From Deseret News archives:

Peter Breinholt — Just plain folk

Musician content with local fame

Published: Saturday, April 26, 2003 11:31 p.m. MDT
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By now he has established a routine that his fans can count on. He plays Sundance for several nights in the fall, Thanksgiving Point at Christmas, Tuacahn during spring break, Kingsbury Hall at various times of the year, and summer is filled with outdoor concerts and arts festivals and a July show at the Sandy Amphitheater.

Then there are myriad performances elsewhere, an average of more than one a week. A week ago he played a few songs on a morning program on Channel 4 and before that there was a concert at Southern Utah University. He will perform at an LDS fireside in Sandy tonight, with several more to follow in the weeks to come. He will play an in-studio concert for a local radio station next month and a benefit concert at Cottonwood High School, and so it goes.

Breinholt is known largely as an LDS musician, although his songs are not overtly LDS. He is not a Mormon musician, he would say; he is a musician who is Mormon.

"I don't mind that label, but I really didn't get tagged with it until a few years ago," he says. The tag came after he was commissioned to co-produce and write some of the songs for a worldwide Mormon youth conference known as Especially For Youth.

"Now I get invited to firesides regularly," he says. "They have come to me, and that's fine. It's been good."

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His songs are mostly happy and upbeat, a breath of fresh air against the angry, cynical, sometimes profane lyrics on the radio. Excluding the "Live" and Christmas albums, his CDs have reflected the stages of his life, although, he says, not intentionally.

"Songs of the Great Divide," his first CD, related experiences on his mission — the people, poverty, humility and culture he saw in Chile. "Heartland" covers his worldwide travels before he was married. "Deep Summer" is largely about children and family.

"It was not a conscious thing," he says of the themes. "It was later when I looked back at the albums, I'd go, 'Well, what do you know.' "

So he has built a healthy, though not extravagant, living making music, which is not bad for a guy whose career began while playing for a few friends.

Dear Peter, I have been singing your song "Jerusalem" to my daughter before bed. She is only 3, but she has most of the song memorized.

Breinholt calls himself the oddity of his family. His parents were both educators — Robert took degrees at Harvard and Stanford and taught at the prestigious Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania and later at the University of Utah; Jane taught grade school for a time. Peter's four siblings, all bright and motivated, pursued their educations at blue-blood schools in diverse ways.

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Salt Lake musician Peter Breinholt warms up before a recent appearance on a KTVX morning show. Dylan Schorer, left, accompanies on guitar.

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