BJU has posted an article about the premiere of in paradisum on its website- and it includes a 3 minute set of excerpts which we hastily mixed and montaged yesterday… you can go take a listen by clicking here.

in paradisum was premiered tonight- by a 60-member wind band and a 100+ voice choir, for an audience of nearly 7,000. It was a fabulous performance- far and away better than any of the rehearsals. It did what it was supposed to do, and said what it was supposed to say, powerfully. Once again, I observe my life, and thank the Lord for these blessings that I don’t deserve.

The “surprise” that we were saving for the audience, was a set of 8 handbell players, hidden in the balcony of the hall- and at the end of the piece, (after 10-11 minutes!), they echoed motives played by onstage bells. I purposely wrote something in the program notes about eternity calling from “on high”- which I hope the audience understood in retrospect- it was a little clue about what was going to happen.

The recording of the entire concert will be available from the BJU Campus Store, sometime later this summer. in paradisum, itself, is slated to be include on the “ForrestWorks” CD which should be forthcoming from Soundforth Music, later this fall. More on that, and other upcoming events, later…

For now, to my dear students and friends that performed tonight, who are reading: Thank you from the bottom of my heart, for tonight’s performance. You’ve overwhelmed my ears and heart, and have made me proud!

I’m personally urging composers to view ASCAP’s petition for a Composers’ Bill of Rights, as various groups are lobbying against these basic tenets. You don’t have to be an ASCAP member to sign it.

You can view the Bill of Rights by clicking here, and sign it electronically by using the link at the bottom of that page, or by clicking here.

Heard in paradisum… for the first time tonight with band and chorus, and thankfully…it works! I wasn’t entirely sure about this marriage of wind band and chorus, but my attempts to let the band have its moments, but then stay out of the way of the choir, seem to have been mostly successful. (And a 100+ voice choir helps balance, too!) We’ve got some work to do (and I have a few parts to fix!) but I’m excited about it. We still have over a week, and a few more rehearsals, to get everything right.

Premiere is next Friday at 8:00 at BJU’s annual Commencement Concert, for any Greenvilians interested in attending. The audience will probably be around 6,000-7,000….not too many composers get the opportunity to have premieres in front of those kinds of numbers! I’m thankful!

Hinshaw’s current E-Letter Composer Spotlight features an article about my work, and they’re offering a “Dan Forrest packet” of my music with them.

For the newsletter, click here.

For my article, click here.

Now that this year’s Pulitzer prize winners have been announced, I can make it known- Hinshaw Music nominated my “Three Nocturnes for Chorus and Percussion” for a Pulitzer prize in music this year. It’s an immense honor to me, just to be nominated! It would have been a little tacky to be proclaiming the nomination before the awards were announced- and (not surprisingly) my name wasn’t among the winners. But now I can at least share my little “nomination” secret with the world, and we can refer to the Nocturnes as a Pulitzer-nominated piece!

Ok…I finally gave in…and joined Facebook. It’ll just be a presence (as a Musician, so it’s a public page, and I have “fans” instead of “friends”) and will point here to my blog for content. But it’s getting harder and harder to not be in Facebook anymore- this seems like a good way to have a presence there.

PS) I recently discovered that comments on my site weren’t getting through. I hope to have fixed that now- I’m sorry if you tried to comment and couldn’t!

The Soundforth CD, King of Love, is now available! The premiere concert went very well tonight, and Soundforth sold out of the CDs at the concert. Thankfully, they have a good supply at the warehouse, and the “premiere” price of 10$ will be honored at the BJU Campus Store all day tomorrow (Thursday)…

Here’s the first 3:30 of The King of Love My Shepherd Is…

The King of Love My Shepherd Is

Premiere Concert is tomorrow night (Wednesday) at BJU’s Bible Conference; the CD will be available after the concert.

The new Soundforth CD will be released in 10 days! We’ve already given pre-release copies to several people to review; some reviews/posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

Even better, though, I have permission to post some audio on my site! So- here’s Be Thou My Vision- which I wrote originally for piano and SATB choir; on the CD, though, it’s in a new scoring for harp (played by Prentiss Kendall), cello (played by Sharon Mulfinger [!]), and SATB choir. Take a listen, leave a comment if you like, and then buy the CD next week!

Be Thou My Vision.mp3