At The Break Of Day – TB/TTB/TTBB

Soaring arrangement of a Brazilian devotional work
Also available in SATB (HMC1311)
About Dr. Michael Cox

Few musical careers stretch as naturally from children’s words and familiar hymns to two-piano concert music, large sacred compositions, and analytical studies of Chopin. For Dr. Michael Cox, however, these seemingly different projects belong to the same lifelong pursuit: understanding how music is created, how performers learn it, and how it can speak meaningfully within a community.

Dr. Cox is an ASCAP award-winning composer, conductor, pianist, and educator who currently serves as Composer-in-Residence at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. His career has encompassed university teaching, church music, choral and orchestral conducting, commissions, clinics, music copying, and engraving.

The breadth of his creative work is especially evident in his piano catalog. Alongside settings of well-known hymns such as Abide with Me, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Amazing Grace! How Sweet the Sound, and O God, Our Help in Ages Past, Dr. Cox has written original concert music and developed study materials for advanced pianists. His catalog includes more than 100 piano entries, ranging from devotional arrangements and seasonal selections to fantasias, preludes, and works for two pianos.

His Grand Perpetual Motion Waltz offers a particularly memorable example. Written for two pianos and four hands, the piece was commissioned by the Texas Music Teachers Association and premiered in Lubbock on June 10, 1995, with Courtney Cox and Michael Cox as the performers. The commission joined Dr. Cox’s background as a pianist with his gifts as a composer, resulting in a work designed not merely to be studied, but to be shared by two musicians at the keyboard.

Dr. Cox’s continuing interest in piano pedagogy can also be seen in his editions of four Chopin études. These study scores use a reductive analytical approach, allowing pianists to examine the melodic, harmonic, and formal layers beneath the music before confronting the complete technical demands of Chopin’s original scores. The method encourages students to recognize patterns and larger musical groupings rather than reading every pitch in isolation—much as a reader recognizes words instead of processing one letter at a time.

That combination of scholarship and practical musicianship has characterized Dr. Cox’s work from the beginning. He earned a Bachelor of Music with honors in piano performance from Oklahoma Baptist University, followed by a Master of Music in orchestral conducting from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and a Doctor of Music in composition from Florida State University. His studies prepared him to encounter music from several perspectives: as the performer realizing it, the conductor shaping it, and the composer imagining it.

Dr. Cox later returned to Oklahoma Baptist University as a professor, teaching conducting, composition, and music theory before moving to Fort Worth in 1990. For 13 years, he also directed OBU’s Bison Glee Club. His university responsibilities included conducting the annual Concerto-Aria Competition, which featured student soloists performing with musicians from the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra. He also traveled extensively as a clinician, working with choirs around the country.

His years at Oklahoma Baptist University placed him within a musical community that continued to influence his work long after he left the faculty. In 2004, OBU presented his Symphonic Psalms as its annual Oratorio Project. The large-scale composition was commissioned by Scott Oyer, one of Dr. Cox’s former students and a former Bison Glee Club member, creating a meaningful reunion of composer, teacher, student, and university.

In 1990, Dr. Cox joined Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s School of Church Music, where he served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition until his retirement in 2009. He also directed the Southwestern Seminary Men’s Chorus. Through these roles, he was able to connect the analytical disciplines of theory and composition with the daily realities of rehearsal, interpretation, and ensemble performance.

Dr. Cox’s choral catalog demonstrates both the scale and variety of his imagination. It includes sacred anthems, psalm settings, seasonal works, blessings, concert pieces, men’s and treble repertoire, and music written for particular churches and ensembles. His catalog contains titles as different as Agnus Dei, Danny Boy, The Prayer of the Tortoise, Gloria Fanfare, Prayers of Kierkegaard, and Letters to God from Broadway’s Children.

The last of these is particularly revealing. Letters to God from Broadway’s Children uses words contributed by children of Broadway Baptist Church and presents 15 short letters in a variety of musical styles. Written for unison voices with occasional two-part singing, the work shows Dr. Cox responding directly to the voices and imagination of a congregation’s youngest members. It stands in striking contrast to his more advanced compositions, yet reflects the same attentiveness to text, performer, and occasion.

His experience in Fort Worth has also included appearances as guest conductor with the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra and the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Irving. The Fort Worth Civic Orchestra is a nonprofit ensemble founded by volunteer musicians and devoted to accessible orchestral concerts and educational programs for the North Texas community. Dr. Cox’s work with the orchestra placed him within another musical setting where serious performance and community participation meet.

Throughout his career, Dr. Cox has received commissions and requests for choral and instrumental church music and has earned the ASCAP Standard Award annually since 1987. His selection as the Texas Music Teachers Association’s commissioned composer in 1995 placed him within a program devoted to encouraging new American music and presenting commissioned works at the association’s annual convention.

Dr. Cox has also worked as a music copyist and engraver, a role that requires an exact understanding of notation and of the way musicians encounter a score. It is a fitting extension of his larger career. He has participated in nearly every stage of musical creation: discovering the first idea, shaping its form, placing it clearly on the page, teaching performers how to understand it, and guiding ensembles as they transform notation into sound.

From the playful sincerity of children’s letters to the structural complexity of a Chopin étude, Dr. Cox’s work reveals an artist fascinated by the many ways music can be learned, shared, and brought to life. His career is distinguished not only by its range, but by the thoughtful craftsmanship connecting each part of it.