I grew up in a Baptist Church and of course from day one you're immersed in
music and then I had an opportunity my brother wanted to quit piano and I asked
if I could take his place and I was just getting ready to turn five and I think
that very early beginnings that it helped me with my sense of pitch and
just getting it into my bones I guess and I guess I really wanted to to see
how far I could progress with that as a little kid and even though it's always a
challenge to do the the practicing when everybody else is playing ball but when
I was in the second grade I had this vision of starting a music store where
all the music was written by me I of course I didn't understand the whole
thing but I always had this urge to create in fact when I was in the third
and fourth grades I would read all the biographies about the inventors because
I was really wanting to invent something but as I got older I found that I was
not very much in mechanical reasoning and technical sense so I I think that's
where my creativity went back to music the thing that I knew the best well I
think my background in music is really varied I took with a piano teachers from
the ages of four through the fourth grade then I picked up band played
trumpet and band all the way through high school as I got into high school I
started playing a little bit with my buddies they were playing guitars and
drums and that kind of thing and so we had a top 40s man when I was a senior in
high school played in the in the Battle of the Bands and then just intent that I
was going into music and getting a music degree and went to the University of
North Carolina at Greensboro and then of course was immersed in more classical
music so and even as I was studying that classical music I was doing little
things on the side with my buddies who played guitar and keyboards and that
kind of thing so maybe I have a short attention span but the more noble way of
describing that is that my interest are really varied I just enjoy just getting
into the language of music I'm just so amazed when I hear the
different styles of music and say yeah that's still music and this classical
piece is still music this is just an incredible force of humanity I love to
write in different styles because I think we have we define ourselves too
too tightly on what is worship music we have formulas of how what we need to do
to create a vital exciting energetic service and they said no there's there's
more than one way to do it it doesn't have to be a trap set with a couple of
guitars we got I mean you've got Celtic music and jazz
you've got classical of course there's just a wide palette there's a great big
menu there that I think that we don't take advantage of to express our faith
and to reach out to people whose background is might not be classical or
might not be alternative rock lots of languages there and I just love to
immerse myself in them it might be a little bit that I might be bored with
one style and I just want to say okay what's on the other side of that curtain
that I could use and and also one of our responsibilities as composers is to to
offer something that everybody else can't offer and to find what your own
individual voice is
we talk about it often when I say John Purifoy my very first piece I wrote it
from my own church and it was for their 25th anniversary and it was called
within these walls it's still one of my best pieces I've ever written I think
because back then I was working on one piece rather than a lot of pieces but I
pretty much put all of Christendom in one one anthem and I sent it to John and
then later on I saw him at a conference said hey I sent you a piece ya pepper I
heard I know that's a good piece and he said I'd like to give you some
suggestions that's it hey I got time let's go over to a church and he spent
like an hour or two that day saying okay this needs to have more in it or this
head needs to be simpler and that night I've never done this any other time in
my life that night I stayed up all night working on that
piece because I figured this could be my only chance to get a piece published and
then after it was published I thought you know this could be my only piece
ever published and so five months before it came out I I was giving people my
business card with the name of the piece written on the back of it just please
look at it when it comes out so I was just I think I sold about half of what
was sold of that very first piece but it was it was the best seller for Purefoy
publishing which is part of the lorenz now
church music I was taught this early in our seminary days that church music
really is a functional kind of of art something in a concert hall the music
might stand a little bit more for art's sake I mean people would argue with me
with that but there we're going for the high art I just have I just accepted the
conclusion that this was a functional art and my composing was to help people
express what they wanted to express I'm people say where do your pieces come
from where it is where do your ideas come from and I say I'm always listening
to how people express their faith and how they talk about their faith and I
try to find out what they're saying or wanting to say and then to give them a
beautiful way to say it there's a another piece that comes to mind of
sweet are the prayers of a friend that was inspired by my own home church
Greystone Baptist in Raleigh when we were sitting in a prayer meeting and I
was just listening to people express their concerns and then listening to the
prayers that were being lifted up and I thought that really is such a focal part
of church ministry and why people are bond together and take the time to come
together is to lift each other in prayer and there needs to be a song that helps
them express that so it says sweet are the prayers of our
friend for a friend those who offer up who lift us up in prayer who pray us
through struggles to play pray us through troubles and you're helping them
express rather than you expressing yourself and asking people to join you I
suppose
when I'm travelling around one of the things that I always work on is is
bringing the music to life usually when I'm showing up we've got a little more
rehearsal time and I know from my own experience when you come in there on
Wednesday and Thursday night and you need to come up with a new anthem for
Sunday I know our time constraints a lot of times will cause us to learn the
piece learn the notes the words and the rhythm and say okay we're gonna make it
for Sunday but I think the the if if there is a trend away from choral music
in church I think it's because we have some choral music and in a boring way we
have not invested ourselves and of course you know like I say we're doing
the best we can with the limited time but somehow we have to make it come
alive and make it vital and make it exciting
whatever the piece is if it's a slow legato pace then it has to be sung with
passion and human breath if it's if it's a fast bouncy piece then we need to get
in there and really make it happen it gospel bring your gospel chops to it to
make the the choral time in a service reel happening and I'll tell people when
I go there we don't want after the coral the coral worship ordering the Pearl
worship we don't want people say okay well they're singing it that nice well
they're doing the best they can bless their hearts but we wanted them to be
engaged and be moved by our choral music I'll give Jim Martin credit on that one
time he called me up said hey pepper I need some more singers would you like to
go and in tandem with me on a project at Carnegie and I jumped at it and had a
good time and I thought okay well you did Carnegie isn't that nice
all right that's done what's next but when I started hearing the testimonies
of my choir members and people that other people from other churches that
had gone on that they would say things like that was one
of the most spiritual experiences of my life
it was the musical high point of my life and I'm just still just just beaming
with the energy that that happened on that night I said okay that's I'm gonna
do that again if I really do keep doing it for the people it's wonderful to have
your music's songs have magnificently in such wonderful halls as Lincoln Center
in Carnegie with a giant Orchestra when the people show up for those Carnegie or
Lincoln projects one thing they know the music cold so it's a director's dream to
come in and we rarely work on a note and those experiences so you have six to
seven hours of rehearsal where you're just working on the fine points we all
have to come together and agree how we're gonna approach this and I tell
people we need to use our Carnegie voice we were a little bit straighter and a
little more open nice round tone rather than singing like we're talking in tune
so we work all that some and then I guess my thing is to to make the music
move and make it communicate and so we're working on which syllable to to
emphasize and to make it sound human as we're singing this text I tell the the
people we want to make that energy just leap off the stage not let the listener
simply observe and listen but just be impacted by our singing one of my
prayers when I go into a new place is Lord let me be a blessing and you can
just feel that energy of the people and feel like you're playing a special part
in those people's lives as you're making this music
if I had a message to give to my younger self I think I would probably say hey
it's gonna be okay you are gonna make be able to make a contribution when I was
young I was bound and determined that I was gonna you know do something with
this music art and I have been able to make a contribution I'm not on network
TV but I am gratified and just appreciate when people express what my
music is meant to them and it has moved people in a deep way in us in a
spiritual ways I think that would be my message that you it's gonna work out I
think often that it takes a lot of courage to create anything and in choral
music and I think often well is this gonna work I don't know if this is gonna
work I don't know if this is good am I wasting my time should I go out and mow
the lawn instead of working on this choral piece it takes courage to say no
you can do this keep working on it you know as you get older you have people
saying people that you had in your youth choir at church come back to you say you
know you made an impact on me and you gave me sort of a model of what it meant
to be a faithful Christian in someone with integrity we probably don't value
that nearly as much when we're younger as we should but because at the end of
the end of the road it's not going to be how many pieces you publish but what
impact you had on people's lives I think that's the ultimate value
well one word I would have for anyone and everyone that would be listening and
or watching this is I would encourage you to support everybody in this whole
process we are pretty much on the honor system in our choral music and as
educators and church musicians you would think that we would that would be enough
but the more that we support each other there's the more free that we can be to
create and I think as we support each other our level of musicianship and
artistry I think can go higher often I think as I'm creating I think well you
cannot be doing this for the money you've got to be doing because you feel
a passion but I will confess that it really helps me to think well it you are
creating it and giving it and making a contribution to the people and musicians
and churches and in schools but maybe this will help my family and pay our
bills at the same time so we need to support the publishers the distributors
the composers the arrangers everything said so that we can continue to serve
you with with freedom and and have and when you support us we have more courage
to offer you things that maybe is not the tried and true we take more chances
when we know you're going to back us up so that would be my my encouragement and
exhortation for you today
you