A Prayer for Music (2025)

for SATB choir, a cappella

A Prayer for Music
CA$2.75

Text: Book of Common Prayer (1979)
Duration: 3.5 minutes
Difficulty: 1/4

Commissioned by All Saints Anglican Cathedral (Edmonton, AB) in celebration of the 45th anniversary of their Director of Music, Jeremy Spurgeon. First performed in May 2025.

In 2013, my husband and I moved to Edmonton for the first time. Within a month of our arrival, we had already been recruited by Jeremy Spurgeon to join the choir at All Saints Anglican Cathedral. Although I was studying composition at the time, my time singing at All Saints had a far deeper impact on my own musical development than anything else. Jeremy's skills as a musician and his passion for English choral music inspired and educated me at a crucial point in my life.

This work, commissioned for Jeremy's 45th anniversary at All Saints in 2025, explores the stylistic elements of English cathedral repertoire through my own harmonic voice, adapting a tender and humble prayer from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer—an expression of Jeremy's own humility and devotion through his decades of musical service.

Click here to see the complete score.

Live recording currently unavailable. MIDI available on request.

Full Text


O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.