DAN FORREST
Dan Forrest was born in Elmira, NY, in 1978. He holds graduate degrees in both piano performance and composition. His composition teachers have included James Barnes, Dwight Gustafson, Joan Pinkston, and Alice Parker.
Dan’s concert works have received numerous awards and acclamations. His choral work Words From Paradise (Hinshaw Music, 2007) won the American Choral Director’s Association Raymond Brock Competition as well as a 2006 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award. His setting of All People That on Earth Do Dwell won the 2007 Donald Sutherland Endowment Composition Contest. His other choral concert works (published by Hinshaw) have won awards including the University of Kansas Choral Society Composition Contest, the Vanguard Premieres Choral Competition, annual ASCAP Standard Awards since 2003, and the Anthony Cius Award.
Dan has also published church music in various genres with nine different publishers. He regularly receives commissions for both choral and instrumental works from churches and performing groups. Dan composed all of the music for the first 12 Kids 4 Truth original songs (lyrics written by Eileen Berry).
Dan's choral anthems have received favorable review in the ACDA Choral Journal, as well as numerous Editor’s Choice designations from Pepper Music and Creator Magazine. Dan also received the $5,000 First Prize from the John Ness Beck Foundation for 2005 for his best-selling choral anthem, “The King Of Love My Shepherd Is” (Beckenhorst Press 2004).
Dan’s recent commissions include Make A Joyful Noise! (chorus and orchestra) for the 2006 South Carolina Music Educator’s Association convention, Three Nocturnes (chorus and percussion ensemble) for the West Valley Chorale of Phoenix, AZ (April 2007), and Arise, Shine! (chorus and orchestra), which was premiered in Carnegie Hall in February 2007. Most recently, Dan collaborated with well-known poet Anthony Silvestri on a commission for the University of Kansas School of Music. Dan recently defended his dissertation, a 35-minute work for chorus and orchestra entitled DE PROFUNDIS, and received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Kansas. He currently teaches theory and composition at Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC.
He is listed in Who’s Who In America, is a member of the American Choral Directors Association and the College Music Society, and is a Fellow of Melodious Accord. His music has been broadcast on NPR stations on multiple occasions. Recent all-Forrest concerts include a “ForrestFest” (October 2007) at Bob Jones University, and a week long residency at Houston Baptist University in February 2008 which culminated in an extended all-Forrest concert.
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