Mr. Christopher LaMountain is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he pursued a double major in Religious Studies and Music Performance Studies. After being awarded an Undergraduate Research Grant from Northwestern in 2018, Mr. LaMountain completed a multi-media research project comparing gynecological texts of Mediterranean Antiquity with Marian narratives of the New Testament Apocrypha. In the latter portion of his collegiate career, Mr. LaMountain conducted research on devotional music at seven of the eight continental Baha’i Houses of Worship as the 2019 Northwestern Circumnavigator grantee. Having sung in choirs and as a classically trained tenor soloist, Mr. LaMountain also sung with the musicians of Baha’i Temples around the world and subsequently produced his honors undergraduate thesis comparing the musical styles and presentation forms of devotional music at the different Baha’i Temples. With the help of his colleagues from the Bienen School of Music, Mr. LaMountain has also presented two concert lectures on his comparative Baha’i musicological studies, which featured musical excepts from his worldwide research trip. Interested in inter-religious musicology and cross-cultural studies, Mr. LaMountain has achieved proficiency in French, Italian, and Hindi, passed upper-level courses on various traditions of the major world religions, and studied musical traditions, such as Negro Spiritual, Western Classical, Hindustani, Ugandan traditional, and Nueva Cancion Chilena musical styles. Mr. LaMountain aspires to pursue a graduate degree in sacred music studies, become a religious studies and musicology professor, and continue singing in choirs over the course of his life.
With his Fulbright-Nehru project, Mr. LaMountain is both observing and participating in the process of devotional music making at the prayer services of the Asian Baha’i House of Worship, called the Lotus Temple. In comparing both these observed musical styles and presentational forms of the Lotus Temple with other faith spaces in Delhi, for example Akshardham and ISKCON Temples, Gurudwara Bangla Sahib, Myanmar Buddha Temple, and Moti Masjid, Mr. LaMountain is determining the manner in which local worship music from religious traditions outside of the Baha’i Faith influences intonation of the Lotus Temple.