I Do Things My Way

If you haven’t had the glorious privilege of singing church hymns with Ardean playing the piano and/or leading the singing, you may not know how joyful singing the hymns can be. Electrifying, to put it mildly. I remember the time he was wearing a tie with the piano keyboard. Wanting to get one for Brent, I asked him where he got it. Years ago, we loved to go to his free Pop Concerts in Salt Lake City. He’s been around a long time, a true legend, but I didn’t know his story until he died.

I first read the article in the Tribune:

Ardean Walton Watts — former associate conductor for the Utah Symphony and University of Utah music professor — has died, his family said Saturday. He was 89.

Watts, a longtime pianist, died Friday surrounded by his family after suffering complications from heart failure, his daughter Mitzi Watts Busath said.

"Ardean Watts' influence will continue to flow through the hearts, minds and actions of his wife, and growing family which now rivals the number of keys on his keyboard," the family said in a statement. "Ardean brought to our notice everything from the microscopic wonder of mushroom spores to the grandeur of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony."

Watts was born in Kanosh in 1928 and was raised in Idaho. He returned to Utah for college, earning a degree in music theory from Brigham Young University in 1952. He also served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New England. He married Elna Brown of Bear Lake, settling in Salt Lake City. The couple had eight children.

Maurice Abravanel, the symphony's conductor for more than 30 years, hired Watts as a pianist in the 1950s, a job he kept for 22 years. Near the halfway point in his tenure, Watts became an associate conductor, serving in that capacity for 11 years.

Abravanel and Watts were dear friends who for years spent each Sunday morning talking while Elna Watts attended church, Carolyn Abravanel said.

"It was a very special love affair between he and Maurice," she said. "I hope there is a heaven and, if there is, that Maurice is welcoming him and probably yelling, 'Bravo!' "

Abravanel said her husband, who died in 1993, mentored and depended on Watts during their years together at the symphony.

Watts was a loyal friend who had an animated personality, was a great storyteller and became a "musician in full spades," Abravanel said.

"I am going to miss him," she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

For more than three decades, Watts was a professor in the University of Utah's music school, where he "taught virtually every class offered, instructing generations of students," a department website says. He developed three courses in the use of electronic synthesizers and one on "electronic music and modern culture." He twice received the university's distinguished teaching award and chaired the ballet department for five years, a news release from the Utah Symphony says.

In a statement Saturday, Utah Symphony and Utah Opera President and CEO Paul Meecham expressed sadness over Watts' passing, noting that he helped shape the classic music landscape in Salt Lake City for decades.

"His passion for not only the orchestra but for ballet and opera made him a fixture on the performing arts scene," Meecham said. "He left a lasting legacy on the arts in Utah. We will miss his warm presence and enthusiasm at our concerts from his favorite perch in the second tier."

Watts was the founder of the University of Utah Opera Company and, for 13 years, was its artistic director, producer and conductor, a news release from the symphony states.

For 20 years, Watts played a role in producing full-scale operas in the U.'s football stadium with the Utah Symphony and the theater department.

Watts will be missed by Utah's community of mycologists. A mushroom expert who founded the Mushroom Society of Utah, Watts was renowned for his knowledge of various species, founding club member Don Johnston said. Watts was a prominent figure in the club's annual late-August foray, sitting patiently for hours at a table with a microscope and reference books, helping club members identify their bounty.

"That's one of the things he enjoyed about mushrooming," said Johnston, who called Watts strong willed and gregarious. "He loved people and had many, many friends."

Some Salt Lake City-area residents may remember Watts as the unofficial greeter at the City Creek Center mall. In 2012, when City Creek opened, Watts took to sitting on a shady bench near the stream that runs through the mall, greeting shoppers and trying to engage them in conversation.

"Little kids are good. They'll come up and break the ice sometimes," Watts told The Salt Lake Tribune in a 2012 story, adding that he had adopted a Taoist approach to the exercise. "If it doesn't happen naturally, forget it."

Watts also served Utah's arts and outdoors communities through much of his life. He served on the board of Hawkwatch International and was the music director and principal conductor for the Ballet West orchestra from 1966 to 1984.

****

Then I listened twice to a podcast with Doug Fabrizio (and watched a video on going mushroom hunting with him).

In honor of his death, Doug replayed it again this week:

“I’m curious – I guess that was a gift I was given. Nobody likes to hike with me because I don’t go anywhere.”

“Mushrooms are the perfect symbol for my philosophy of life. I have a love of wild unruly things. I prefer weeds to flowers.” (Much to his wife’s consternation.)

Re his epiphany, he was traveling on the bus to Denver with the Utah Symphony. It was 3:20 PM. He was 46 years old. Doug asks him to repeat the story. “I explain it differently every time. That’s what I have in common with Joseph Smith. I keep changing my story. I was given permission to let go. Everything caved in. I could assent or resist. I sat there as my whole Mormon belief system melted away. I knew I was going to be a different person for the rest of my life.” “Were you sad?” “I felt exhilaration by the prospect of freedom. Leap into the boundless and make it your home. I love that freedom.”

“What about your family?”

“I celebrate with them honestly. I’m the prayer-sayer at Thanksgiving. I know how to pray Mormon. It may not always be what they expect.”
    When asked if he believes prayer helps, he told of when his wife was critically injured a few years ago, when a truck hit her as a pedestrian. He said much of her front brain had to be removed. "It helped her when she heard the people in Japan were praying for her; it made a difference." Their daughter was living in Japan and had her LDS congregation pray for her mother. 

They wouldn't let him put a sign up, so he had this shirt made.

This interview was about three years ago. It may have been while he was at the City Creek Mall. Doug asked him how he felt about dying. “Actually, I'm happy to have the gift of another day. I go not screaming; I go not kicking. I hope I go smiling.”
    When Doug asked him about his belief in some of the doctrine, he replied: "I celebrate the mystery."
    That's where I feel akin to him. Sometimes I don't think we know all we think we know about the hereafter and life after death and that's OK. Celebrate the mystery.

Additional excerpts from an interview about 20 years ago in his own home:

James W. Ure, editor

Ardean Walton Watts

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
—Robert Frost

Not all of his performing has been classical. He was leader and conductor of dance and show bands at Lagoon, Saltair, and the Rainbow Randevu in Salt Lake City in the 1950s. He was a Grammy Award nominee for best classical performance-choral in 1962, when he prepared the University of Utah Chorus to record Honegger’s King David with the Utah Symphony. Ardean is active in Rotary Club, was a member and chair of the Music Committee of the YMMIA General Board of the LDS church (1958-74), and was appointed to the Utah Arts Council in 1987, serving as its chair in 1993-95. He has been president or a member of the board of the B. H. Roberts Society since 1987. He was also the founder of the Mushroom Society of Utah, and is a member of the board of Hawk Watch International.

Describe what kind of a Mormon you are.

First of all, I’m an historical Mormon. I was raised in the church, and I’d say that most of my habits of living, the way I think, and my values have been inherited from the Mormon tradition. I don’t repudiate them in any way. I consider the church essentially a human institution. As a human institution, it stacks up very well against other human institutions, like the Democratic Party, the Elks Club, etc. I think that the big problem that many people have is that their expectations are too high because the church claims to be a divine institution. I have lowered my expectations to the extent that I can still smile a little bit once in a while when it comes to the church. I think they do a great deal of good for individuals of all ages. In my ward they nourish old people in ways that are very often rare out in the world. And they do the same for the very young. We used to be very good in the field of youth programs, but I think we’ve slipped somewhat where that’s concerned. There are many programs sponsored by religious and secular societies that probably do as good a job as we’re doing in that area. But I’m still amazed at how many good things happen, and they’ve happened in my family, and I personally feel they’re worth investing in. It’s just that I don’t believe that the officers are called of God, and I’m under no obligation to believe what they say.

That’s unconventional.
It sure is.

You have eight children?
I do.

You’re married to a woman who is a …
A strong believer.

You were at one time a strong believer?
Definitely, until about age forty-five.

What happened?
A moment of grace came into my life, which I can describe more specifically, but it’s not worth the time. It was simply a moment when I realized that change was possible, and I wanted to make it. I wasn’t dissatisfied. I’ve never been persecuted by the church. Nobody hurt me as a Mormon. I did dislike Boy Scouts, and I wasn’t a good one as a result, but I have an Eagle Scout in my family, so obviously I’m not against Boy Scouts. It just didn’t work for me. That event (the moment of grace) happened at 3:20 in the afternoon.

Please describe it?
I was reading a book, and the name of the book I know, but it doesn’t matter. The idea occurred to me that in order to be a better person, I would have to be more receptive to what I thought were God’s messages for me. And so I said, “I’ll do whatever You want if I know it’s You speaking, and hang the consequences.” And that was it. Everything caved in within a few minutes, and I had to start from scratch to build a new faith.

A genuine epiphany.
I think it was. I consider that the most important, single moment of my life.

Was it a freeing moment?
There was no lead up to it at all. It was just, Wham! And I did respond in the way that I said I would.

What were the first things you did?
I was on my way to Denver with the Utah Symphony. The first thing that I did was to decide to buy a pair of roller skates—pretty irrational. The second thing was I felt compelled to read a book which in my mind at that time was forbidden. That book was one I had run across when I was a missionary in New England and had more or less put into a file to be dealt with some other time. The next morning in Denver I was waiting on the library steps when it opened, and I spent two days nonstop reading that book.

What book was that?
It’s a book called Oahspe, and it’s doubtful that you’ve ever heard of it. It’s a mystical book, and dates from the middle of the nineteenth century. Its content was startling to me, although I can say it has little impact on me today. (He said in his interview with Doug Frabizio that this man had a similar experience to Joseph Smith and it made him realize that many people could have the same dealings with God. He thought Joseph Smith was the only modern one.) It was a catalyst, and it did accelerate the process of flushing out the old and making room for the new. It happened very, very fast. Most of my library I gathered during the period immediately following that event when I felt I had to fill in the blanks. Generally Mormons are not encouraged to study all faith systems seriously, but I had to. So I became a voracious consumer of literature about religion. I’m at least four things. I’m a father and husband, a musician, a naturalist, and a religious nut. But I don’t own a church. I make up my own theology to fit the need.

You’re very spiritual, aren’t you?
I don’t know what that means. I’ve succeeded in erasing the line between what is spiritual and what is not. I think every human activity has the potential to be a spiritual act—an act of worship, an act of thanksgiving, of rejoicing—or the opposite, damning and hellish. I choose to make life experiences, as much as possible, fun and glorious. That may be spiritual to some, but it’s not a conventional way of looking at spirituality. They wouldn’t buy that in my ward, but they wouldn’t buy it in a lot of other places, either. My modes of prayer and worship are so many that they’re indescribable and constantly changing. (He said in the interview with Doug that he still has all his Mormon values. He doesn’t smoke or drink or any of the others things some do when they leave the fold.)

When I was tracting in New England as a missionary, people would often say, “I’m very open-minded but I’m not interested.” Bam! We’d walk away and I’d remember saying to myself, “Yes, they’re so open minded their brains are falling out.” One could say that about me perhaps, but I have my own solid convictions. I have a very strong belief system, but it is unconventional by Mormon standards. I care little if there’s a hereafter. I find most descriptions of God uninteresting. I believe in doing compassionate things and having fun. That’s about it.

How does that impact your wife and children?
My children are close to each other and to my wife and me, very close. It’s inconceivable that we do important things without sharing them. We have four families who live here in the valley, and we have four families from sea to shining sea. And I’m good friends with all of them. We do much better than tolerate each other. I respect their religion and they reciprocate. I encourage them to be good Mormons if they believe that way.

So I do have strong values. I’m grateful to various religious traditions who’ve articulated those. People have done that, and they continue to do that today. I wept when Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa, and he brought together a cabinet of his enemies. I think he’s a prophet to our world. In my sense of a prophet, he’s showing us a very lofty way to live. Prophets are wherever you find them, and I think there are a whole lot of them to learn from.

Not everybody should do what I do. You have to have a certain disposition or personality to make your way alone where the religious enterprise is concerned. I certainly wouldn’t advocate that anybody follow me. I enjoy people who grow their own because we get so many new ways of looking at the world, whereas when we get institutionalized, we are encouraged to all think similarly or to not think at all. Maybe I wouldn’t have done it at another time in my life. I think that what happened to me was appropriate when it happened, and probably shouldn’t have happened earlier—for reasons I don’t know.

What do church authorities make of Ardean Watts?
I don’t know, but I can imagine. One of my friends who became an apostle told me that he thought that my epiphany was from the devil. My response was that if I pray to God and God allows the devil to answer, then he’s not my God. On the other hand, I had a number of other interviews with the brethren at the time that were very positive; some were quite understanding and said things like, “Well, you’ll probably be back some day when you wake up out of your funny dream,” which is better than saying that it was the devil. One former general authority friend responded, “I understand where you’re coming from.”

May I make a request? Would you play something for me?
No.

You won’t?
No, I’ve never played the piano well enough to match my standards. Now, for the first time, I’m playing for my own pleasure at home. I don’t do it excellently, so playing in front of anybody makes me ill. The only exceptions are a few family occasions when the family understands, and occasionally I support others as soloists.

Fair enough.
I do find ways of contributing musically. For instance, I’m on the search committee to find a new conductor for the Utah Symphony. I dig into that with my heart and soul. I do things my way. I do everything with passion. My life is full and varied. Tonight I’m taking my first scuba diving lesson. I’m going to the Yucatan Peninsula next winter to have that experience for the first time. I’ve snorkeled a little bit in the Caribbean and in the Gulf of California. Never done the deep stuff, and I wanted to do that before my body and mind deteriorate to the point I can’t.

So you plan to be certified?
I’m going to be certified by Christmas.