so acutely from the challenges he's faced as a
father. His two beautiful daughters, 12 and 19, were both born with
spina bifida. It is rare to have this disability appear twice in
a family, but Kurt is philosophical about it. "They are my angels.
Their time spent here will be in bodies that don't totally work.
They've got everything they need to be happy. I have none of the
problems most people have with their children."
For his good
works, Kurt was recently awarded the Rich Gibbons Humanitarian Award
at the Pearl Awards.
Conclusion
Can you hear the voice of the children,
Softly pleading
for silence in a shattered world?
Kurt wrote
that out of the passion of his deepest heart. He tries to live in
a way that he can hear those voices, too.
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Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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