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Dominic White
COMPOSER AND DIRECTOR
From the earliest age I felt a calling to compose music. I loved nature too, and it fed my spirit. With my family’s strong support, I studied piano and organ at Canford school, then Classics at Cambridge. Next, I moved into science – a doctorate in historical seismology at Imperial College – at the same time frelancing as an organist and choir director. While I enjoyed this, I became worried that often performance and spirituality were completed disconnected. I started writing organ pieces, connecting different feasts of the Christian year with the seasons and elements. This was the beginning of Cosmos.
In 1997 I became organist and choirmaster of St. Dominic’s Priory in North London. I grew to love the daily biorhythm of chanted prayer of the Dominican friars and sisters who served this Catholic parish, their honest and intelligent engagement with real issues, their compassion and their hope, and in 2000 I entered the Dominican Order. www.english.op.org Formation as a friar and Catholic priest was a time of spiritual journeying, studying theology and philosophy – which taught me both the value and the limitations of words – and meeting and working with people of many different cultural and religious backgrounds. I was enriched by Middle Eastern music and folk traditions, African drumming and above all dance: I saw that for Cosmos truly to unite heaven and earth, it must include this most bodily-spiritual of arts.
In 2006 I moved back to the London Dominican community www.op-london.org, who have been a great support, and in the visionary artists’ fellowship of the Bard School I completed Cosmos and got the network I need to produce it. After a lot of struggle, in July 2008 the miracle happened, and Cosmos was introduced to a large and appreciative audience. The Cosmos community are a delight to work with, and I pray that as we work together and share and develop each other’s gifts, we will be a blessing on all who experience Cosmos, and bring healing to our planet.
