1) It provides a PERSPECTIVE for your students/choir/ensemble members to see how music comes into being.  Most composers are dead and their best notes are now written in stone, but at some point they were real live human beings too.  They solicited commissions, erased wrong notes or lousy melodic ideas, and struggled to get people to perform their music. 

2) It MIGHT result in a good piece of music that will be enjoyed by many people for many years.  Let’s be honest, most music written in the early 1800’s wasn’t Beethoven’s 5th symphony.  Many commissioned pieces today receive a performance or two from the commissioning party and then languish in relative obscurity before becoming lost to human memory…and that is OK.  Not all artistic expressions need to still be in print 200 years later to be worth the effort of bringing them to life.

3) It provides CONTEXT for you and your choir to learn more about music.  We composers bring an analytical artistic perspective to music that is somewhat different from what is required to perform music, and I would love to interact with you and your choir about the commissioned piece or another piece in your repertoire from the perspective of how it’s put together and what makes it work.  Skype, email, snail mail, phone…pick the one that works for you and I’m happy to interact.