ForrestWorks

Posted a few more audio tracks to my music player today. Enjoy!

Well…we’re now the proud parents of three kids- Jenna Grace was born this past week, as you may have seen in my Twitter feed. She’s doing great, and we’re not too sleep-deprived.

I’ve finally got an audio player up on my site here (in case you didn’t notice it hanging off the right side of your window right now?!)- I’m still experimenting with different options, but it’s nice to have something going. I hope to get a whole playlist of pieces over there, in the not too distant future. For now, you can hear Good Night Dear Heart (Hinshaw 2009) when you come to my front page. If you don’t want to hear it, feel free to press pause on the player and turn it off.

The Hinshaw Celebration is in a little more than a week- I’m eager to go hear the Gala concert which includes both my music and John Rutter’s (he will be there, conducting some of the concert)- but I’m not sure I can desert my dear wife and kids right now…

I do still plan, Lord willing, to be at the Pine Lake Church Music Leadership Conference, the following weekend…

Well, the bad news is that we’re still waiting for our baby girl- we cleared our calendar for this week since the due date is so close, but nothing has happened- so we’ve just been hanging around close to home, not doing a whole lot.

The good news is, while we’ve been waiting, I got two pieces done that I wasn’t even sure about doing, this summer- one is a piano arrangement of All Glory Laud And Honor for Beckenhorst, and the other is a choral anthem that I had wanted to get done for a long time, had a couple ideas for a while back, but hadn’t done much with. I wasn’t sure if I’d even get to it this summer, but now it’s pretty much done and ready to go- I’m thanking the Lord!

Now, about this baby…

Whew- I finally finished the Te Deum. It’s 3 movements for chorus and orchestra, and 17-18 minutes or so. It’s been my front-burner project for the last…what…5-6 months, I guess. In one way I’m almost sad to see it done…in another way I’m sick of working on it(!)….and in another way, I’m eager to hear it!

It was commissioned as the first major work to be published by Jubal House, the new publishing imprint of the Brehm Center for Worship. I’m blessed to have become friends with Ed Willmington, who is in charge of Jubal House and has been my contact for all of this.

We plan to do a professional recording of the work- so we’ll see what happens with that, and when… I hope we can really do it up right!