Music

CFA Composition Lecturer’s Work Selected for The London Festival of Contemporary Church Music

Founded in 2002, the London Festival of Contemporary Church Music promotes the living tradition of liturgical music for choir and organ. Now in its 18th year, the Festival has commissioned nearly 90 new works, many submitted through their Call for Scores project. A piece by Rodney Lister, Senior Lecturer in Composition and Music Theory at BU School of Music, was one of the 96 works selected to circulate to churches across London performing contemporary music during this year’s festival.

The piece, “Prayer of Humble Access,” will be performed on Sunday, June 18, at St Mary of the Angels Church in Bayswater, London.

“I’ve been going to church at the Church of the Advent in Boston, which has always had a wonderful music program, as long as I’ve been in Boston,” says Lister. “After a while, I started writing pieces for the choir.  Over the years there have been quite a few. The Prayer of Humble Access is a part of the Anglican liturgy. I wrote it for the choir at the Advent.” Lister then received the Call for Scores from LFCCM and submitted the piece.

For Lister, being a composer is all he’s ever wanted to do. “I started writing music when I was in elementary school. I’m still trying. Everything else I do as a musician – playing the piano, putting on concerts, teaching – I feel I’m doing as a composer.”

Lister’s been a member of the faculty at BU since 2006. He directs Time’s Arrow, BU’s new music ensemble of unfixed instrumentation, performing works for unspecified instrumentation and music of fixed instrumentation. Currently, Lister is working on a piece for the chorus of Greenwood Music Camp, a summer chamber music program based in Cummington, Massachusetts, where he is on faculty during the summer of 2023.