Album Notes

Denice Rippentrop

Composing innovative, high quality, sacred and secular choral music is the core of Denice Rippentrop’s professional and personal life. She uses her tremendous talent to bring modern choral music to audiences in a highly creative yet accessible manner. Her works have been performed and broadcast in the United States and abroad. Beautiful Star was published internationally by Plymouth Music Company in 1991. Since founding Beautiful Star Publishing, Inc. in 1992, her compositions have had significant national performances by church choirs, high school choirs, college choirs, children’s choirs and community choruses.

Ms. Rippentrop’s deep faith and love of music have inspired a lifelong commitment to creating music that will serve God and speak to people in a significant way. Her music has been described as “Music which unfailingly works from the spirit outward – beginning with the soul and singing through the words.” - Libby Larsen

Ms. Rippentrop was Composer-in-Residence for the Maternity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, United Hennepin Methodist Church and Wooddale Church in Minneapolis-St.Paul, MN. The residency was through the Grant Bremner Foundation and the American Composers Forum.

Ms. Rippentrop was commissioned by Ms. Louise Phillips of Washington D.C. to compose a musical for the USDA Forest Service’s 100th Birthday in 2005. Entitled The New Century Creators – A Celebration, the work will be performed by adult and children’s choruses throughout the United States.

Recent performances of chorale works include The New Century Creators – A Celebration by the Shawnee Forest New Century Choir at the Kennedy Center and at the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., Is Not This Salvation Too Great to Ignore? by the Masterworks Choral of Augsburg College (Minneapolis, MN) under the direction of Dr. Peter Hendrickson; The Woman’s Eyes by Randolph-Macon Women’s College Chorus (Lynchburg, Virginia) under the direction of Dr. Randall Speers; and The Landscape of My Soul by the Festival Singers (San Francisco, CA) under the direction of Dr. Stephen McKerscie. The Arizona Arts Chorale, under the direction of Ms. Carolyn Eynon, performed It Is In These Wounds at their Holocaust concerts in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona.

Ms.Rippentrop’s choral work, Earth Turns Inside Out, was premiered on June 21, 1998 at the Church of the Twelve Apostles in Rome, Italy under the direction of Mr. Bob Wills. Ms. Rippentrop has two other CD The Sounds of Change and The Desert Trilogy & Other Sacred Songs. The Sonoran Desert Chorale led by Jeff Harris (Phoenix, AZ) and The World Voices led by Dr. Karl Erickson (Minneapolis, MN) were featured on these CD.