Walking In The Light – SATB

Moving words by George MacDonald celebrates the choice to follow God
Easy-to-medium range
bout Dr. Michael Cox

A composer’s influence can be measured through published scores and performances, but a teacher’s influence often travels farther. In the case of Dr. Michael Cox, the two are inseparable. His music has been sung and played by choirs, instrumentalists, churches, universities, and community ensembles, while the musicians he taught have carried his lessons into careers of their own.

Dr. Cox is an ASCAP award-winning composer, conductor, pianist, and educator whose professional life has brought together scholarship, performance, sacred music, and musical craftsmanship. He currently serves as Composer-in-Residence at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, continuing a long association with music written for worship and the church.

Oklahoma Baptist University played a defining role in his development. Dr. Cox graduated from OBU in 1970 with honors in piano performance and returned to the university in 1972 as a faculty member. Until 1990, he taught composition, conducting, music theory, and church music while participating actively in the institution’s performing life.

For 13 years, he directed the Bison Glee Club, an experience that allowed him to combine musical instruction with the camaraderie and shared purpose of an ensemble. Former members remember the group not simply for its concerts, but for the discipline, friendships, travel, and personal growth that accompanied the music. Reggie May, who later pursued a career in church music, recalled Dr. Cox as one of the models by which he continued to judge musical excellence. May’s memories of the Glee Club included tours reaching Hawaii and the American Southeast, as well as the lasting friendships formed during hours of rehearsing and traveling together.

Another former Glee Club member, Paul Langford, went on to become a Chicago-area singer, arranger, keyboardist, producer, and conductor. Langford has credited Dr. Cox and his other OBU professors with giving him the musical foundation, encouragement, and practical tools needed for a wide-ranging professional career. His later work included performances and collaborations with major artists, orchestras, churches, recording projects, and entertainment organizations. The path of musicians such as Langford illustrates how Dr. Cox’s influence moved beyond the university classroom into the larger professional world.

Dr. Cox’s responsibilities at Oklahoma Baptist University also included conducting the annual Concerto-Aria Competition. The event featured OBU student soloists performing with members of the Oklahoma City Philharmonic Orchestra, giving young musicians the valuable experience of preparing and presenting concerto and aria repertoire with professional orchestral players.

His connection to OBU continued long after he left the faculty. In 2004, the university presented his Symphonic Psalms as its annual Oratorio Project. The eight-movement work for chorus and orchestra uses texts from Psalms 8, 23, 47, 90, 95, 103, 117, and 148, with the joyful invitation of Psalm 100 serving as a unifying idea. Its movements range from stately, hymn-like writing to more syncopated and rhythmically animated passages.

The story behind Symphonic Psalms made the performance especially meaningful. The composition was commissioned by Scott Oyer, a former student of Dr. Cox and a member of the Bison Glee Club. For its OBU presentation, the Oratorio Project brought together the Bison Glee Club, University Chorale, Bisonette Glee Club, Chapel Choir, instrumental students, faculty musicians, and members of the Shawnee community. The result connected Dr. Cox’s work as a teacher with his continuing life as a composer: a former student made the composition possible, and a new generation of students brought it to life.

In 1990, Dr. Cox moved to Fort Worth to join the School of Church Music at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as Professor of Music Theory and Composition until his retirement in 2009. He also directed the Southwestern Seminary Men’s Chorus, applying the same combination of theoretical understanding and practical musicianship that had characterized his earlier work at OBU.

Throughout his academic career, Dr. Cox remained an active and prolific composer. His hundreds of published works encompass choral, piano, orchestral, and instrumental music. He has received numerous commissions and requests for sacred choral and instrumental compositions, writing music informed by his firsthand knowledge of the singers, conductors, keyboardists, and instrumentalists who must rehearse and perform it.

His contributions have also been recognized by major professional organizations. Dr. Cox has received the ASCAP Standard Award every year since 1987. In 1995, he was selected as the commissioned composer of the Texas Music Teachers Association. The TMTA commissioning program supports the creation and premiere of new music and submits its commissioned composition for consideration in the Music Teachers National Association Distinguished Composer of the Year program.

Dr. Cox’s experience as a conductor has extended from university ensembles to choral clinics and community orchestras. Since moving to Fort Worth, he has appeared as a guest conductor with the Fort Worth Civic Orchestra and the New Philharmonic Orchestra of Irving. He has also traveled extensively to conduct choral clinics, sharing his experience with singers and conductors beyond the institutions where he taught.

His formal education reflects the breadth of his musical career. Dr. Cox earned a Bachelor of Music with honors in piano performance from Oklahoma Baptist University, a Master of Music in orchestral conducting from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and a Doctor of Music in composition from Florida State University. He has also worked as a music copyist and engraver, bringing a composer’s understanding and an editor’s precision to the preparation of musical scores.

Across his work as a composer, professor, conductor, pianist, and engraver, Dr. Cox has demonstrated that a musical life is not built through one role alone. It is formed through the scores that are written, the ensembles that are led, the students who are encouraged, and the traditions that continue long after a rehearsal has ended.