I composed “Great and Glorious Light” on Thanksgiving Day 1998 when my wife asked me to please not be underfoot while she finished preparing the evening’s big meal. I ended up walking over to our church to play on the new Baldwin grand piano there, and quite unexpectedly I ended up writing a new piece which I called “Great and Glorious Light.” I conceived it originally as a duet for me to sing with one of my voice students at the time, Nick Barootian- and together we helped our church kick off that year’s Advent season. The following Christmas my Chamber Singers sang it on the Carthage Christmas Festival, and they have sung it several times since. It has also been sung on several occasions by the Tremper High School Chorale under the direction of Polly Amborn, and by various other middle school and high school choirs. It has also become a regular part of Holy Communion’s annual Christmas program “Look for the Light,” conceived and written by Kate Potter Barrow. “Great and Glorious Light” was the first of my compositions that Hal Leonard chose to publish.
I had the honor of performing this piece with Carthage Choir at the 2011 Christmas Festival, and every single performance had me in tears at the end of the piece. Our performance of this piece also served as a means for Greg to polish the piece for publishing. Listening to this, I can tell the piece is in very good hands with the Tremper Chorale and their amazing accompanist — the only man on Earth who actually has 88 fingers.