The Acis release of my REQUIEM for mixed chorus and string orchestra is the artistic culmination of a multi-year project, one that was interrupted but also fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic. For it was the isolation and space created by the pandemic that allowed me to drive my earlier work on the REQUIEM to its conclusion in 2019.

One sometimes reaches a point as a composer when the music one imagines suggests a larger form, something of greater artistic consequence. Taking my cue more from earlier composers, as my piece unfolded, I was also conscious of the sacred choral music of Arvo Pärt and Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for Choir, a twentieth-century choral masterpiece. These two composers somehow found modern musical languages that were purposefully subdued, yet ever powerful and moving in their seeming restraint. In light of all of this history, I found the path to my own REQUIEM. It is without dedication, but is of its time.

The sixteen-voice choir Coro Volante, conducted by Brett Scott, recorded my REQUIEM in September, 2022 in Cincinnati, Ohio, at The Episcopal Church of the Redeemer, in four days of sessions produced by Douglas Knehans and engineered by David Yost.