5/05/2026 – When you have time, please read.

Dear Deer Creek Chorale,

I am, even today, in the thick of it writing this piece for you to premiere next fall, titled “Crossing Over: An American Requiem.” I’ve been working on it little by little since January. But over the next several weeks, it will be my primary musical activity to finish the choral score, and then orchestrate it for the performance this coming November.

And yet, I feel as though I’ve been writing this piece my entire life.

As a young boy, I remember hearing stories from my grandfather, who grew up in the middle of the Great Depression, learning music from shape-note hymns in the country churches of southern Missouri and Arkansas. He first sparked my interest in the folk anthems of American sacred music. In the years that followed, my ears seemed to perk up whenever I heard songs like “I Am Bound for the Promised Land,” “Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal,” “Simple Gifts,” and “Poor Wayfaring Stranger.” The beautiful melodies were both beautiful and haunting. I loved the simplicity of expression paired with the richness in symbolism. The texts spoke of rivers, forests, gardens, birds and fields, and gave a musical voice to all of nature, all expressing the desire to travel, learn, explore, but then finally, to go home. This really struck a chord in this Missouri boy who grew up with a busy state highway and large gravel lots looking out the front yard, but with thick, mysterious woods out the back yard.

Over years of professional music training and various conducting positions in my career, as most musicians surely do, I have been moved by the great requiems of composers like Mozart, Brahms, Durufle, and Faure, most of them setting the liturgical texts that have become our common expressions of grief and glory.

A few years ago, I wrote a setting of the “Lux Aeterna” for choir and orchestra. 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. 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, but still connecting to my fascination with American folk anthems, my own setting of “The Promised Land.” So much of that text reflects how I envision the crossing over from live to death, and I decided to use it as a basis for my requiem.

And that’s when 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. I am still using the common structure of the Requiem, with each movement having a subtitle that corresponds to the liturgy, e.g. Introit, Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus Dei.

But the texts themselves use the invigorating, colorful character of American hymns:

Come, let us travel on, and to glory we will go!

I know dark clouds will father o’er my,

I know my way is rough and steep.

But beauteous fields lie just before me,

where God’s redeemed, their vigils keeps.

There generous fruits that never fail.

On trees immortal grow;

There rocks and hills, and brooks and vales,

With milk and honey flow.

And my favorite verse that will end the final movement:

Filled with delight my raptured soul

Would here no longer stay;

Though Jordan’s waves around me roll,

Fearless I’d launch away.

I’ve been working with and composing for the Deer Creek Chorale for years now. I love writing with your sound in my ear.

And I have always been drawn to work with you because of your mission to serve. And in a way, I hope this piece is a chance for me to serve you.

The idea to write this piece and premiere it came in the days following the tragic passing of Miriam and Cliff Long. Most of the ideas and texts were already selected or formed in my mind, but as Marty and I spoke about the piece, it just felt so right to for this to be a piece that honored their lives. And when I think of how important nature was to Miriam, with her beloved gardens that were open to all to enjoy, it just seemed like a natural fit.

The music will be for mixed chorus and orchestra, and there are two movements with parts for a youth choir as well. Most of the melodies are newly composed, but you’ll probably feel like you’ve sung them before. They are all meant to sound like a Requiem of American tunes and texts.

I couldn’t be more excited to come back to Maryland and get to work with you all again to bring this piece to life.

My love to you all,

Danny