I often find myself falling into old habits and patterns when composing because my hands naturally want to fall certain places on the piano that I like. I was searching for new ideas and stumbled into a rabbit-hole of YouTube channels that provide short jazz tutorials and ideas to “spice up” simple chord progressions. I started to play around with these progressions and colors.

In 2025, I was traveling to New York City to work with a church choir, and the Gospel for the 3rd Sunday of Lent was centered around the Transfiguration. With this in mind, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to play around with harmonies that suddenly shift and change, parallel to the story told in the Gospel. Now, some might say “jazz doesn’t belong in the church,” so I made sure to keep it nice and conservative—just enough to perk someone’s ears up!