For several months now, I have enjoyed teaching piano lessons here in Saint Paul, mostly to complete beginners. It has been profoundly rewarding to see the creativity, enthusiasm, and open-mindedness of these young people in their explorations of the piano. It is important to me to expose students to a variety of musical styles, develop their creativity and listening skills through improvisation and composition exercises, and do what I can to show them that classical music is alive and open to all of them.

While there are countless composers of all stripes creating beautiful and imaginative work today, very little contemporary concert music is written for beginner to intermediate musicians, especially in solo instrumental repertoire. To do my part to rectify this, I hope to compose a collection of short piano pieces which are memorable, compelling, diverse in their sound, and written at appropriate and progressive levels for students.

To support this endeavor, I am seeking piano teachers (or students, or anyone interested!) to join a commission consortium to support the creation of these pieces. A commission consortium is a group of people who come together to cost share a new music commission, allowing the composer to receive support for their work while keeping the project affordable for all commissioners.

The details are as follows:

• The consortium will commission a collection of ten pieces, all of which will be available for the members to use for themselves and their students in perpetuity.

• The collection will contain two primer level student-teacher four hand duets, and one piece each at levels 1 through 8, as outlined by the Pianist’s Guide to Standard Teaching and Performance Literature.

• The commission fee is $50 per consortium participant.

• A minimum of ten consortium participants will be needed to execute the project.

• For each additional participant over ten people, I will write one additional piece. Members will be able to vote on the technical level of any additional pieces.

• Consortium members will be asked to sign a written agreement upon declaring their intent to participate. The $50 fee will be payable once the minimum amount of consortium members is reached.

• Pieces will be due to the consortium members six months after the minimum number of participants is reached and fees are payable.

• Pieces will be made available to the consortium members via pdf download. Members will be able to print as many copies as they like for use by them and their students.

• The collection will be made available for purchase to the public, both as individual pieces and as a complete collection, one year after it is made available to consortium members. The names of the consortium members will appear in all editions of the pieces, thanking them for their support.

• Consortium members will continue to be able to print copies of the works for use by them and their students free of charge in perpetuity.

To my fellow piano teachers: I hope you’ll consider joining me in the creation of vibrant new works for beginner and intermediate pianists! Contact me to inquire further.

It’s been far, far too long since I’ve updated this page… but better late than never, I suppose!

To begin with, I recently visited the lovely Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, MI for a residency on March 6th. The choir performed my Evening Canticles beautifully, and I gave a reflection on Lenten themes in my work as a composer during the evensong service. You can watch the service here.

You can also hear several new recordings of my work from the past few months by Nazareth College Chamber Choir and Brian Stevens, who premiered my Mine Liking in concert on 11/20, Westminster Williamson Voices and James Jordan, and SACRA/PROFANA and Juan Carlos Acosta:

Additionally, other recent and imminent performances of my work include:

• SACRA/PROFANA will be performing my piece Rough Country on their “American Landscapes” concert in Fallbrook, CA on March 27th

• Skylark Vocal Ensemble will be performing Mater Dei on their “Sub Rosa” series of concerts in various Massachusetts locales at the end of April

• The Chamber Singers of Loras College will perform my Magnificat alongside Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb in Dubuque, IA on April 29th

• The Wiener Motettenchor in Vienna, Austria was scheduled to perform my setting of Psalm 113 on March 27th, though this concert appears to have been postponed for the moment

• Libera Cantoria Pisani and their director Filippo Furlan will be premiering my piece Roses of Life on May 15th

• Anne Matlack premiered Love Song, a short piece for organ, in her recital at Grace Church (Madison, NJ) on March 19th

• EVoco Voice Collective performed O Vos Omnes (in its SSAA iteration) in two performances on Long Island on March 5th and 6th

• San Diego State University Chamber Choir performed my piece The Devil’s Tower last semester, and will be performing The Arctic Tern’s Prayer this semester

• Violinists Danielle Simandl and Lauren Pulcipher performed my duet Rounds at Peter White Public Library in Marquette, MI on December 30th

• The Esoterics performed We Walked through the Trees in Olympia, WA on November 21st (2021)

• Siglo di Oro performed Mater Dei at the Little Missenden Festival on October 17th

• Organist Sarah Bereza performed my chorale prelude on “Joy to the World” at First Congregational Church of St. Louis on Christmas Eve

In more personal news:

I’ve been teaching piano lessons in the Twin Cities for a few months now, and enjoying it a great deal! If you or someone you know in the Cities is looking for beginner piano lessons with a solid grounding in musicianship and creativity, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Also, Worf now has an adorable younger sibling named Kira who joined us in January. We love them, and they love each other very much! She came from Caring for Cats in North Saint Paul, an all-volunteer operation that we would highly recommend.

With the changing of the seasons, and academic organizations and ensembles coming back into session, I suppose it’s time for a news round-up.

Westminster Williamson Voices and conductor James Jordan released two recordings today (September 24th), available on all online musical platforms – my piece “Breathe Free” and “To Know Your Love” by Thomas LaVoy. My piece is a Sacred Harp-inspired setting of Emma Lazarus’s iconic sonnet “The New Colossus,” designed for a distanced choir. It was commissioned by Westminster Choir College/Rider University, and can be found on Spotify, Apple Music, and other major music streaming services.

Nazareth College Chamber Singers and their director Brian M. Stevens recently released their premiere recording of “The Arctic Tern’s Prayer,” commissioned by them and setting beautiful poetry by Oxford poet Mary Anne Clark. The recording was featured at the Association of British Choral Directors’ virtual choral leaders’ festival.

Grace and Jim Roman recently premiered their commissions from myself and Thomas LaVoy at St. Luke’s UMC in Houston, where Grace is Associate Director of Music and Jim is Associate Organist. My piece is a setting of “Verde Embeleso” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a poet, philosopher, composer and Hieronymite in early colonial Mexico. Her writing focuses on themes including love, religion, and women’s rights and advocacy. The concert took place on September 18th at St. Luke’s and you can view it here: https://youtu.be/ryZSNeWq6Rk?t=3416

The Choir of the Church of the Ascension and St. Agnes in Washington, DC performed my setting of Psalm 113 on Sunday September 19th. You can watch them sing the piece here: https://youtu.be/ye2HNSoamps?t=3341

Other upcoming events this season will likely include performances by SACRA/PROFANA, Skylark Vocal Ensemble, Siglo de Oro, The Esoterics, The Leonids (a new professional ensemble in Vancouver, BC), the choir of the Anglican Church of Saint John the Divine (also in Vancouver BC), and ensembles at Sacramento State University and San Diego State University.

In slightly more personal news, Tom and I have moved to the Twin Cities! Our cat Worf is enjoying our new home very much, and so are we. If you’re in the area, let us know so we can say hello.

With performances and events beginning to come back online, I am excited and encouraged to report a few performances (in various capacities) of my work in the coming weeks!

This Sunday (June 20th), the Cathedral Choir of St Machar’s Cathedral in Aberdeen and their director Roger Williams will premiere my setting of Psalm 113. This is an excerpt from The St Machar Songbook, a larger work commissioned by them in honor of the Cathedral’s 500-year anniversary, particularly the anniversary of the heraldic ceiling, one of very few such decorated ceilings to survive the Reformation. The piece contains sixteen short movements, all of which are canons in some fashion – one for each of the central row of shields, representing the church leadership in Scotland at the time. The texts are my own reinterpretations of parts of the Solemnization of St Machar found in the Aberdeen Breviary, including lessons, psalms, and other liturgical texts. Working within such a specific framework of canons and rounds to give the Cathedral Choir a piece which can be used in many ways was an absolute joy.

On June 21st at 4:30pm EDT, organist Shannon Murphy will be premiering my chorale prelude on ‘Jesu Meine Freude’ at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in Little Italy, NYC as part of their Make Music Day 2021 recitals on the historic Erban Organ. The piece makes use of lots of Impressionist-style clusters of pitches, and Shannon has chosen this recital to premiere the piece specifically for the organ’s suitability for these sounds. The piece was generously commissioned for Shannon by Lee Ryder, who’s been a great supporter of my music over the years. Tickets are available here, free with the opportunity to donate to Friends of the Erban Organ. *Edit – I thought this was being live streamed but it’s not, my mistake!

On June 27th at 3pm EDT (8pm BST), Chamber Choir Ireland and conductor Bernie Sherlock will perform my piece Uprooted as part of their “Shared Ground” concert. The program also includes works by Veljo Tormis, Michael Tippett, Juris Karlsons, and the Irish premiere of Alec Roth’s Shared Ground, featuring six settings of poems by Vikram Seth. Chamber Choir Ireland is Ireland’s flagship professional choir, and I absolutely can’t wait to hear how they interpret this piece. Tickets to the video broadcast are available for €10 here. The recording will be viewable with a ticket for a week after the broadcast.

Well, it’s been several months since I’ve updated this page. However, despite all feeling to the contrary in day-to-day life right now, there has actually been some news in my musical corner of the world. I shall attempt to catch up now!

Many, many thanks to the groups who have performed my work in various capacities recently.

• Shannon Murphy and her choir at First Presbyterian Church of Rutherford, NJ premiered my setting of the Nicene Creed on All Saints Day, November 1st 2020. They did it in a virtual performance – no easy feat! They commissioned the piece last year in memory of choir member Tom Gray. The premiere was originally scheduled for March 2020.

• Ryan Tibbetts and his singers at St. Mary’s in Richmond, VA gave a lovely performance of my “Shall we gather at the river?”, also on All Saints Day. If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you can see the video here.

• The wonderful SACRA/PROFANA and Juan Carlos Acosta included my “Mater Dei” in their holiday concert, which they streamed online through YouTube. The performance is from their 2019 holiday concert. The video can be found in full here, with my piece starting at 25:17: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS66bXTlUN8. It also includes pieces by composers including Brandon Waddles, Fahad Siadat, Amy Gordon, and Shawn Kirchner.

• In a rare live performance, with plenty of space, Kantos Chamber Choir and their director Ellie Slorach recorded my “Brightest and Best” as part of their musical Advent Calendar. The piece is available on James Jordan’s “Evoking Sound” series with GIA.

As the new calendar year begins, I am excited to be working on (or finishing up!) a number of recent commissions.

My husband Tom and I just recently finished up new works for organ and soprano, commissioned by Jim and Grace Roman. I set a wonderful poem called “Verde embeleso” by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and Tom set Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “The Dying Child to Her Blind Father.” We both had a fantastic time exploring these stunning texts by writers who should be better known than they are currently, and writing for these wonderful performers. Grace is associate director of music and fine arts at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church and a voice teacher at Bridges Academy of Fine Arts in Houston, and Jim is associate organist also at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church. Both are highly accomplished musicians and we can’t wait to hear them perform the pieces sometime in the new year!

As they announced a few weeks ago, I am very pleased to be working with the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford and their director James Potter on an anthem to be premiered during the 2021-2022 season. I am writing an anthem centered around Hagar’s verses in Genesis – she is the first person in the Bible to name God. As part of this initiative, the Cathedral Singers are also commissioning composers Bertie Baigent, Alison Willis, and Ben Rowarth.

I am honored to be working with Dr. James Jordan and Westminster Williamson Voices on a commission for a distanced, recorded performance in the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul this spring, health regulations and conditions permitting. I have set Emma Lazarus' “The New Colossus” in a piece designed to take advantage of the spacial possibilities of a distanced ensemble using inspiration from Shape Note music, as well as from the Shape Note-inspired works of composer William Duckworth, a favorite of both of ours. It was a pleasure to set such an iconic and idealistic American text in this idiom. Grammy®-nominated Westminster Williamson Voices is one of the most accomplished collegiate choral ensembles in the country, described by Gramophone as an ensemble of “intimate and forceful choral artistry.” James Jordan is known around the choral world as one of its most pre-eminent conductors and clinicians, and has authored more than 30 books on all aspects of the choral art.

Also for a distanced performance in the spring (conditions permitting), I am working on a commission for Nazareth College Chamber Singers and their director Brian Stevens. Brian is a great friend to many composers and has performed other works of mine a number of times, so I am thrilled to be working with him on something brand new. In honor of his love of bird-watching, I am setting Oxford poet Mary Anne Clark’s tribute to some of the most resilient birds on earth, “The Arctic Tern’s Prayer.” It is a stunning poem, and I sincerely hope to set more of her work in the future!

Moving slightly farther into the future, I am looking forward to working with Jeremy D. Jones and the Miami University Men’s Glee Club on a new work on the theme of “journeying.” The Glee Club is one of the nations oldest and largest collegiate choral ensembles, and you can hear their wonderful work on their recent album We Are. They are working with the National Collegiate Choral Organization to commission works by female-identified composers for men’s choirs/lower voices.

I am also writing a piece for Roger Bevan Williams and St Machar’s Cathedral Choir in Aberdeen, in hono(u)r of the 500th anniversary of the heraldic ceiling – one of the few to survive the Reformation. I enjoyed singing at St Machar’s very much during my final years in Aberdeen, and I am looking forward to writing this piece to mark the occasion. I will be writing a short canon or round to represent each one of the shields in the middle row, which I hope will give the Choir some great options and flexibility with how they perform the piece!

I am truly thankful to be working with every single one of these ensembles, and I welcome the opportunity to keep busy in the coming months!

I am very excited to be a faculty member for See-a-dot Publishing’s Creative Workshop: https://www.seeadot.com/creative-workshop

From their website: “The See-A-Dot Creative workshop focuses on career and composition development for composers interested in deepening their understanding of choral/vocal writing. The Creative Workshop consists of a month-long online cycle that features four weekly one-on-one hour-long lessons with a See-A-Dot composer and a career development session with See-A-Dot Director Fahad Siadat. This will result in the completion or further progress of a choral / vocal work.”

If you are interested, or if you have students who may be interested, do send them our way! See-A-Dot publishes some of the most innovative and engaging choral music being written right now, and they have a great group of composers for this initiative.

I am very proud to have a piece on Sarah MacDonald’s series with Selah Publishing – my piece “Hodie” is now available. Sarah MacDonald is renowned as a composer conductor, composer, and organist, and she is a strong advocate for living composers as director of the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge. Her series features anthems for the church by women.

Additionally, this is rather old news, but my piece O God Thy Sea… was published over the summer by Seeadot Publications.

Check it out!

In what may be the first live, in-person performance of my work since March, The Gesualdo Six will be performing my piece “My Heart is like a Singing Bird” in Bristol on Saturday 19 September. The group will be performing a wide range of their repertoire, including Italian madrigals, sacred pieces by Parsons and Tomkins, and works by contemporary composers including Alison Willis, David Bednall and myself at the Church of All Saints, Clifton. There will be two performances – one at 3pm and one at 7pm – to accommodate proper distancing in the venue.

Tickets must be requested in advance. Check it out if you are in the Bristol area.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, choirs are searching for new, safe ways to continue as communities and make music together. C4 Composer/Conductor Collective will be giving a remote performance of my piece “O God, Thy sea” on YouTube and social media on Thursday 21 March at 8:30 pm EDT. While many groups have produced “virtual choir” videos which are edited together, this will be a live performance conducted remotely using software that drastically reduces audio latency. Do tune in if you can!

I am looking forward to working with Barbara Hoefling and Deutscher Chor London, who I worked with in 2016 when I wrote Flowers of the Forest for their concert at the National Gallery at Buckingham Palace, commissioned by the Royal Collections Trust. I will be writing them a new piece for their upcoming concert.

Barbara and the choir are supporting myself and a number of other composers during the COVID-19 pandemic through their “Corona Commissions.” Over the next few weeks, we are looking forward to sharing more information about our pieces through videos, which will be posted on the choir’s social media. The pieces will all be inspired by the theme of fear.

For information on how to support the project, see here.

One of my most rewarding recent projects has been my piece for the Glasgow School of Art Choir, commissioned as part of the ComposeHer project, in partnership with the Glasgow Women’s Library and supported by Creative Scotland.

Over the next few weeks and months, I (and the other composers) will be writing blogs about our experiences and ideas writing these pieces for the GSA Choir. You can read my first blog here, where I discuss my text searching and selection process.

I’ve written a number of pieces involving organ recently, and I’ve been immensely enjoying this medium. One of these pieces is a chorale prelude on “Jesu, Meine Freude,” one of the great German chorale tunes, written last year for organist Shannon Murphy, director of music at the First Presbyterian Church of Rutherford, NJ. The piece will be premiered on 21 April at 7 pm at The Church of St Paul the Apostle, NYC.

The piece was commissioned by Lee Ryder on the occasion of Shannon’s Master’s graduation. Lee has been a generous advocate for my works for many years now and I’m honored by her support!

Update: postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic.

My first work for choir, organ and brass will be premiered in the San Diego area: Easter Anthem was commissioned by the Village Church of Rancho Santa Fe, CA and their director of music ministries Juan Carlos Acosta, and will be premiered at the 10:30 am service on Easter morning.

I’ve set the Easter story as told in the opening paragraphs of Matthew 28, using sounds inspired by Sacred Harp music and early Renaissance choral music (which share some surprising harmonic similarities) to dramatize the narrative. Many of the great church anthems in the British tradition, such as Greater Love by Ireland and O Thou the Central Orb by Wood, have a very strong sense of narrative – I was inspired by these works in this piece, but hoped to capture the drama in my own way.

Update: the section leaders and musicians premiered this piece on their livestream worship service on Easter morning.

I’m very pleased that my setting of the Nicene Creed, commissioned by First Presbyterian Church of Rutherford, New Jersey. The piece will be premiered by the church Choir and their music director, Shannon Murphy (who will also be premiering my chorale prelude on Jesu, Meine Freude in April). The concert will also celebrate the music of J. S. Bach in honor of his 335th birthday, and proceeds will be donated to Rutherford Food Pantry.

The piece was commissioned in memory of Tom Gray, choir member and patron of the arts at the church. I’m very much looking forward to attending the rehearsals that week, along with the premiere.

Update: Postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Renowned vocal consort The Gesualdo Six and their director Owain Park have performed my Rossetti setting “My Heart is like a Singing Bird” on numerous occasions over the past three and a half years, and soon they will be releasing a recording on their upcoming album Fading. Owain writes about the album:

“Since the fourth century, the service of Compline has marked the end of the day, ushering in the darkness of the night. Much of the music here is inspired by this ancient service. The first half of the album features a selection of atmospheric works that relate to the transition between light and darkness. Then there is a turning point; the light returns, birds sing, and flowers bloom once more.”

The full track list includes music from Hildegard von Bingen, Gesualdo, Veljo Tormis, Alonso Lobo, Joanna Marsh and others, and more information can be found here: https://www.thegesualdosix.co.uk/product/fading-2020/, alongside information about their other wonderful recordings.

The album will be launched at a concert at St Bartholomew the Great in London on 14 March: https://helmtickets.com/events/5502/the-gesualdo-six-fading-cd-launch

The Cambridge Chorale will be releasing their album “Hymns to the Mother of God” album at their concert on 29 February at Little St Mary’s Church, Cambridge, across from Pembroke College.

This album features my piece Mater Dei alongside works by composers including John Tavener, Cecilia MacDowall and the choir’s director Owain Park. The Cambridge Chorale premiered this piece three years ago at Trinity College Cambridge on their wonderful concert of the same name.

Mater Dei has now been professionally recorded three times: by the Cambridge Chorale, by Khoros Choir on their album “Mother of God: choral music to the Virgin Mary”, and by SACRA/PROFANA for release on their upcoming CD, featuring music from their recent holiday concert.

In honor of Leap Day, and my having a moment to breathe amidst commission deadlines and recent teaching pursuits, I finally have a moment to do some news updates on recent and upcoming performances.

• The Choir of Selwyn College Cambridge and Sarah MacDonald performed “Brightest and Best” on their Epiphany carol service on 19 January.

• Phillipsburg High School Chamber Choir and Tom DiGiovanni performed “In the City of Your Heart,” a piece I wrote back in 2011 and ultimately included on my final BM composition recital, at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA on 13 February.

• The St. Ambrose University Chamber Singers performed “Charlie is my Darling” at Allaert Auditorium, St. Ambrose University on 28 February.

• “Hodie” will be on on the “worship and music” reading session at ACDA’S Western Region conference in Salt Lake City on March 5th.

• SACRA/PROFANA and Juan Carlos Acosta will be reprising their performance of “The Devil’s Tower” at the prestigious St. James Music Series at St. James by-the-sea Episcopal Church in beautiful La Jolla, CA on 22 March at 4 pm. (Update: postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic.)

• Skylark Vocalists and Matthew Guard will be performing “Mater Dei” on their Sub Rosa concert program, exploring symbolism and numerology in choral music in collaboration with Dan Brown and composer Gregory W. Brown. They will be performing this program in various locations around the greater Boston area on the 21st to the 25th of April. (Update: cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic.)

Thomas LaVoy and I are thrilled that our pieces commissioned by the “Scattered Light” Consortium are receiving their East Coast premieres by Grammy-nominated Westminster Williamson Voices and Dr. James Jordan on November 3rd. We both immensely enjoyed working on our settings of “The Burning Ladder” and “The Stars Now Rearrange Themselves” by former NEA chairman and California poet laureate Dana Gioia. We can’t wait for these pieces, inspired by these distinctive and musical texts, to start making it out into the world.

The performance will be at Bristol Chapel on the WCC Princeton campus at 3 pm on Sunday, November 3rd. The program also includes Steve Pilkington, James Whitbourn, and Anthony J. Maglione (who recently gave the Missouri premiere of Thomas’s cantata In Heaven Hereafter and my Uprooted with William Jewell College Concert Choir). The piece will also be performed at the Cathedral Basilica in Philadelphia on Sunday November 17th at 3 pm.

Autumn is in the air, the leaves are beginning to change here in the beautiful Upper Peninsula, delicious pumpkin products are widely available, and I’ve got a number of performances (that I know of) coming up in these fall months:

The Gesualdo Six will be performing “My Heart is like a Singing Bird at the North Wales International Music Festival this Friday (20 Sept) at St. Asaph Cathedral at 7:30 pm. I have many fond memories of St. Asaph where the University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir performed many times, and by total coincidence, I was in St. Asaph singing (and premiering Shenandoah) when G6 first premiered the piece in 2016. They’ve performed it on numerous occasions since then.

Also on the other side of the Pond, London-based Khoros Choir and their conductor Patrick Allies will be releasing their debut album at a concert at St Stephen Walbrook (EC4N) at 7:30 pm on 17 October. The program includes my piece “Mater Dei” alongside works such as Britten’s “Hymn to the Virgin,” de Lassus’ “Alma Redemtoris Mater,” and Sandström’s “Det är en Ros Utsprungen,” a real favorite of mine. The Edinburgh University Singers and Calum Robertson will also be performing my arrangement of “Wayfaring Stranger” on 22 November at Church of the Sacred Heart, Lauriston Place, at 7:30 pm.

PopUp Choir recently returned from their tour to Scotland, conducted by Paul Mealor, where they performed their program “The Road Home,” including my Shenandoah alongside works by composers including Britten, Paulus, Hogan, and fellow recent Aberdeen grad John Frederick Hudson. They will all be reprising this wonderful program Stateside on 12 October at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St. Paul, MN at 7:30 pm.

The William Jewell College Concert Choir and their conductor Anthony J. Maglione will be performing their concert titled “Perspectives” at First Presbyterian Church of St. Joseph, MO. This concert centers around Thomas LaVoy’s stunning cantata “In Heaven, Hereafter,” based on the life and writings of artist and folk hero Nancy Luce of Martha’s Vineyard. My piece “Uprooted” will also be performed, as well as works by Ed Frazier Davis and Nathaniel Dett. Tom will be in residence with the choir that week, and we are both immensely excited to attend what is sure to be a unique and engaging concert. His pre-concert talk begins at 7:30 pm, with the concert starting at 8:00.

Conductor Brian Stevens, a great friend and advocate of many composers including myself, will be performing a couple of my pieces with his choral ensembles: Nazareth College Women’s Choir will be performing my O Vos Omnes at Beston Hall at 4 pm on 16 November, and Nazareth College Chamber Singers will be performing my “Charlie is my Darling” at Linehan Chapel (also at Nazareth College) at 3 pm on 17 November.

Happy August, everyone! At this time of year, a lot of us are hard at work taking stock of our upcoming schedule or planning our next “season” or academic cycle. I am very happy to announce some commissions to be written and premiered in the coming months (and years).

• I am currently hard at work writing “In the Beginning was the Word” for Harmonium Choral Society and Dr. Anne Matlack. This piece will be a joyous setting of a number of different translations of the iconic verse John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” I’ve taken the top five languages in the word by population: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Arabic and Hindi, and I am using these wildly different-sounding sentences to create a variety of festive rhythms and textures. The piece will be premiered on December 7th (8:00 pm) and 8th (3:00 pm) at Morristown United Methodist Church, NJ. Harmonium performs all manner of repertoire from Arcadelt to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion to contemporary works including my “Mater Dei” and “We Walked through the Trees” in recent months, and I’m thrilled to be working with them further.

• My next sacred commission after that will be for Dr. Juan Carlos Acosta and the Choir at The Village Presbyterian Church in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. I worked with Juan on the premiere of my piece “The Devil’s Tower” with SACRA/PROFANA, and I am so excited to be working again with such a warm-hearted and skilled conductor. This time, I’ll be writing an anthem setting of Matthew 28 (the Easter story) for choir, organ and brass.

• I will also be writing a new work for organ (a current favorite instrument of mine) for Carson Cooman. Carson is a composer himself and his dedication to all kinds of new music for organ is abundantly clear. The piece is tentatively scheduled for premiere in June 2020 at National Cathedral, Washington DC – more info when the time comes. (Update - recital was scheduled for June 28th, but cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic.)

• This is all in addition to my new piece for the Glasgow School of Art Choir, which I can’t wait to focus on this spring. The piece will be premiered in 2021.

The Glasgow School of Art Choir and their conductor Jamie Sansbury have just announced their partnership with Creative Scotland and the Glasgow Women’s Library. They are commissioning seven composers: Rebecca Rowe, Ailie Robertson, Pippa Murphy, Jane Stanley, Dee Isaacs, Cecilia McDowall and myself. I’m honored to be in such fantastic company!

The 100-member-strong choir has an extensive record of commissioning new works from composers including James MacMillan and Jay Cappernauld, and they are also participating in the Scattered Light consortium with myself and Thomas LaVoy. I absolutely can’t wait to work with them on a larger-scale project. More information will be available in the spring of 2020, and the works will be premiered in 2021.

I’m pleased that my arrangement of “Charlie is my Darling,” released on the Jo-Michael Scheibe Series on Walton a few months ago, is making the rounds. The piece was workshopped at NextDirection Choral Leadership Symposium on July 19th at University of Wisconsin (Parkside), as well as at the Choral Conductors Workshop with renowned conductor Rod Eichenberger in Seaside, Oregon on July 31st. Aberdeen Vocal Ensemble is also performing the piece on their Scottish tour from Elgin to the the Lothians August 5th through the 10th; details available on their Facebook page.

These are, of course, just the performances I know of – very exciting!

With a number of performances of new and recent works in the past few months, I’ve received a number of excellent recordings recently. I am proud to be able to share them now.

In particular, the St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral Girls Choir and their conductor Blanaid Murphy have just released their new CD Vox Feminina, a stunning collection of sacred music for upper voices by women featuring works by composers such as Judith Weir, Roxanna Panufnik and Sarah MacDonald, and my “O Sing Unto the Lord”. The piece was commissioned by the Diocese of Aberdeen and Orkney for the installment of Bishop Anne Dyer, first female bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church.

The musicianship and sensitivity of these recordings is absolutely top-notch. The CD is available for purchase all the usual sources, and individual tracks are on YouTube.

Khoros Choir (London) and their conductor Patrick Allies have also just completed their recording sessions in Cambridge this month, which included my piece Mater Dei. Can’t wait to hear the final result – here’s a preview of the ensemble!

I’ve been thrilled to receive a number of stunning live recordings recently as well, including the recent performance of “The Devil’s Tower” by SACRA/PROFANA, and “Interrogations at Noon” and “The Angel with the Broken Wing” from my Failed Saints cycle by Ensemble Companio.