February music

I made a new year’s resolution this year to write a new piece of music every month. Before I became a minister I worked in Human Resources with AIDS Project Los Angeles. And before that I was a composer. I was part of a composer’s writing/performing group called Lo Cal Composers Ensemble. We put on concerts of our own music several times a year in venues all around Los Angeles. I worked at a bookstore, too, to pay the bills. My undergraduate degree is in music composition from Cal Arts.

But I hadn’t been doing much composing in recent years and I realized that writing music was still an important part of my identity. So I made a resolution to make time for composing this year.

My January music was for solo piano. For February I had planned to write a piano/cello duet. But then I got inspired to write a song for tenor and piano. The text was written by a schizophrenic man who attends my Los Angeles church and sings in our choir. He had written a description of what’s going on in his world. It was so strange, and sad, and beautiful. Full of paranoia, but also tender. I set it to music.

If I can figure out how to post an mp3 here I’ll share it with you.