A Clear Midnight

SATB divisi, a cappella

The Taylor Festival Choir, a professional chamber choir based in Charleston, South Carolina, commissioned A Clear Midnight as a companion piece to one of my earlier works, On Meditation. In contrast to the text of On Meditation (from the Tao te Ching), which provides active instructions for entering a state of enlightened meditation, the subject in Walt Whitman’s A Clear Midnight makes a conscious decision to put the pen down, and let himself enter a “free flight into the wordless.”  Continue reading “A Clear Midnight”

Ave Maria

SSATTB divisi, a cappella

I wrote this for my wife’s Master’s Recital in 1997. Since then, the work has been performed at numerous festivals, conventions and religious events around the world. Performance venues include St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican; Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris; the Mozarteum in Vienna; the Dome Cathedral in Florence; St. Mark’s in Venice; and Carnegie Hall in New York. The work is featured on a commercial recording by the Taylor Festival Choir, This is Thy Hour, O Soul, released by Centaur Records in November 2006, and by the Pacific Lutheran University Chorale on Peace: A PLU Christmas. Continue reading “Ave Maria”

On Meditation

SATB divisi, a cappella

This was the first work commissioned by the Taylor Festival Choir for their inaugural season. Commissioned in memory of Rob Taylor’s father, an avid reader of the Tao Te Ching, the work is featured on a commercial recording by the Taylor Festival Choir, This is Thy Hour, O Soul, released by Centaur Records in November 2006. The text is from Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching. Continue reading “On Meditation”