About Me

Thank you for visiting tonywardmusic.com. I am a composer of music for communities gathered in worship and prayer, focusing on the tradition of the Roman Catholic faith.

I am a lifelong resident of Omaha, Nebraska, and grew up in a former firehouse in a Polish neighborhood in South Omaha. My liturgical music experience goes back to fourth grade, singing English and Polish hymns with the St. Francis Assisi Parish choir. Throughout high school and college, I concentrated on performance and composing skills, but felt called towards directing and education. I took a part-time choir director position at St. Francis Borgia parish in Blair, Nebraska, and "found my life's calling," as it were.

I graduated from Dana College in Blair with a Music Education degree, and spent three wonderful years teaching music to intermediate elementary students at St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Omaha. After a brief tenure in diocesan parish ministry, I joined the Campus Ministry team at Creighton University, where I am currently employed as Music Director for St. John's Parish. It's a great joy to work with the diversity found in an archdiocesan parish with such an active student body.

My "journey in the arts" took me through stints in opera, community theater, classical radio, and voiceover work. As a composer and arranger of liturgical music, I've been blessed to collaborate on projects such as the St. Louis Jesuits' most recent album, Morning Light, priestly ordinations in the Wisconsin Province of the Society of Jesus and original works for the Heartland/Delta V Conference at John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH in 2007. In 2009, I'll be taking my first spin as a clinician, conducting the annual Youth Choral Clinic for the Archdiocese of Omaha.

My passion for music and liturgy runs deep, but the love of my life is my family: my wife, Jenny, and our three children, Anna, Ian, and Aidan. In answering the call to the vocation of married life and parenting, I have found a new and profound understanding of God's deep and abiding love that never fails to surprise, challenge, and inspire me.