While on a family trip to Hawaii, Christopher Bradford, a sociology and percussion performance major, discovered crystal singing bowls, musical instruments typified in many Eastern spiritual traditions to promote healing that, when struck, make a pleasant, traveling ringing sound.
After talking with the shop owner, Bradford learned that the leading manufacture of crystal singing bowls was in Utah. “We had to go all the way to Hawaii to discover that these singing bowls were not even a two-minute drive from our house in Holladay,” Bradford said. “It’s kind of amazing that it happened to be right there.”
Inspired by his father and art director of the Utah Chamber Artists, Bradford wrote “Bridges,” which was performed at Salt Lake City’s Cathedral of the Madeleine and performed by the Utah Chamber Choir.
Bradford tested thousands of singing bowls. “We’d go to the shop (as a team) and find the particular pitches we were after. Most of them were not true pitch.”
The end result was dedicated to their late grandmother Dorothy Bradford, who passed away in December 2016 and who Bradford believes was a bridge-maker.
“She (my grandmother) was LDS, “Bradford said. “There was an issue with (gay) family members coming out, and she was amazing, and she reached out, and she attempted to re-evaluate and be open-minded.”
More articles like this in ‘Student Innovation @ the U!’
Find this article and a lot more in the 2018 “Student Innovation @ the U” report. The publication is presented by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute to celebrate student innovators, change-makers and entrepreneurs.
