About

Hello there and welcome to my website. I'm Craig from New England, and I compose choral music and write songs and hymns. I'm also an avid gardener (flowers, mostly), have taught high school music at a boarding school for 15 years, and am raising three passionate and creative children with my astonishingly lovely wife.

Music and gardening for me are ways to pass on beauty in this world. At my core I believe beauty originates in God, and always reflects him. The abundant beauty surrounding us in the natural world invites us into the making of art as we seek to bear the image of our creative God. Crafting beauty in music and cultivating beauty in gardens is my response to the divine beauty that has captured my heart.

A cellist first and then a pianist, I studied composition and voice at the Hartt School, and fell in love with choral composition through singing in the chorale and chamber choir. Painting text with music delights me, and choral sonorities melt me. In my compositions, I explore triadic harmony, subtle dissonance, and the natural rhythms of the text, seeking to produce dynamic pieces choirs love to sing. I see choral works as musical stories and work to capture the essence of the words with soaring musical lines and shimmering harmonies.

I'm grateful I had the opportunity to complete a music degree in composition, and later, summer programs in choral conducting, choral pedagogy, and choral composition at Westminster Choir College and Oxford University. I've had pieces performed in the United States and Europe by high school, college, and adult choirs; as a former church choir director, I have also composed anthems for worship, hymns, and liturgical music. Before conservatory, I completed a three-year certificate in biblical studies to deepen my personal faith. Sacred music is my first language, but I feel comfortable across genres and styles.

For fifteen years I taught at a New England boarding school, leading classes on musicianship and arts appreciation to students from around the world. Also accompanist for the choral, instrumental, and theater programs, I got to spend hours each week involved in the process, craft, and repertoire of choral singing and musical theater, rehearsing literature from across time periods and genres. Playing the magnificent pipe organ there was a great privilege, as was the joy of living in a global community.

I hope you discover something beautiful while you're here, and please reach out if you want to connect.