Other notes - Weston

I started singing in choirs at age 6 and entered St. Thomas Choir School at age 10. After high school, I worked as an organist while pursuing my undergraduate degree and later in Graduate school while completing my doctorate in Music Composition. While teaching in Academia full time, I still played for a church and directed a small choir. Throughout most of my life, I worked in a church until recently. When I started composing Anointed, I realized that I don’t remember not knowing the 23rd Psalm. Not just from church, but my parents quoting it, or just listening to Anglican chant recordings while driving during my commute. It is difficult to experience something very familiar in a new way. My initial childhood responses to the text, I realized while writing, never left me. As a kid, I thought being anointed was a magical transformation that can occur at Baptism or Confirmation. A protective spiritual armor that seemed to me to be the most important moment of the text.  It was also difficult to set the 23rd psalm without feeling like I was composing a prayer, my own prayer, and not just setting text. Anointed is, therefore, a life-long response to my thoughts about the 23rd psalm.

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