The Foundation for Sacred Arts is premiering the works of the winners of its composer competition on August 14, 2010. This is certainly something to attend! It’s a great thing to see the rise of a new generation of serious Catholic composers, most of whom have come out of the ranks of the Church Music Association of America.
The winners this year are
Category I: Non-liturgical Sacred Choral Works
1st: Amen, Alleluia (Revelations 19:4-9), Daniel Knaggs
2nd: Credo, Frank La Rocca
3rd: He Who Eats This Bread (John 6:54-55, 58), Daniel Knaggs
Category II: New English Mass Settings
1st: Mass in Honor of St. Maximillian Kolbe, Jeffrey Quick
2nd: Mass of St. Theresa of Avila, Daniel Knaggs
3rd: Missa Sancti Johannes Apostoli, Daniel Knaggs
Honorable Mention: Mass, Paul Ayres
Honorable Mention: Mass of the Resurrection, Audrey Faith Seah
Honorable Mention: Mass of the Blessed Virgin, Mary John Henderson
Honorable Mention: Mass, Amanda Jacobs
The website of the Foundation is really growing and so are the activities of the Foundation. This is precisely the sort of support that Catholic musicians need to make a difference.
I plan to be there and hope I can meet some of y'all.
I will also be there and look forward to meeting my fellow winners, the folks from the Foundation, and some of the leading lights in the revival of Catholic music.
I am proud to have been a student of Dr. LaRocca, who took special interest in my compositional development decades ago, and more recently in another of his former students, Janet Sullivan-Whitaker.