All Episodes
Michael Hicks uses his extensive musical knowledge in the church to walk us through the Psalms. Enjoy a fruitful and musical conversation.
Author, composer, and performer Michael Hicks is a Professor Emeritus of Music at Brigham Young University, where he taught from 1985-2020. He is the author of five books in the Music in American Life series of the University of Illinois Press as well as five other books, the most recent of which is Plague Psalms (By Common Consent Press, 2026). Dozens of his historical and analytical articles have appeared in books and journals ranging from the Journal of the American Musicological Society and Musical Quarterly to Dialogue and the Oxford Handbook of Mormonism. His poetry, meanwhile, has been published in various Mormon journals as well as anthologies such as Cadence of Hooves (2008) and New Poets of the American West (2010). He has twice won the Deems Taylor Award from the American Society for Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) for his writing about music and a third time for his editorship of the journal American Music, a post he held from 2007-2010. He has twice been a finalist for the Utah Book Award and his most recent awards include Best Memoir from the Mormon History Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Mormon Letters (both in 2023).
For a comprehensive survey of his scholarly and creative work—including as composer and performer—go to www.michaelhicks.org.
On a personal level, he and his wife of nearly 48 years, Pam Bodell Hicks, are the parents of four children and grandparents of sixteen.