Several years ago, I arranged the old Austrian carol “Still, Still, Still” for my church choir. It was fairly simple, but I liked what I came up with. As soon as that arrangement was done, I started thinking about what it would take to turn that arrangement into a more emotional piece for my chorus, Northwest Sound. It took over a year to figure out the right way to approach it. She probably doesn’t remember it, but I had a 45-minute session with Mo Field at Harmony University in 2016 that opened my eyes on how to do something like this. And then I listened to a lot of Eric Whitacre and Anuna. What I came up with isn’t barbershop, but it’s pretty.

Northwest Sound sang it for the first time in 2017, and we’ve sung it nearly every year since. This arrangement is treated differently by my friends than any other arrangement of mine we’ve sung together. Nearly every single time we run through it in rehearsal – even five years later – someone speaks up and thanks me for creating this arrangement. They really like to sing it, and that’s so gratifying to me to have brought that kind of joy into people’s lives. I do consider this still one of my best arrangements. I’d love for it to get sung more widely.