C. P. Langille

C. P. Langille’s work in music and writing has grown largely out of the practical needs of the communities he has served. After many years as a church organist, he moved into contemporary worship leading, developing an approach to church music shaped by both traditional hymnody and modern worship.

For the past sixteen years, he has been teaching school band, working with young musicians across a wide range of ability levels. His arranging began, in part, out of necessity: sometimes the music he wanted for a particular school band simply did not exist in a form that suited the musicians in front of him. Writing and arranging became a way of creating music for real ensembles—with their particular strengths, limitations, personalities, and possibilities. That practical beginning eventually grew into a catalogue of music for school, concert, and church musicians.

His writing followed a similarly unplanned path. Star Bright, Angel Light, his first play, began as a Christmas production written for his first elementary school—a tiny rural school of just forty-seven students. The challenge was not merely to write a Christmas play, but to create something that could involve an unusually large proportion of a very small school. What began as a solution for one particular group of children became the beginning of a much broader interest in drama and writing.

Today, Langille’s work ranges from concert and educational music to worship, drama, devotional writing, and imaginative fiction. Though those forms may seem varied, they share a common beginning: creating something because there are particular people who might benefit from performing it, singing it, or reading it.