RS: When did you decide this was a story you were interested in?

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RI: Any choir member who tunes out the sermons is left with a lot of time for self-reflection, so I suppose my thoughts began to percolate during those twenty-minute stretches, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Curiously, although I've worked in both writing and music throughout my life, I've rarely combined them; this is one of the few pieces I've written that explores my identity as a singer.

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RS: How did the project change over time?

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RI: This essay had an unusually long gestation. The earliest draft was written when I was in graduate school a quarter-century ago, and was moved from drawer to drawer for many years. As such, the revision process was many-layered: not just trimming sentences and weighing word choice and testing the structure, but also assessing whether I still agreed with my younger self. In truth, holding those beliefs up to the light again brought a sense of confidence that I rarely feel about my writing. The essay’s conclusions, a brave prediction when first written, are now words I’ve lived by for almost half my life.
 

RS: In writing a story about religion, were there certain taboos that you were actively trying to avoid?

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RI: That’s an interesting question. No, I just wrote as honestly as I could. I do sincerely hope no devout Christians will be offended by my outsider’s perspective on their faith; while I don’t end up subscribing to the tenets of that or any other religion, I’ve tried to circle back to a place of respect. If I failed in that regard for any reader, I offer humble apologies.

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RS: Did you find that your career as a musician has informed or inspired your writing?

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RI: Oh, in every way. Literature and music are art forms that move through time: the rhythmic balance of sentences--internally, and in conjunction with each other--is central when I'm writing. Metaphor is fundamental in both fields, too. During a choral rehearsal or individual voice lesson, the right metaphor can transform the sound; that flash of creativity feels very much like the aha moment at a keyboard. I once told a choir to imagine the last traces of sound fleeing their bodies in every direction like a hundred hamsters scurrying offstage. God knows why it worked, but it was the best diminuendo they ever achieved.

 

There's an additional, worldly way in which the music industry prepared me for this second career in writing: there's a lot of rejection in both. A tough skin and a sense of perspective are essential. In three decades of directing choirs, I auditioned thousands of singers and had to turn away many of them--which was never easy, yet there was nothing personal about it. Agents and editors who face the same winnowing challenge have my sympathy even when my own writing doesn't make the cut.

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RS: Do you currently have any music/writing projects in the works?

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RI: Thanks for asking! I've written a novel which is currently with my agents (Jenny Bent and James Mustelier, of the Bent Agency) and will hopefully find a publisher soon. In it, a man who never speaks up for himself is suddenly surrounded by animals who do. So it's a story about finding your voice, though not in the musical sense. Another novel--a straight-up thriller about the SAT's--is languishing in a drawer, but may get resurrected someday.

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On the musical side, I sang with the PATRAM choir for their new recording of the Rachmaninoff Vespers, scheduled for release next year. We recorded in the monastery atop the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, fitting our takes between the calls of the muezzin from the mosque nearby. And I'm headed to Wales in a couple weeks to develop ear training pedagogy with faculty at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. I feel fortunate that music has brought me to so many places around the world; that kind of travel fills my eyes and ears with sensations that inevitably find their way into my writing.