I wrote the Living Water Composition Project for Living Water, which I directed from 1987-2009. The first fifteen years were at Valley Church; the last seven were at First Presbyterian Church.
In 1989, I was starting a songwriting project on behalf of “Seasons of Heart”, the Valley senior high ensemble. I needed something to do while I was recovering from foot surgery. The original idea was to dedicate a song to each of the eleven SoH members and their director. Unfortunately, SoH rode off into the sunset before I could give them any of the then-intended pieces.
That turned out well for Living Water, though, because SoH was a subset of our membership. So I kept the first twelve songs for LW rather than let them vanish. It was a fantastic feeling to find that LW didn’t just like, but loved their new repertoire, the “Living Water Composition Project”.
That’s not all; I tied an in-house game the Living Water Composition Project by writing the dedicatee for each song into the score. When I’d give LW a new song, I would tell them whether the clue was in the words, the music, or both. If the members couldn’t figure out asong by the first performance, I’d reveal the answer and explain why. Sometimes they solved a song quickly… but other times we waited till the first performance.
I’d hoped for the LWCP to be a “forever project”. That, however, assumed that I’d be directing Living Water for… well, forever. And God had other plans, so in 2003 I completed the last of the eighty-plus songs and moved on. So here are these songs, waiting for some intrepid director with a group of enthusiastic singers to take them on and have fun with them. Let me know if you do!