Love

This piece was composed for a wedding. It celebrates the complexity and beauty of love, understood as both the sacred emotion of bride and groom and also, in a broader sense, as charitable love, as taught by Christ and expressed in this case in the second letter from St. Paul to the Corinthians.
 

 based on the Gregorian chant melody

  "An Ever-Fixed Mark" was written for the new music ensemble, C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective for their February 2009 "Shakespeare Settings" concert. This piece is a setting of Sonnet 116. I composed this in an attempt to express the depth of what "love" means to me in the context of the sonnet, a beautiful text that describes a lasting love beyond all things.

William Blake, born in London in 1757, penned "To the Evening Star" around the age of 20. One of the most famous British poets, Blake is known as a visionary mystic who proclaimed the supremacy of the imagination over the rationalism and materialism of the 18th-century.
This musical setting, both intimately tender and fiercely vehement, is meant to depict our human vulnerability as we passionately encounter all of life's beauty.
Read more about the piece here:

The recording submitted is conducted by the composer, who has completed the questions below.