This month we spent some time getting to know composer and music minister James Biery.

How did you first become involved with music, and what drew you to composition?

I was fascinated by music from an early age, starting piano lessons at age seven and then organ at eleven. As a teenager, I discovered that full-time church music was a career option, and from that moment there was no turning back! As an organ student at Northwestern University, I was almost entirely focused on performance. It was only later after I started work as a church musician that I began to write music of my own. It was a way to come up with music that was needed for particular occasions. Those first pieces were mostly shorter choral pieces. The organ music came later.

What is your compositional process like? Do you wait until everything is clear in your head, then write it down, or do you start writing and see where it takes you?