“Sacred Songwriting” with Dan Forrest

Show Notes:

Chris and Eddie are joined by Dan Forrest, a well-known musician and composer who has found his niche in composing and arranging music as a way to honor the beauty of God’s work in creation. 

Dan’s work ranges from small choral pieces to multi-movement works for full orchestras and choirs. You may have heard his Requiem for the Living (2013) or Jubilate Deo (2016). (Links to both of those pieces are below, if you’d like to listen for the first time, or give them a relisten.)

Dan has a doctorate in composition from the University of Kansas. He has served as the Chair of the American Choral Director’s Association Composition Committee and adjunct faculty at Furman University. He is currently the Vice President of Publications and Editor at Beckenhorst Press and is the Artist-in-Residence at MItchell Road Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

Resources:

Learn more about Dan at his website, danforrest.com

Listen to recordings of Dan’s music on Apple Music or Spotify

Watch Requiem for the Living performed by Bob Jones University Chorale

Watch Jubilate Deo performed by Rivertree Singers and Friends 

Follow Dan on Facebook, YouTube, and Soundcloud

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 Hi, I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight.

Eddie Rester 00:04

Today we have a world renowned composer Dan Forrest, who's with us. He has written music for churches. He has reset ancient hymns in new ways for churches. He has composed magnificent works that are sung in churches and cathedrals all over the world. And we wanted to talk to him, not just about his work, but about his faith and who he is as a person who has been given a gift.

Chris McAlilly 00:35

A great conversation about beauty, about the power of music to kind of move you, but also kind of take you into a different way of engaging the world. We talked through kind of his approach and kind of some of his favorite pieces. We talked about some of Eddie's favorite pieces, and Eddie...

Eddie Rester 01:03
One, apparently, that he didn't write.

Chris McAlilly 01:05 Yeah, Eddie...

Eddie Rester 01:06
He did play the piano on it.

Chris McAlilly 01:08
Right at the top. Eddie's trying to give him a good compliment, and, turns out, it wasn't his

song. We were gonna edit it out, but for your benefit, we're leaving it in. And...

Eddie Rester 01:19 For Eddie's humility.

Chris McAlilly 01:20

Yes, for Eddie's humility. Yeah, we're talking, you know, for a person who's extraordinarily talented, we do talk about ambition. We talk about how to set, how to think about that, how to set your ambitions wisely, how to stay humble in the midst of success. Excellent conversation, gracious individual, amazing musician, just extraordinary. And I was just honored to get to be a part of the conversation today.

Eddie Rester 01:50

I think it's one that you're going to enjoy. If you love music and beauty, look him up on Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube, maybe get one or two of his songs in your mind, your heart, as you listen to the interview today. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for always sharing and always just being in the journey with us. Thank you.

Chris McAlilly 02:15

[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.

Eddie Rester 02:32

As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.

Chris McAlilly 02:43
But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of

wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.

Eddie Rester 02:53
That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our

assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.

Chris McAlilly 03:03
Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition,

and responsiveness to a changing world.

Eddie Rester 03:11

So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a non profit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Eddie Rester 03:27
We're here today with Dan Forrest. Dan, thanks for taking some time to be with us on The

Weight.

Dan Forrest 03:33
Glad to be here, Eddie, thank you.

Eddie Rester 03:34

I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while. I think we started emailing a year or so ago, about finding time for you to be with us. And one of the things I want to on the front end, I'm going to fanboy with you when Apple gave me my 2023 replay, all my favorite music, and 2023 for me, was a weird, strange year for a lot of reasons. My top two songs were two of your songs, two of your pieces of music. And so I'm thankful for you in a lot of ways. And you didn't know that when you were coming on the podcast, but just thankful for your work.

Dan Forrest 04:13

Now I'm curious what the two are. Do you want to share?

Now I'm curious what the two are. Do you want to share?

Chris McAlilly 04:15
Me, too. Let us know. Let the world know, Eddie. Don't just hide behind...

Eddie Rester 04:20

Well, it wasn't two that I expected. The one that jumped into 2024, was "Oh Love," was that year, and it was from, the two were from, oh gosh... What's the name of your piece? Not? Well, you know, I should have, I should have looked that up.

Eddie Rester 04:36
You should have teed that up, Eddie. That was... You just fumbled that.

Chris McAlilly 04:39 I just, you know...

Dan Forrest 04:39
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna call an audible here and say you need to edit that portion anyway.

Because "Oh, Love" isn't my piece. [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 04:45 Oh, is it not your piece?

Dan Forrest 04:48
No. I helped edit and it's...

Eddie Rester 04:50 Okay.

Dan Forrest 04:51
I'm accompanying on that recording.

Eddie Rester 04:53
Oh, you're accompanying on that.

Dan Forrest 04:54
No, that's a piece that Beckenhorst published, but it's not one I wrote.

Eddie Rester 04:57
Why don't we just start back over?

Chris McAlilly 04:57

No, no, no, we're definitely leaving this in. We have to leave this in. This is, this is amazing. I'm so grateful that Eddie just, Eddie just said that he loved your piece that wasn't your piece. That's great. There are plenty of pieces that I love of yours, including "And Can It Be," which is your piece? Correct?

Dan Forrest 05:19
Yes. Now you're going to question everything, right?

Chris McAlilly 05:22 That's right.

Eddie Rester 05:22
"The Church's One Foundation" for Duke Chapel's reopening. But it was J"ubilate Deo," the sixth

movement, "Alleluia" and the seventh movement were my top two in 2023.

Dan Forrest 05:30
Yeah, cool. Yeah. All those for sure. That's great.

Chris McAlilly 05:37
Dan, where did you grow up? And how did you get into music?

Dan Forrest 05:43

I grew up in kind of central western New York State, not the city, kind of in the Finger Lakes area, and we had an old upright piano in our house. I don't even remember where or when my parents got it. And when it rained or got humid, it would smell like beer, because it used to be in a bar and people had apparently spilled drinks in it. It was kind of funny. And, yeah, I just love playing on that thing and just messing around. And when I was really little, just wish that I knew what I was doing. And people would play at church, and I would just stare at them like, "Oh, wow. I wish I could do that."

Dan Forrest 06:23

And I remember listening very keenly to music, too. My earliest musical memories are of my parents watching like Masterpiece Theater late at night, and the theme song would comeon, "da da bum bum bum da da da da da da dum," that Baroque Mouret Rondeau. And I would sneak out of bed to try to go hear that, because I just loved that piece. So I was supposed to be in bed, you know, like stay in bed. But I would sneak out and silently crack my door and stick my ear up to it so I could listen to that So kind of unusual behavior for probably, like, I don't know, five-year-old, six-year-old, at the time. That's just kind of a little hint of where I was headed, I think.

Eddie Rester 07:09 So you started...

Dan Forrest 07:10 Go ahead. I'm sorry.

Eddie Rester 07:10

Oh, I was gonna say and then you took, started taking piano lessons. At what age did maybe you realize, beyond just loving the sound of music and piano, what age did you realize, "I really love this. This music and the creative piece of it." How did that grow in you?

Dan Forrest 07:28

As far as loving music, it was just as soon as I started taking piano. It was just absolutely what I wanted to be doing. It was just my thing. I was into lots of other stuff, but nothing sparked joy the way that that did. And then I think the creativity sort of emerged from improvising at the piano, which was kind of forbidden. You know, in your first few years of piano lessons, you're like, "Play what's on the page. Practice what your lesson is supposed to be on." And I'm just at the piano making stuff up.

Dan Forrest 07:58

And I mean, I distinctly remember getting in trouble with my parents, who were like, 'You're supposed to be practicing and you're not." Like, "Do the thing." Like, maybe I am doing the things. I didn't know how to phrase that at the time. So yeah, I tried to put in my time on the pieces, which were just really easy. I mean, I didn't need the practice on them. I could just about sight read them. But yeah, I was just always making up stuff that wasn't on the page, and it kind of grew from there.

Chris McAlilly 08:25

What about your faith? The music that you play, there's a depth to it, and I don't know, I find a spiritual vitality to it, and clearly that comes from an immersion in the sacred music traditions. And so I wonder where you encountered those at church, and what's your faith background?

Dan Forrest 08:52

Yeah, I grew up in a Baptist church with my parents in our very tiny town in New York. We would walk about a half mile to church as long as the weather permitted. Walk the half mile home. Yeah, and we had a choir, and there were pianists there who were doing things that I wasn't capable of. So from as early as I can remember, we were there on Sunday mornings and Sunday nights and Wednesday nights, and any other time there's anything going on, we were always there for it. And I was hearing the choir on Sundays and trying to sit by the pianist so I could watch what they were doing.

Dan Forrest 09:28

And whether it matters or not, and whether it matters for here or for now or for eternity, or, you know, there's so much there that we can explore, specific things, but the music and the faith have always been together for me, kind of one of the same.

Dan Forrest 09:28

And yeah, the music and faith components were always just wrapped up together. And in fact, for me, when I eventually started composing and arranging, it took me a while to find a voice for concert music, because everything that I did was so wrapped up in church. As far as me personally, there are so many angles to how faith and art come together and interact for me now, and how, you know, "of him and through him and to him are all things," and it's so interwoven around everything that I do, as far as why I do it and how I do it, and for whom I do it.

Chris McAlilly 10:10 I love that.

Eddie Rester 10:26

Was there an influence along the way that helped you begin to weave faith and music together? Because a lot of folks that I know that become, who are musically gifted end up outside the church realm in one way or another. But who was it that allowed you to see this could be your vocation? Or maybe there was a moment, maybe not a person?

Dan Forrest 10:49

Yeah. You know, this probably sounds like a big cop out answer, but I don't think for me, it was that I thought of the two as separate, and then I needed something to pull them together. I think by default, they were always together, and nothing ever pulled them apart for me. And like even when I went to college, I went to a Christian university, and it was just kind of presumed that everything had a ministerial sense about it, and a sacred calling. Any vocation was a sacred calling, that all ground is holy ground.

Eddie Rester 11:20 Right.

Dan Forrest 11:21

That that everything we would do, and we would do heartily as unto the Lord. And you know, there was never any kind of bifurcation there. The dualism kind of came in for me in terms of, like, does it matter? And is it a worthwhile end in itself to create beauty, or is it only a utilitarian means to some more ministerial end? You know, and is my music less worthwhile if I'm not writing something that the text is overtly worshiped for use in church?

Dan Forrest 11:50

You know, you mentioned "Jubilate Deo" earlier. There's not a lot of churches that are singing Latin "Jubilate Deo" movements as part of their worship services. So is that lesser in some way? Do we subscribe to this two story dualistic thinking? You know, that was the more difficult area for me.

Chris McAlilly 12:05

I wonder if you would maybe spend a little bit more time in that area. Because I do think some of those deeper, more philosophical questions are important to kind of the substructure of your work. So where did you find the space to kind of begin thinking about that? Was that in college, or was that beyond college? And, you know, how do you think about it? What, you know, what is the place of beauty? Is it something to be explored for its own sake, to the glory of God? Is it meant to be kind of captured and used to get us to a deeper place of kind of rational engagement? Or, how do you think about it?

Dan Forrest 12:23

Ooh, and that's like six questions. Like, where it came from, you said college or kind of after college. [CLEARS THROAT]Excuse me. I think I got some mixed messages in college, probably. I had some professors. I mean, all of them, all of them Christian, but some of them either taught or implied that, like, hey, this stuff really matters, and we do this heartily as unto the Lord, and this aspect of reflecting God's glory, maybe. I'm trying to think of the angles they would have come at it from. It would probably be like reflecting God's glory, which is very valid, obviously. So some of them were teaching me that sort of thing.

Dan Forrest 13:34

Others of them were kind of saying, you know, like you should be majoring in Bible or missions unless God calls you elsewhere. You know, you should pursue those higher callings, those nobler, more direct ministerial callings. And then, you know, if that isn't what you're actually called to do, then you can sort of settle for one of these other more secular things. And I'm like, "Oh man. Here I really wanted to serve God, but like, he's gifted me in music instead of missions. Ah." Kind of the way it felt sometimes, which is not good. So.

Dan Forrest 14:12

It was actually a pastor of mine after college, even after grad school, that was exploring reformational worldview type things. And that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. But at the core of it, he was just exploring kind of creation mandate and saying, like, what did God put us here to do? What did God say to Adam and Eve in the garden to try to accomplish? What's their purpose? Like, take this earth and the fullness thereof, all of which is God's, and push it towards its fullest potential, away from brokenness and fallenness, towards a redemptive end that we will never fully accomplish, but we strive for it. And like the little mist of the kingdom is coming before it actually rains, you know. And we're going to feel that and see it in these little ways, the same way the heavens declare the glory of God, even in a fallen world.

Dan Forrest 15:09

Those are fallen heavens, but they are still speaking God's glory. And my music, written by a fallen, fallible, messed up guy who's broken in some ways--in a lot of ways--can still declare God's glory and still show his handiwork, just like the firmament, to use the King James word there. So yeah, that gave me a lot stronger foundation to start exploring this from, and to think that, okay, maybe this isn't like second-level work, or inferior in some way. But this matters.

Eddie Rester 15:40

Yeah, I think that a lot of people need to hear that what they do isn't second -evel work. That whether it's the work of being in the marketplace, the work of whatever it is that God gives you there is great glory there. There's great hope there. There's... You talked about what sparked joy in you. And I think everyone is looking for, what are those things that spark God's joy in you? Because it brings life, not just for you, but for others.

Eddie Rester 16:14

As you began your journey of composing, and then, you know, what I see is you kind of reset a lot of older pieces that had been set to other tunes. How did... When was the moment that you thought this, this is it. This is what I'm created to do. This is the thing that I'm going to pursue, because it's the thing that God has given me to do here.

Dan Forrest 16:45

Yeah, I don't know that I had a kind of Paul on Damascus Road moment where the light shone down, and suddenly I knew my calling. It was, for many years I was teaching full time and composing somewhere between part time and full time. But somewhere along the way, I just had to pick one or the other to go all in on, because I felt like I wasn't at 100% on either. And it was in 2012 I stopped teaching full time and started composing full time. And I attended graduation on Saturday, and then on Monday morning, I started writing my "Requiem." To this day, that's my most performed, most widely known piece, and I will forever say that I wouldn't have had the creative space to do that if I were still teaching. I just, I needed to go all in one or the other. And that, it just from there, that's kind of the turning point where I was just kind of able to be more single-minded and focused, and I felt like do a better job at what I had been trying to keep doing while teaching.

Chris McAlilly 17:51

For folks who haven't heard the "Requiem," maybe describe a bit of what you were trying to accomplish with that piece. It's extraordinary. We've done it in our church. It's amazing. And so I could try to give words to it, but I wonder kind of if you could describe what it is that you were trying to accomplish.

Dan Forrest 18:13

I'd almost rather hear you describe it and see how it strikes you. Yeah, it's a five movement work, a little more on the concert side of things. I mean, it's not like your average kind of churchy, church anthem, Sunday morning kind of music. But yet it's, I hope, like deeply profound and says really profound things with its texts, and then hopefully provides musical material that puts those across in a way that might be more impactful than your average Sunday morning anthem kind of situation.

Dan Forrest 18:52

And it's a requiem, which is traditionally a prayer for the souls of the dead, of the departed, a prayer for their rest. But I titled my requiem, "Requiem for the Living," and aimed at more as a prayer for those who are still here in a broken and fallen and fractured world desperate for prayer for those who are still here in a broken and fallen and fractured world desperate for shalom. Like, how do we find that rest? What are we going to do? And it works almost through the stages of grief. There's just like, starts with silence, it eventually just breaks open and just pours out its grief. There's a movement that's devoted to the anger and just kind of cynicism and fighting back, raging against the vanity and emptiness of this world, with some text from Ecclesiastes. There's an Agnus Dei in the middle that is more prayerful, prayer for redemption.

Dan Forrest 19:42

Then eventually it kind of turns to God's answer to Job about the problem of pain. Instead of saying like, "why?" in all this brokenness, the question just becomes, "who?" and "where do we see him?" And the answer is in the Sanctus text: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of your glory."

Dan Forrest 20:02

And then in the last movement, there's it's peace and rest. And kind of that prayer is answered. And it actually quotes a little bit of English too, in maybe the most famous scripture that deals with rest, where Christ says, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest." So the answer to that prayer that's been prayed all along is right there, and we purposely sing it in English at that point. Everything else has been Latin. And then all of a sudden, at least for American-speaking audiences, like whoa, like you're speaking to me now, and you hear Christ's words emerge, and there's this moment of just an epiphany almost, of, yeah, there is rest to be had. Even though there's all these other emotions and these things that get in the way of it. This is what we're working towards. So. Is that what you were going to say?

Chris McAlilly 20:49

Yeah, I would not have said it exactly like that as... But no. I mean, you know, Rowan Williams, who's a former archbishop of Canterbury, says, "Music says to us that there are things that you will learn only by passing through this process, by being caught up in this series of relations and transformations." And that's how I experienced that requiem. It very much does a lot of work. Or I guess maybe I should just speak personally. Just having the benefit, being the beneficiary of hearing that, and being with, you know, being in the chancel space as our choir perform this in the context of, I can't remember if we did it on All Saints, or if it was, it might have been during Holy Week.

Eddie Rester 21:36
I think it was Holy Week, yeah.

Eddie Rester 21:37 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 21:37

Yeah. I think it was during Holy Week. It was just a way of kind of dealing with the reality of death within the context of life. And I don't know. It was a powerful, powerful moment within the life of our church. And, yeah, I mean, I just am extraordinarily grateful that you had, that you gave yourself completely to that. I, you know, I think movements like that, I think of as being at least two to three hunderd years old, you know. There's not a lot of... I don't know. I have not come across a lot of high level composition in the last hundred years, much less the last, you know, 25 to 30. And so, yeah, I feel like you're a bit of a, I don't know, almost like a pioneer kind of, going back into some of these older veins of... I don't know. There are seams of wisdom within the theological arts, including music, and particularly these larger movements. And you just, you're just giving them fresh life. And I don't know. I guess one thing to say is just thank you.

Dan Forrest 21:37
That sounds like I might need to hire you for marketing or something. I'm grateful.

Chris McAlilly 21:43
I you know, sorry, Eddie, I'm gonna jump.

Eddie Rester 21:48
No, no. You go ahead. I've got, yeah.

Chris McAlilly 21:56

Yeah, I don't know. I think the thing that beyond gratitude, I think, is just this desire for the church to be more engaged in contemplating beauty. You know, if, like, the three great transcendentals you have--truth, goodness and beauty. Oftentimes, the church spends a lot of time on the question of, is it true? And we do all these things to try to convince people that don't think the Christian faith is true. It is true. You know, there's apologetics and all these different ways of engaging the world. And then there's esthetics, morality, not esthetics, but you know, kind of is it good? You know, are we living good lives? Are we engaged in a moral vision?

Chris McAlilly 23:57

But beauty is it just a much... I don't know. It seems like a much more generous way in for people, if you present the faith as beautiful. I do think that music, poetry, architecture, these are ways of offering the faith, a kind of theological imagination about the way the world is, or could be, about our humanity, about who God is. I wonder how you think about that. Like, how you think about offering the beauty of God to those who would listen to your music? Is that? Do you think of it like that? Or maybe I, I wonder kind of how you approach that, those set of questions.

Dan Forrest 24:37
Absolutely, I'm so glad you went back there. That's one of the questions you asked earlier, and

it was like number five or six.

Eddie Rester 24:44
That's the way Chris asked questions. Yeah.

Dan Forrest 24:46

It's the way I answer questions too, which is terrible. Um, yeah, that utilitarian mindset I think does a lot of damage, where music is only a means to some other spiritual end, but not a spiritual end in itself. So in some ways, I think of myself as less of a pioneer, necessarily. There are other composers who are setting ancient texts and setting them beautifully, and even in a very heart-stirring and, what's the word I want, kind of spiritual sort of way. But I think maybe the space that I occupy that's a little more unique is just, in the Venn diagram, it's the overlap of faith and art. That, like, I'm not just setting these texts because I think they're beautiful. I also think they're true. And in terms of bringing together truth and goodness and beauty in a way that actually is from the Spirit, and not just from the mind or looking for another pretty song, but like I actually believe this and it matters deeply, the things that matter the most to me.

Dan Forrest 25:55

This is the cause that I want to push with my music, not a political cause or some cultural cause. This is my number one cause that transcends all that stuff. So, yeah, I think that there's so many people that would die for truth if it were on the line, and they would live for goodness. But then when it comes to beauty, they're like, oh, yeah, whatever. Like, we can take it or leave it, and if it accomplishes some higher end for us towards truth or goodness, fine, but on its own, yeah, whatever.

Dan Forrest 26:23

You know that the third leg of the stool just sort of gets lost. That stool is going to tip over if you only got those, those two legs. God is true and and God is good and God is beautiful. And if there's anything beautiful in this world, it reflects God. We say all truth is God's truth wherever it is found. I'm not the first person to say all beauty is God's beauty wherever it is found. And that's in a church anthem, or in a Latin Requiem, or in some quirky piece for middle, high, middle school choir, all of those. If they're beautiful, those are the--I think it was Tim Keller who said, "Beauty is the fingerprints of God on his creation."

Dan Forrest 27:03

We come along and say, like, okay, this doesn't really serve some biological purpose, does it? Why is this here? Where did this come from? Who put this? And you kind of dust for prints, and then when you pull up the prints, you're like, oh, somebody was here. I love that analogy, and I'm just trying to create those little dust for fingerprints moments as best I can, so that people come along and say, "Oh." Like, 'There's something going on here, isn't there?" Like, this is a little signpost towards something more important.

Eddie Rester 27:33

And one of the things, and N.T. Wright talks a lot about beauty as well. And when you think about how children learn, children learn through the beauty of music, it's why things are set to music. But sometimes we overlook, and I think particularly the last 20 or 30 years, we've overlooked the importance of the beauty of music for childre. The prayer of Saint Francis, I learned as a child at a choir, a church choir camp. And the only way I ever would have learned that would have been that way until I became much older and encountered it. But at age probably 9 or 10, I'm singing those words, and that, it just begins to teach something.

Eddie Rester 28:20

So again, I don't want to get to the utilitarian part of it, but it's the beauty of music that draws us into more than we thought it would be. I wonder again, you have gone... I hate to say go back, but whether it's the hymns of Matheson or Wesley or other folks, and have kind of re- engaged them. And I know, a person of deep faith, the Spirit's leading you there, but one of my favorites of yours is "And Can It Be?" which is an old Wesley hymn, traditionally sung to a really horrific tune, to be quite honest. But you've now placed it in a way, and if folks are listening, just go over to YouTube, Dan Forrest, "And Can It Be?" How do you begin? Or how do hymn texts find their way to you in that process? How does that all work for you?

Dan Forrest 29:23

Yeah, so sometimes it's a deeply spiritual experience of my own. Sometimes it's, as it was in this case, the request of a commissioner. So this is just the commissioner saying, "We want to honor the professor and music director who has been a lifelong Wesley fan, and his favorite hymn is "And Can It Be." Would you write an arrangement of that?" And what came to mind was, probably can't hear that very much over here, but the tune you're talking about. And I replied to them, "Does he have a second favorite Wesley hymn?" And they said, "No, we want this." And so I agreed to try to find something to do with it, but I really didn't want to try to arrange that tune.

Dan Forrest 30:11

So I looked, I just kept looking at the text, trying to find some different angle on it, some way in to unlocking it that hadn't been done before. And after quite a bit of time, it dawned on me. That tune is "And Can It Be!" with an exclamation point. It says, "Yes!" It's confident. It's assertive. It's bold. We kind of have it all figured out, "Bold I approach thee, eternal throne." So yeah, there are phrases in there that kind of lean themselves that way, but that's not what most of the text is talking about. Most of the text is asking a question. And it was the question mark on the title that actually gave me the inspiration for that setting. Like, how can I write music that asks this question? Can it be?

Chris McAlilly 30:57 That's it. Yeah.

Dan Forrest 30:58

Yeah. So that everything that arose from that was just thoughtful, little more introspective, even doubtful at times.Because, like, I'm not positive I know the answer to it. And by the final stanza, yeah, we get some kind of confident answers to it. But yeah, I just tried to write, and can it be question mark instead of and can it be exclamation point.

Eddie Rester 31:20 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 31:20
It's searching. The way that the song feels is you're kind of searching your way through the the

ideas, you know.

Dan Forrest 31:31

So that's one of the ways that I like to re-approach old hymns, is to just find some new angle on them, whether I'm like, writing a new tune for them, or whether I'm preserving the old tune, but kind of writing an arrangement that fits around it, that just kind of frames it or sets it in some new sound world, some new angle, some new place, some whatever word you want to use for it. And I think that reengages people when they they hear something that they're familiar with, but it's presented in in a way that's very different from how they've heard it before. Then maybe they reengage that text, or even the tune, and maybe it gains new shades of meaning for them.

Eddie Rester 32:08

Your setting of "The Church's One Foundation" also does that, I think, in a marvelous way, because when you get to the verse, when it talks about the church by heresies, distressed, it just... It's so intimate and almost, almost too quiet to even... You're drawn in at that point, into really reflection of that. So again, that was another one commissioned, I think, by Duke Chapel for the reopening of Duke Chapel. As you think about your works, which one would you say, "This is the one that..." I don't want to say is favorite, but, "This is the one maybe that means the most to me?" Or "This is the one I think of the things, the work that I've been able to do over the last 10, 15, years, this is the one that I really lean towards."

Dan Forrest 33:05
Yeah, which of your children is your favorite?

Eddie Rester 33:08
Which of your, yeah. I know that's an impossible question.

Dan Forrest 33:11

You know, no, I can answer it. It's fine. It's often the piece that I just finished working on, because, like, I feel a sense of satisfaction and joy at having completed something that I wasn't sure that I could do again, and then if I actually do finish a piece again, like, oh boy, it means a lot to me. But, um, once I started writing larger works, they just mean more to me because I've invested so much more in them. So the requiem we talked about, that was a year of my life. "Jubilate Deo," which you mentioned earlier, that's a year and a half of my life. And this "Creation Oratorio" that just came out this last year ago, that took two years of my life. It's a 70 minute work.

Eddie Rester 33:54 Wow.

Dan Forrest 33:54
And I scored it three different ways. So the orchestral score is 300 pages, and I did it three

times, so it's like 900 pages of orchestral score.

Eddie Rester 34:06
Help us understand why. Why scoring it three different ways? Help folks understand what that means.

Dan Forrest 34:14

Yeah, so there's a full orchestra version for places that want to do it with, like a symphonic choir and a large orchestra. Then there's a smaller version that uses organ and a string section, but a lot fewer winds and brass. So if you're a smaller budget, smaller auditorium or stage, smaller choir, or just don't have the means to put on this huge orchestral production, you can kind of do a medium version that's still kind of a lot of most of the bang for a lot less buck. And then the third version is much smaller yet. It relies heavily on the organ and just a handful of solo instruments. You could even add piano to it if you want, but that would be like for a chamber choir or just a smaller situation, or sometimes even larger choirs that just don't have space or budget to do a great big orchestral thing. So just trying to make it as usable as possible for lots of different situations.

Chris McAlilly 35:08

How do, I'm not as familiar, in kind of the history of music, with creation oratorios. What's the tradition there? I assume there might not be a grand tradition, but for those who don't know, I mean is, maybe there is, tell us a little bit about kind of the history of it.

Dan Forrest 35:28

That's great. There's one. That's the answer to your question. Yeah. Haydn wrote a "Creation Oratorio" in 1799. Had its London premiere in 1800, and it's still being sung today. There are dozens, or maybe even hundreds of performances around the world still each year of that piece. It just become an absolute staple of the repertoire. But some of the text is a little unusual. He hired a librettist that wrote kind of these love songs between Adam and Eve, and commentary from Uriel, the imaginary angel looking down on creation. There's just a lot of stuff going on. People sometimes do, like, a portion of "Creation" and not all of it. Some of it just kind of goes on for a while. So I just thought what would happen if we wrote a 21st century version of this? And chose my own libretto instead of using that same one. So the title definitely catches people's attention because they're familiar with that one, other one, that's been written, but it's a very different musical and textual approach.

Chris McAlilly 36:38

So just for, you know, I was looking on your website, and there's some pretty extraordinary places that this piece is going to be taken up and performed in the coming year or two. Maybe just, you know, tell folks who aren't familiar, kind of where that will find a hearing in the next 12, 18, months?

Dan Forrest 37:03

Yeah, I would almost have to go look the list myself, because I'll probably forget something. We had a premiere in Philadelphia to begin with, and then we had a performance at the Lincoln Center a few months after that. A couple of weeks ago, I was down in Fort Lauderdale at Coral Ridge Presbyterian, with their huge, world famous organ, got to pull that in, because there is an organ part. So we got to do it with that, which is really neat. This summer, it will be done in a festival at Ely Cathedral in England. Really looking forward to that one. That's just a iconic piece of architecture and history, and some of the rare musical performances that have happened there are really kind of monuments of music history and performance. So it's just great tradition there to follow and get to perform it there. Are you thinking of one that I'm not thinking of?

Chris McAlilly 38:00

No, I was thinking about, I was thinking particularly about that one, the one at Ely Cathedral. That's going to be an extraordinary experience for you, I can imagine, just that piece of music in that place. It will be an amazing opportunity. And just it will be so amazing to see that piece breathe within the context of that setting.

Dan Forrest 38:26
Yeah, for sure. And there's a follow-up performance, the following summer, summer of '26 in Rochester Cathedral in England as well. So kind of going around the British Isles there.

Eddie Rester 38:40 Yeah, not a bad place to go.

Chris McAlilly 38:42 No, I...

Eddie Rester 38:43 No, go ahead. Chris.

Chris McAlilly 38:44

No, I would just, I just wanted to kind of follow up on that and just ask. So you know, if your work, not began, but you discrete hymns that you're finding new life within, and that's one of the directions that your work has taken. Then over the course of time, you know, you mentioned the requiem, "Jubilate Deo," these longer works that require more of you, but also that create the opportunity for extraordinary settings for music and for of a symphony of beauty to be experienced from folks you're now. I mean, you're less than 50, and you know, seemingly at the height of your powers, in terms of your training and your experience. You've got several of these works underneath your belt.

Chris McAlilly 39:43

I wonder kind of how you begin to think about setting your ambition correctly. You know, how do you steward that? How do you pray through what do I do next? How do you make those decisions from a prayerful perspective? Not just, "I want to do X, Y or Z thing." YOne way to do it would be, "I've been successful at x, y and z thing." I think that's the normal American way to go about it. But it seems to me that you have this deeper kind of vocational sense in the decisions that you're making. I wonder if you could maybe just speak to that.

Dan Forrest 40:21

Yeah, certainly a couple things I'd mentioned there. Choosing what to do next is difficult, and how much to commit to, and when I can have it done, and all that sort of thing. I'm always just looking for the place where some commissioner's interest overlaps with what I would kind of like to write myself, and that way, hopefully I don't become a mercenary where I just pay whatever you pay me enough to write. You know, there has to be a sense of integrity to that, as well, and being true to whatever my voice is as an artist.

Dan Forrest 40:52

You mentioned setting ambition. That's a really good question. I've been thrown into places that I never could have seen coming. When I think of what I used to aspire to on just a very, very small, local, provincial sort of level, you know, like, oh, maybe my university would perform this one piece of mine at this one concert for 100 people. And if I did, I think I would die happy. I distinctly remember some of those situations where I was like, "Oh, if only they could do one of my pieces at this." And now that's just so very small compared to all this stuff that God has opened doors for.

Dan Forrest 41:38

I have to stay humble in that for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is that I would just literally wither under the pressure of some of these situations that I'm put in that I would not have seen coming. And there have been times in my career where I've sort of tried to pretend to be what I thought I needed to be for the audience, or for the musicians that I was collaborating with, or something like that, because I was so afraid I wasn't enough--not necessarily spiritually, but probably more musically and just personally. Like, oh man, you know, so I would try to be the thing that I felt like people needed me to be, and all that did was give me incredible amounts of anxiety. And I don't mean just like mental anxiety. I mean like bodily, physical, like, "I have to get out of this place. I can't even... I'm going to be sick." Just way more than I could handle.

Dan Forrest 42:41

And while that was not fun, and I actually still have to fight that sometimes in certain ways, it took me a while to figure out where it was coming from. And I kind of worked through it with a counselor, and started to realize just how much I felt like I had to live up to people's expectations. And I had to realize that keeping it real and being who I am and not pretending to be something "more"--I put that in quotes, because it's actually not more than what I am. But just thinking that I have to live up to somebody's expectation or something, that's just self destructive for me.

Dan Forrest 43:19

So I actually work really hard to kind of keep it real, whether it's in a podcast situation like this, or if I'm kind of the guest artist at some big fancy thing or some gig, or a performance in some European cathedral, or whatever. I have to remember who I am and who I'm not and not try to be something I'm not, and staying humble and remembering who I am and what I've been given, as opposed to what I've think I've earned or merited in some way or accomplished by my own hand. You know, I just have to receive gifts humbly with thanks and then stay who I am, just keep it real and be humble. And that's the only way that I can avoid crippling anxiety. And of course, it's better for everybody else, too.

Chris McAlilly 44:06
That's such a good answer. Thank you so much for sharing.

Eddie Rester 44:10

In our last couple minutes, I want to shift gears real quickly. You're a dad, and so your kids, are they musical? What's your hope for them in terms of music or their exploration of music? What's your view of that in your parenting?

Dan Forrest 44:30

I have seen very talented musician parents make their kids hate music and music making by pushing them too hard. So for my wife and I, our goal for our kids--we have three kids, two in college and one still in high school. Our goal has always been we want them to love music and to love making music. That doesn't mean they have to be virtuosos. Doesn't mean they have to practice two hours a day. My youngest, who's still at home, she's required to be studying some kind of music. Like, she has to take some kind of lesson, and she has done quite a bit of viola, and this year she was kind of tired of viola. And I was like, "Fine, you don't have to do viola, but you just have to do something. Do you want to do piano?" Like, go back to that for a while, which she done in the, yeah. So this is a piano year for her. That's fine.

Dan Forrest 45:21
You know, I really want to draw her towards music making for life, rather than drive her

towards the kind of "I have to do this," that might just make her sour to it.

Eddie Rester 45:32 Right.

Dan Forrest 45:32

So, with that said, my oldest is on a scholarship at Furman University because she's very skilled at violin and viola. She plays both. She's studying abroad right now, and she took her violin with her, and she goes to Irish sessions and plays either Bluegrass or Irish traditional music with them, just as happily as she goes and plays symphonic music with the Furman orchestra and all that kind of thing.

Dan Forrest 46:01

My son has kind of morphed through a lot of things, and has ended up at guitar, and he just plays and plays and plays and plays. And he's, he's gotten so good, like, over the last couple of years, he's really stepped up. And he can pick out these kind of rock riffs, and he can play Irish music with me, and he can play folk music and just pick out all this stuff, and his ear is developing. I'm just so thrilled about all that. And most of all, he just likes making music. So the best thing I could hear from my kids is like, "Dad, can we jam?" Not like, "did you get a scholarship?" or "are you going to have some big performance?" But I just want them to love music making.

Chris McAlilly 46:43 That's awesome.

Eddie Rester 46:44
That's awesome. Dan, thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your gift in so many

ways. We just, it's been a blessing just to be with you today. Thank you.

Dan Forrest 46:54
Absolutely, yeah. Thanks for letting me join. I know my answers are long. I have so many

thoughts, but thanks for your questions. I'm grateful.

Eddie Rester 47:01
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like,

subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 47:10

If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]