In the midst of several other projects (some musical, some pedagogical, some domestic!), my collaboration with Anthony Silvestri is progressing quite nicely. The piece, “Oread Farewell”, is nearly completed, and I’m enjoying going back and forth with such a wordsmith and lyric artist as Silvestri.
Also, I got an email today saying that I won the Donald S. Sutherland Endowment Fund Competition- a 2500 dollar award! I wasn’t able to do much else besides my dissertation in the last year, but I did enter this, and now I’m glad I did! We’re a) speechless, b) humbled, and c) thanking the Lord, yet again.
Lord of Glory, my Christmas cantata, is now in print and available from Soundforth Music. Click here for more info.
The cantata is 35-40 minutes long (slightly flexible), and is musically and spiritually rewarding, without excessive difficulty. The narration is all Scripture pertaining to Christ’s glory and incarnation. It’s designed to be as flexible as possible: it can be done with a small SATB choir and piano, or with additional options including congregational involvement, obbligato C instrument and trumpet (included in cantata book), children’s choir, or orchestral parts.
Products available from Soundforth include cantata books, demo CDs, or a “preview pack” with one book and one CD for 10.00. Even if you’re not interested in performing this cantata, you might want to purchase a CD or the preview pack, so that you can listen to the recording. Joan Pinkston and David Rasbach produced the recording, with orchestra and a great choir, and it’s fabulous. It’d make a great “regular-listening” Christmas CD, I think!
By the way, the orchestration is available directly from me, not from Soundforth or Sacredaudio.com; if you call SF about it, they’ll refer you to me. 
I’m particularly excited about this release, and I hope the cantata will be well received in many churches. Feel free to contact me (use the “Contact Dan” tab at the top) with any questions.
You Are The Music was premiered Sunday June 3 in Dearborn, MI- with great success! Kevin Dewey and the Vanguard Voices sang it with great enthusiasm and a wonderful range of emotions, from tiny “lean-forward-in-your-seat” pianissimos to thundering fortissimos at the climax. Overall, it came across wonderfully- it was powerful and very moving. It was very well received by choir, conductor, and audience alike- for which I’m thankful, since I had never heard it before!
I greatly enjoyed seeing Kevin and all the singers in Vanguard again- wonderful to reacquaint with some, and meet others for the first time. I also had a great time meeting Mark Dal Porto (head of theory/comp at Eastern New Mexico University- his “At Midnight” was a powerful piece), Guy Forbes (conductor at Milliken U, whose O Nata Lux was lushly wonderful, and whose family made me miss my own!), and Mary Ann Walters (teacher of composition and orchestration at Manhattanville College in New York City- her “O, only for so short a while” was a very creative setting of an old Aztec text). We had a great time talking in pairs and as a group about various aspects of composition, the choral art, and many other things.
I’m back in SC again now, with an orchestration due to Hal Leonard in 11 days (…and I’ve hardly started on it, with all the work that’s needed to be done around the house, getting all our new SC affairs in order with house, vehicles, etc., the trip to Detroit, etc….) I’d better get busy on it!
This weekend is the premiere of You Are The Music by the Vanguard Voices- I’ll be there for the rehearsal Saturday and the performance Sunday. I’ve never heard the piece performed, so it’ll truly be a premiere. We’ll see how it goes! I’m looking forward to seeing and working with Kevin and all the Vanguard singers again, and also to meeting the other award winners…
