An hour long interview: ‘Evoking Stillness’
Forgive me that this has been delayed for so long. You will understand why I beg your clemency if you already know Peter Bouteneff, or if you have listened to any of his interviews with a wide array of guests.
My conversation with Peter took place on November 21, 2025, and was posted to the LUMINOUS podcast channel on December 10. We discussed my book, The North American Thebaid, and fine photography, and spanned a galaxy of ideas and points of light… I wish it could have gone on indefinitely. At my sister’s house we often remark upon some contemporary figure or another, how we wish we could enjoy an evening of conversation with them around the table. Such was my hour with Peter and engineer/producer Serge Ossurguine.
Dr Peter Bouteneff is director of the St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary Institute of Sacred Arts, and Professor of Systematic Theology. He is known for his edifying book, How To Be A Sinner, and especially for his exploration since 1990 of the spiritual music of Arvo Pärt, distilled especially in his book Arvo Pärt: Out of Silence, and also as editor of Arvo Pärt: Sounding the Sacred.
With this emphasis on Peter’s long appreciation of the work of Arvo Pärt, you would think I would have been prepared to at least touch on this master composer, but Peter caught me a little off guard with his question about this beloved maestro, and from our entire conversation, I only wish to revisit and amplify my response in that one respect, regarding the music which I chose to accompany my image editing and pre-press work on the North American Thebaid book.
In my immediate reply to Peter’s question about the music I chose to accompany my work, I shared about the transportive motion picture soundtrack album for the 2019 biopic, ‘TOLKIEN’ (directed by Dome Karukoski), by multi Oscar nominated composer Thomas Newman. Some soundtrack albums are almost too atmospheric, too ethereal, but with this album, Thomas Newman crafted a musical narrative, which draws the listener through an enchanting soundscape more elvish than even Howard Shore’s grand compositions for the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings Trilogy. (Change my mind.)
In my response, I let all other titles get shoved to the periphery, and when Peter asked me if I had happened to include Arvo Pärt’s music in my working soundtrack, though I quickly affirmed that I did indeed enjoy Arvo’s oeuvre, yet not all the titles came to me in the moment.
So here, offered in my own defense, are the Arvo Pärt recordings which I happily immersed myself in again and again during those magical days, months and years of image editing, pre-press details, and file conversion and optimization for my book:
- Berliner Messe (Vladimir Spivakov)
- Summa (Paavo Järvi & Estonian National Symphony Orchestra)
- Da Pacem (Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir)
- Adam’s Lament (Latvian Radio Choir et al)
With that, I invite you to sit back and enjoy our reveries and discussion:
Luminous: Conversations On Sacred Arts, with Peter Bouteneff – Evoking Stillness
The web link above includes Peter’s intro text, plus two photos from the book, one of them discussed at length in the podcast. Subscribe through Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
For those interested in Peter’s two other interviews which I specifically mentioned in our conversation, here they are:
The North American Thebaid 