Welcome to the new sacredmusic.josephsowa.com!
After years of publishing my sacred and concert music on the same website, I decided to give my LDS church music its own website. By separating out the two genres, I hope to better serve the communities for whom I write.
Toward that end, I’ve started by posting five of my best/most recent arrangements on this site. In the coming months, I hope not only to post the remainder of my works, but also that this new website can be of service to church musicians, particularly those serving in LDS wards and stakes:
- I hope they can find and put more to use the music I’ve written.
- I hope to share blog posts highlighting quality works by other composers.
- I hope to pull back the veil on how music works and explain what makes the music I recommend quality.
- I hope to share seasonal programming suggestions.
- Most of all, I hope that the new site enables me to write more church music with greater frequency.
I started writing church arrangements as an undergraduate at BYU. I wrote church music as a way to take a break from the rigorous concert music I was writing for my degree and to serve in the church using my talents. Since then, I have come to believe that church music need not be simple to be reverent or trite to be easily performable.
I hope you’ll join me in the coming months and years as I share with you what I create and what I’ve learned. And I hope that by these things, we can invite the spirit of God more fully into our congregations.
