COMPOSITION AND PREMIERE TIMELINE

• Fall 2025: Finalizing the text and mapping/sketching each movement
• Winter 2026: Composition and engraving
• Summer 2026: Delivery of choral/piano score. Creating the chamber orchestration
• Fall 2026: Creating the full orchestration
• November 2026: U. S. premiere on Sunday, November 22, 2026 by the Deer Creek Chorale at St. Ignatius Church, Bel Air, MD.
• June 2027: International premiere on June 6-13, 2027 with a choir from MidAmerica Productions and the RIAM Orchestra in Dublin and Kilkenny, Ireland

COMPOSITION SAMPLES

When possible, I will post in this space samples of movements along the way so that collaborating choirs can have a "sneak peak" at the work.

For now, I will post links to two works (published by ECS Publishing, and re-used with their permission) that will be referenced in Crossing Over. These links include reference recordings as well as links to the publisher website with score samples. Collaborating choirs do not need to purchase these scores at the present time.

The Promised Land

Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal

ABOUT THE COMPOSITION

A few years ago, I wrote a setting of Lux Aeterna for choir and orchestra, a 5-minute work premiered on Palm Sunday 2024 by the Eastern Connecticut Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. I intended to build on that work to start writing a whole Requiem using the standard liturgical texts. But I found that the ideas just weren’t coming the way I wanted them to, and I found that the Lux Aeterna seemed whole on its own. So I began pondering other ways to create a piece about life and death.

As I considered the texts on this subject that held the most meaning for me, I was drawn to one of the first works I had composed that I felt really represented my voice and mature training as a composer, a setting of the Southern Harmony text, “Bound for the Promised Land.” So much of that text reflects how I envision the crossing over from live to death. While discuss this concept with one of my mentors, Rosalind Hall, she told me, “Well, that’s your title: Crossing Over.”

And then it started coming together. I sought out texts that evoked the images that resonate with me, and some of the music that first drew me to consider a career in music. And I thought of my grandfather, singing shape-note hymns in country churches.

Yet as a classically-trained conductor, I admire so much of the great requiems of composers like Fauré, Verdi, Brahms, and Mozart, the last one holding special meaning for me and so many others. So although my libretto uses texts from mostly American sacred music traditions (including Shaker songs, shape-note songs, and publications like Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony), I am still using Mozart’s structure and formed mine after his, using the liturgical texts as subtitles.

But then I needed something for the section of the Requiem commonly known as the “Sequence.” This is the part that speaks of the fears, anxieties, pains, and intense mourning that is part of death. Nothing I found gave voice to my own convictions regarding this element of the life and death experience.

So I reached out to Glen Nelson, a noted writer, art collector and critic, and overall polymath and promoter of many artists, who has written texts for my compositions, along with libretti for many other composers. Glen always has an idea for you, and it usually is not one you’d expect, and once it is fleshed out, it always seemed to have a soulful, buoyant tone, and even a bit scrappy.

He told me of his fascination with the lodgepole pine, a tree that is highly dependent on fire for regrowth. The seeds within its cones, are sealed by resin, but once exposed to the heat, they fall to now nutrient-rich ash bed and begin to grow anew. This concept perfectly evokes the themes of flames and wrath that are part of the Sequence, while projecting the powerful concept of regrowth and return that is so important to my concept of death. He wrote five short couplets based on texts from the liturgical "sequence."

TEXTS
(may still be adapted until work is complete)

Glory (Introit)
Texts by Samuel Stennett (1727-1795), Choice Selection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs (pub. 1827), Christan Songster (pub. 1858)

On Jordan’s stormy banks I tand and cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land, where my possessions lie.
O the transporting rapturous scene that rises to my sight!
Sweet fields arrayed in living green, and rivers of delight!
I am bound for the promised land, I am bound for the promised land;
O who will come and go with me ? I am bound for the promised land.

And to glory I will go, and to glory I will go;
When I set out for glory, I’ll leave the world behind.
And to glory I will go, and to glory I will go;
Come, let us travel on, and to glory we will go.           

I’m just a poor, wayfaring stranger while traveling through this world of woe;
But there’s no sickness toil or danger in that bright world to which I go.
I’m going there to see my father, He said he’d meet me when I come.
I’m just a-going over Jordan, I’m just a-going over home.

I know dark clouds will gather o’er me, I know my way lies rough and steep;
But beauteous fields lie just before me where God’s redeemed their vigils keep.
I’m going there to see my mother, She said she’d meet me when I come.
I’m just a-going over Jordan, I’m just a-going over home.

I’m goin’ wear the crown of glory when I get home to that bright land,
I want to shout Salvation’s story in concert with that bloodwash’d band.
I’m goin’ there to see my Savior to sing his praises evermore;
I’m just a-goin’ over Jordan, I’m just a-goin’ over home.

And to glory I will go, and to glory I will go;
When I set out for glory, I’ll leave the world behind.
And to glory I will go, and to glory I will go;
Come, let us travel on, and to glory we will go.     

O Lord, Give Ear (Kyrie)
Text by John Barnard (Marblehead, MA, 1681-1770)

Unto my words, O Lord, give ear, my meditation heed,
While lowly bow’d in sacred fear, thy strength my soul doth need.
O hearken when to thee I cry, Thou art my hope and stay,
I feel Thy Spirit drawing nigh, when unto thee I pray.

Within thy temple, songs of praise shall evermore resound,
In anthems sweet my voice I’ll raise for blessings that abound.
O hearken when to thee I cry, Thou art my hope and stay,
I feel Thy Spirit drawing nigh, when unto thee I pray.

Meditation on Not One Sparrow Is Forgotten
Text from Shaker Music (pub. 1875, Mount Lebanon, New York)

Not one sparrow is forgotten, e’en the raven God will feed;
And the lily of the valley, Heaven grants its every need.
Then shall I not trust thee, Father? In thy mercy have a share;
And through faith and prayer, my mother? Merit thy protecting care?

The Lodgepole Pine (Sequentia)
Texts by Glen Nelson

 Dies Irae

I am a lodgepole pine whose seeds
Are sealed in resined cones and needs
A forest fire for my release,
A wrathful day before my peace.

Tuba Mirum

Or a trumpeter swan whose cry
Is like the blare of judgment nigh,
A mateless, lonely, flying soul
In search of peace, a sandy shoal.

Rex Tremendae

Save me, someone, something, some place.
Show me mercy, lend me some grace
That I may not be worthy of
But crave and need and seek and love.

Recordare

I almost recall such a home
Before I left the world to roam.
Its peacefulness I nearly see
And wonder, does it still know me?

Confutatis

I am a pine in flames of woe
But understand and somehow know
That from the ashes I can rise
And reach again toward the skies.

Meditation on The Lone, Wild Bird
Text by Henry McFayden (1877-1964)

The lone, wild bird in lofty flight
Is still with Thee, nor leaves Thy sight.
And I am Thine! I rest in Thee.
Great Spirit, come, and rest in me.

The ends of earth are in Thy hand,
The sea's dark deep and far off land.
And I am Thine! I rest in Thee.
Great Spirit, come, and rest in me.

Sanctus
Text from the Mass Ordinary, Brother Ephraim Frost (Shaker community of Whitewater, Ohio, 1872), additional texts TBD

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts
Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory, Hosanna in the Highest.

Holy, holy, holiness unto the Lord,
Love ye, love ye, love ye one another. .

None Other Lamb (Agnus Dei)
Text by Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894)

None other Lamb, none other name,
None other hope in heaven or earth or sea,
None other hiding-place from guilt and shame,
None beside thee.

My faith burns low, my hope burns low;
Only my heart's desire cries out in me
By the deep thunder of its want and woe,
Cries out to thee.

Lord, thou art life, though I be dead;
Love's fire thou art, however cold I be:
Nor heav'n have I, nor place to lay my head,
Nor home, but thee.

Crossing Over (In paradisum)
Text by Samuel Stennett (1727-1795), F. R. Warren (pub. 1875), and Daniel McDavitt (b. 1979)

Hark, I hear the harps eternal, ringing on the farther shore.
As I near those swollen waters with their deep and solemn roar.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, Hallelujah, hallelu.

And my soul, tho’ stain’d with sorrow, fading as the light of day,
Passes swiftly o’er those waters, to the city far away.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, Hallelujah, hallelu.

Souls have cross’d before me, saintly, to that land of perfect rest;
And I hear them singing faintly in the mansions of the blest.

I am bound for the promised land, I am bound for the promised land;
O who will come and go with me ? I am bound for the promised land.

I’m crossing over, I’m crossing over, I’m crossing over, that gentle river.
I’m crossing over, I’m crossing over, I’m crossing over, that gentle river.

When I shall reach that happy place, I’ll be forever blest,
For I shall see my Father’s face, and in his bosom rest.
Filled with delight my raptured soul would here no longer stay;
Though Jordan’s waves around me roll, fearless I’d launch away.