Two Mondays ago, at 10:47am, while I was in Finland for the 2015 conference of the International Society for Orthodox Church Music, an e-mail came in from one of the Psalm 103 Project composers. Attached was the very last section I was waiting for in order for the score to be complete; good thing, too, because I was presenting on the score in just a tick over four hours!

The conference participants were the first to get a visual preview of the entire piece, as well as an updated status report. Alas, some hoped-for score reading didn’t happen — not enough time — nor was I able to get the presentation filmed. I will go into more detail about the Finland trip in another post; in the meantime, let me catch up all of you who weren’t with me at the conference on the current state of things.

First off, the score is complete. The next step will be to have the score engraved, with any lingering copyediting things addressed, and then published. Vlad Morosan of Musica Russica is helping us with this part. All of our Kickstarter backers who made pledges at a level that included a copy of the score will get theirs at that point.

The next phase, then, is the premiere performance and the recording. We have an agreement in principle with Cappella Romana to take this on, pending successful funding being secured. We have an application out for major grant funding that would cover about half of the costs of this phase; we haven’t yet heard back as to the success of this grant. We have other grants that we will be applying for as well, but we’re also going to be soliciting individual gifts for this phase. If all goes well, we hope to premiere and record the Psalm 103 Project during the 2016-17 season, at which point we will start soliciting creative proposals from Orthodox filmmakers about the third phase. All of this is to say — great work is getting done, wonderful overall progress is being made, and we’ve got some excellent people helping us out.

You can make a huge difference in the progress of this effort, and you can do this by making a gift in support of the second phase of the Psalm 103 Project. You can do so via PayPal by clicking here: http://www.johnofdamascus.org/support/ Alternately, please contact me by phone or by e-mail, and we can discuss your gift in greater detail. The score that has been delivered by our composers is a real gift, transcending my highest expectations; please help us to bring together a world class choir for the premiere performance and the recording.

More soon.