I'm Kathryn, and I compose choral music. Here's some you can listen to while you read the rest of my introduction post:

The text is by Robert Herrick (d. 1674):

In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drown'd in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me!

_{Want the sheet music? You can download it for free from the Choral Public Domain Library:
http://www1.cpdl.org/wiki/images/3/35/Sweet_Spirit_Comfort_Me.pdf
Want to support me writing more music like this? I have a support page at my website.}

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About me:

I was born in Canada but moved to the UK when I was nineteen. Eventually I made my way to do an undergraduate degree in playing the French horn, and then ended up as an organist at a small parish church in East London.

I loved my work at that church, but it was a difficult time for me personally and also for the parish, so in 2016 I decided to try something different. I applied for, and was accepted onto, a PhD programme in contemporary sacred choral composition at the University of Aberdeen. As my spouse lives and works in London, this does mean I spend a fair amount of time on trains; thankfully I can often get quite a bit of work done on the train.

I'm about halfway through the PhD programme now, and really enjoying it. I've had a chance to work with some great composers and ensembles, and I'm feeling challenged in my composing. My commitment to Creative Commons licensing, and the difficulty of that for most traditional sheet music publishers, means I don't really have a strong plan for what happens after the PhD. So I've been experimenting with various forms of crowdfunding, and also casting around to see if I can find a good community of like-minded creative people; to me, trying Steemit is part of that process.

I first heard about Steemit from @Katharsisdrill, who I know from Mastodon. I don't really know anyone else here yet.

When I'm not composing, I enjoy singing, cooking, scritching the cat who comes to visit, and cycling, though not all at once. My Christian faith is a big part of my life, and a big part of why I feel called to release my music under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. I dislike broccoli and punctures.

I tried to upload this picture as a profile picture but it doesn't seem to have worked, so here it is:

About my music:

When I'm composing, I almost always start with the text. What I'm trying to do, always, is to communicate the text clearly and lovingly to the listeners, so that they understand it on a different level than they might by reading it. I use a lot of word painting, sometimes in the shape of the melody and sometimes more in the underlying structure of pieces. I don't tend toward a lot of unnecessary repetition of words or musical ideas; many of my pieces are under two minutes long, and most are under five. This brevity means they are often more useful in church services than in concerts, though I'm trying now to compose some of the shorter pieces in sets that could be performed together as a group. I take a lot of my musical inspiration from hymn tunes and chime tunes, as well as Renaissance polyphony and the traditions of plainsong and Anglican chant. I also enjoy exploring different modes, and interrupted or deceptive cadences.

I do also compose secular choral music, but with the PhD being in sacred music it's a matter of getting to it when I have time.

Over to you:

1. What's one of your favourite pieces of choral music?
2. Are there other Creative Commons musicians on Steemit that you think I should follow? Let me know who they are, please!
3. Is there any public domain or CC-licensed poetry you think I should set to music? I'm always looking for texts that resonate with me!