Shout for Joy is available for purchase directly from Hal Leonard. Score excerpts can be viewed here. If you are a choral director and would like a complimentary copy, please use the Contact form to request one, and include your mailing address.

Here is a complete stream of the 2002 performance of the piece by the New Jersey All-State Choir:

Check out these related projects:

   Two Poems of Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

   John Chisum: A Table in the Wilderness

   I Shall Know Why: a choral setting of Emily Dickinson

Written in concerto style, this piece is for a cappella choir with a soprano soloist. I was captivated by the text, which begins and ends with these heartbreaking bookends:

Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She’s resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband–weep no more;
Grief-stricken son–weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter –weep no more;
She only just gone home.

In between the bookends, a beautiful narrative spins, a story of God dealing with a grief-stricken woman (partially excerpted here):

Day before yesterday morning,
God was looking down from his great, high heaven,
Looking down on all his children,
And his eye fell of Sister Caroline.

Then off to the races with an adventure:

Call Death!–Call Death!
And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven
Till it reached away back to that shadowy place,
Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.

And Death heard the summons,
And he leaped on his fastest horse,
Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
Up the golden street Death galloped,

This piece, which has not yet been performed, follows the form of the original poem exactly, with a somewhat dissonant reflective introduction, and then a series of episodes at medium and fast tempos as the story unfolds, concluding with a return to the introduction to cap off the piece. In the faster adventure sections, I spent a lot of time writing the highly rhythmic inner lines to create minimalistic pulsing textures to propel the movement.

The score of this composition is available for purchase for $9.99, which includes unlimited reproduction rights for one choir/conductor/director to perform the piece in a season. The first page of the score to Go Down, Death can be previewed for free by clicking the thumbnail to the right. If you are a choral director who would like to peruse the score for evaluation, please use the Contact page.

Check out these related projects:

   Two Poems of Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

   I Shall Know Why: a choral setting of Emily Dickinson

   Vocal arranging for NBC’s The Sing-Off

The text of the two poems, Night Winds and Rain Music, was written by Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. (1885-1919), a playwright, journalist, and poet from Louisville, Kentucky.

The score of this composition is available for purchase for $9.99, which includes unlimited reproduction rights for one choir/conductor/director to perform the piece in a season. The first page of the score to “Night Winds” can be previewed for free by clicking the thumbnail to the right. If you are a choral director who would like to peruse the score for evaluation, please use the Contact page.

Check out these related projects:

   I Shall Know Why: a choral setting of Emily Dickinson

   Go Down, Death

   Vocal arranging for NBC’s The Sing-Off

I shall know why-when Time is over–
And I have ceased to wonder why–
Christ will explain each separate anguish
In the fair schoolroom of the sky–

He will tell me what “Peter” promised–
And I–for wonder at his woe–
I shall forget the drop of Anguish
That scalds me now–that scalds me now!

The score of this composition is available for purchase for $9.99, which includes unlimited reproduction rights for one choir/conductor/director to perform the piece in a season. The first page of the composition is available as a free preview, by clicking the image to the left. If you are a choral director who would like to peruse the score for evaluation, please use the Contact page. There are no recordings of this piece available yet.

A piano reduction is available for listening:

Check out these related projects:

   Two Poems of Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

   Go Down, Death

   Vocal arranging for NBC’s The Sing-Off