"David Brunner's music is lyrical, fresh-sounding and always creative. His music is a favorite with the choir as well as the audience!"
Lynne Gackle
School of Music
Baylor University
Monday, February 27, 2023 at 3:31PM I had the opportunity a few weeks back to visit Andy Bruhn's Men's Chorus at Illinois State University and his University Chorus at the University of Illinois, both of which were singing my YO LE CANTO TODO EL DIA. That piece is twenty-five years old and still sung everywhere! What great fun!
Monday, February 27, 2023 at 3:27PM Last month I delivered ONE SONG, the commissioned work for the Miami Children's Chorus and their director Liana Salinas. This is the fifth piece I've written for this chorus. Tim Sharp, previous Artistic Director and conductor commissioned YO LE CANTO TODO EL DIA twenty-five years ago, and after that PSALM 150, SIR BROTHER SUN, and EVERYTHING IS MUSIC. I look forward to hearing the premiere (along with other of my pieces) in Miami in May!
Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 12:22PM Susan Quittmeyer Morris and I were music students together at Illinois Wesleyan University in the 70's. In December of 1973 she gave me a little handwritten Christmas greeting with these words by Scottish poet William Dunbar (1460 - 1520?). I had tucked this away thinking I might someday set it to music. The day has come! I just finished this little carol for mixed chorus and piano on Dunbar's final stanza of On The Nativity of Christ:
"Sing, hevin imperial, most of hicht! Regions of air mak armony! All fish in flud and fowl of flicht Be mirthful and mak melody! All Gloria in excelsis cry! Heaven, erd, se, man bird, and best, He that is crownit abone the sky Pro nobis Puer natus est!"
Wednesday, August 31, 2022 at 3:56PM I just delivered the full orchestral score of my song cycle A TIMBERED CHOIR to Chung Park, Director of Orchestras at St. Olaf College. A Timbered Choir is a fifteen-minute work in three movements for tenor soloist and orchestra, on texts by Wendell Berry. I have loved Wendell Berry’s poetry since my first encounter with it and have composed a number of choral pieces to his words. THE CIRCLES OF OUR LIVES was the Raymond W. Brock commission from the American Choral Directors Association, their highest recognition for composers, THE WHEEL a commission from the Eastern Division of ACDA to honor Doug Miller, long-time director of choral studies at Penn State University. Others include THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS, WE CLASP THE HANDS, and an earlier choral work on A TIMBERED CHOIR.
The three poems that comprise the text have to do with great trees: A Timbered Choir, I Go Among Trees, and Sabbaths. There is a majesty and reverence in these words -- wind and air, sun and shade, birds and leaves, stillness and quiet, singing and song. The timbered choir is described as “stout beams upholding weightless grace of song, a blessing on this place”.
A spring 2023 performance is planned with Wendell Berry and me in attendance.
Tuesday, August 23, 2022 at 4:33PM It has been quite a summer in Chicago's Millennium Park, where the Grant Park Symphony hosts its annual eight week music festival of free concerts. Mendelssohn, Haydn, Lauridsen, Vaughan Williams, Arvo Part, Broadway, premieres of new works and performances of lesser-known music by women and people of color, the Grant Park Symphony Chorus, Anima/the Glen Ellyn Children's Chorus, the Lyric Opera, Walt Whitman's Soul Children of Chicago, and more... and more. Oh, and Riccardo Muti leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky's 4th Symphony! It doesn't get much better than this.