Those included in the new volume run the gamut from recognized romantic composers like Crawford Gates and Robert Cundick on the conservative end, to Lisa DeSpain, an award-winning freelance jazz composer and musician, and Christian Asplund, co-founder and musical director of the avant garde Seattle Experimental Opera.

The artwork that inspired their creations is as varied as the music, and reproductions of the art works are included in Mormoniana.

Pieces range from the original architectural rendering for the front of the Nauvoo Temple, by William Weeks, to a three-section photographic composition called "Exquisite Corpse" featuring a broken-tooth human skull atop photos of a human torso in an overcoat and scarf, and another of a baby's legs. The work was produced by Thomas Epting, Matthew Day and Natasha Brien.

Original artwork was created for the volume by Mormon Artists Group member Valerie Atkisson, and appears on the cover and frontispiece of Mormoniana as limited edition prints.

World-renowned concert pianist Grant Johannesen performed most of the compositions for the score's accompanying CD, which was recorded at the Assembly Hall on Temple Square in September 2003.

DeSpain, a self-described "rebel without a cause" who graduated from Orem High School, the Manhattan School of Music and is now working on a jazz symphony and a Broadway show, said she's spent the past 25 years "just kind of doing my own thing. . . . You grow up in the environment and they expect a certain thing out of a white blond woman."

As a child, she loved music and recalls walking down the block in her neighborhood hearing hymns and Mozart coming out of various homes. "You get to my house and hear Earth, Wind and Fire." After playing for cruise ships, nightclubs, piano bars and in New Orleans' French Quarter, she finally found her niche in New York and has never looked back.

Like many of the composers included in Mormoniana, she was honored to be asked to use her skills in a project that most agree will not become a commercial success, but helps broaden the understanding of the diversity that is "Mormon music."

As a jazz musician, she hasn't had the chance to play in church — until this month.

"I went to the Harlem branch last Sunday and played there," she said, adding the response to the "full-out gospel music" she and an African American artist performed there was applauded out loud — a rarity at LDS sacrament meetings.

"We did 'Go Tell it on the Mountain' with clapping and full gospel — what other LDS community could you do that with? I just do my thing and I'm honored when people ask me to. I generally don't fit into the status quo."