J. David Moore
Composer and Arranger

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Fresh Ayre Music is 2!

Fresh Ayre Music turned 2 years old on the first of the month, and we are celebrating our continuing solvency with a couple of special offers. Click here for details.

Premiere:

Old Waters
Saturday, May 10
7:30 p.m.
Lourdes Chapel, Assisi Heights
Rochester, MN
more information: click here

My submission for Minnesota Voices, a celebration of Minnesota's Sesquicentennial sponsored by the American Composers Forum. The text is by Kent Meyers, a Minnesota ex-patriot now teaching in Spearfish, SD, from a volume of autobiographical essays entitled "The Witness of Combines." The text isn't long, so here is the entirety of the portion that I set:

I've been formed by glacier, formed by a land molded by the freezing and thawing of water. I've rafted, as a child, on a lake formed of ice-melt, waving to my father as I pushed away from him under a gray, isolating sky. I have muscles in my legs and shoulders that formed in response to picking up glacial rocks, and my imagination has exercised itself upon the thought of ice lying deep on the land.

The landscape of the northern prairie, which seems so passive, changeless, lacking in surprise, is in fact a place of power and mystery to those who know its story and who carry that story on, a core of coolness in their hearts as they stoop in the sun to a rock, lift it off the earth and hold it, smelling a strange, musty scent deeper than earth, as the sky revolves above them, and from the north a cool wind springs.

Here are a couple of sample pages for your enjoyment.

Current Projects and Awards:

The South Bend Chamber Singers - under the direction of Nancy Menk, has asked me to write a Christmas carol for next winter. I had the tremendous pleasure of hearing their premiere performance of The Ditchling Carol in 2006, so this opportunity tickles me pink.

The Venere Lute Quartet - Through the benificence of the Composers Commissioning Program of the American Composers Forum, I will be writing a piece for the Venere Lute Quartet, a remarkable and scintillating ensemble. This is especially exciting and daunting for its being the first non-choral piece that I've been asked to write in a decade. I am envisioning a multi-movement piece exploring the Renaissance concept of the "music of the spheres," as discussed by Johannes Kepler from Pythagorean models, and that would reflect the characters of the six planets of Kepler's time.

Video of The Rose Ensemble singing "The Rock Island Line"

The Rose Ensemble went to Tolosa, Spain this past November and someone videotaped this. I've never been on YouTube before. As far as my daughter is concerned, I have now arrived.

New mp3 Uploads

In Choral Music for Women's Voices

New Sample Pages

In Choral Music for Mixed Voices

J. David Moore (b. 1962) has had works performed and recorded all over the world. He has degrees in composition and choral conducting from Florida State University School of Music and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In the years following his studies, David founded and directed two professional a cappella ensembles, Cincinnati-based The Village Waytes and St. Paul's award-winning Dare To Breathe. He has won numerous grants and awards through the American Composers Forum, the McKnight Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. An active educator and clinician, David has coached vocal ensembles and served as composer-in-residence at elementary, middle and high schools throughout the midwest. He is a member of ASCAP and the American Composers Forum, and is devoted to bread baking, yoga, his daughter Rosannah, and a good cup of tea.[Click to hear Rosannah's classic hit "I Love Macaroni and Cheese."]

Featured Work for May

i carry your heart with me
My friends Jill and Jason got married last summer, and this piece was my gift to them. I don't know if they or I was the more richly gifted, for I got to conduct a choir of some of my very best friends for the occasion, even though it was deep in the wilds of Wisconsin. Six of us then went to a cabin in the middle of a deer preserve and read Harry Potter for three days.


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