phyllis cole-dai

Please see the Music FAQ below if you'd like to know more about Phyllis's work as a composer-songwriter-musician. You might also be interested in FAQ about her book The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets.

Whenever someone asks her profession, Phyllis is never certain what to say. Depending on the moment, she's a composer, songwriter, musician, author, editor, public speaker, activist.... "Basically anything that doesn't pay well, I do," she laughs.

Phyllis was born in 1962 in Mt. Blanchard, Ohio, the farming community of her childhood. Eventually she left the family home to pursue higher education, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (English, 1984) from Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana; a Master of Theological Studies (1987) from the Methodist Theological School, Delaware, Ohio; and a Master of Arts (English, 1993) from The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

In 1994 Phyllis married Jihong Dai, a research scientist in environmental chemistry. The Cole-Dais relocated in 2000 from Columbus, Ohio, to Brookings, South Dakota, where Jihong joined the faculty of South Dakota State University. Two years later they celebrated the birth of their son Nathan, whose Chinese name, LanTian, means "wide-open blue sky."

Phyllis unites her deep love of composing and writing with a passion for humanitarian service. Her creative work is inspired by a profound desire to help create a less violent and more just and equitable world for this and future generations.

Along with a smattering of short fiction and poetry, Phyllis has authored or edited six nonfiction books, the most recent being The Book of the World: A Contemporary Scripture (2008). She is probably best known as the co-author of The Emptiness of Our Hands: A Lent Lived on the Streets (Authorhouse, 2004). Co-written with James Murray, this book chronicles the 47 days that the authors spent living voluntarily on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation’s fifteenth largest city and home to both at the time. Thousands of copies of The Emptiness of Our Hands have been sold over the years, a portion of the proceeds being donated to programs benefiting homeless persons in Columbus.

Beginning in 2002, Phyllis began turning her attention to the composition of music. Her first work was Beautiful Is the Moon (2003), a children’s album done in collaboration with friends. Subsequently she has composed solo piano music, recording the albums Friends (2006) and Child of All Earth (2007); "spiritual folk songs" for group singing; and, most recently, contemporary songs for performance by Thistledown, a music ensemble formed with friends in 2011. She has also released one holiday album, 'Tis a Gift: Christmas by Guitar (2009). Listeners have consistently described her music as “deeply emotional,” "visionary," “cathartic,” “relaxing,” “moving,” and “lyrical."

With the sale of her recordings and books, Phyllis financially supports social justice and humanitarian relief efforts. In the words of legendary folk singer Pete Seeger, she wants more than anything to help "bind up this sorry world with hand and heart and mind."

Music FAQ

How do you pronounce your last name?  
Where does your strong humanitarian impulse come from?
How long have you played the piano?
How much formal piano study have you done?
Can you play by ear?
Do you write down your music?
Are your compositions available for purchase as sheet music?
How do you go about composing?
How long does it take you to compose a piece? 
What have been the biggest influences on your music?
How long have you been composing music?

How do you pronounce your last name?
"Cole-Dai" is pronounced as if you were saying "coal dye". Cole is my family name. Dai is the family name of my husband, Jihong, who was born in China. We both took this hyphenated name when we got married, in 1994. Top

Where does your strong humanitarian impulse come from?
I can't prove it, but I believe it's in my nature as a human being. It's built into me. It's built into everybody, but sometimes, for so many reasons, we lose sight of it, or we lose our sense of it, and act as if it weren't there. Hopefully we can recognize that loss, and work to recover it. Music, the written and spoken word, service to others, all of these can help us to recover or restore what we've lost: our own deep humanity. That's why I engage in this work. I will also say that I have had powerful mentors along the road who have helped to nurture my commitment to humanity and the world around us. Without those individuals, of every stripe you can imagine, I would be a very different person than I am becoming today. I am more grateful for them than I can say. Top

How long have you played the piano?
As best I can remember, I started taking piano lessons when I was six years old, practicing on my grandparents' instrument since my parents didn't yet own one. That was more than forty years ago. Top

How much formal piano study have you done?
Very little. I took lessons from several piano teachers between first and eighth grades. I'm very grateful for the fundamentals they taught me. One teacher in particular gave me a wonderful gift, teaching me to recognize and improvise upon chords commonly found in church music. However, all of my teachers emphasized the classical European repertoire and style of playing. I quickly tired of that tradition. It just didn't fit my spirit. I quit taking lessons very abruptly, just prior to a huge recital in eighth grade. While I continued to play the piano in school, accompanying choirs and such, there was no more formal study.

My world at the time was very small: On the piano it seemed you were to play either the classics or church music or show tunes. Eventually, to my delight, the shell of my musical world got cracked open. Folk, jazz, blues, soul, new age, world music—all of these (and more) reawakened my interest in music, but my appreciation of the piano as an instrument was by then very deeply buried. It was only within the last ten years that I actually started to take pleasure again in sitting down and playing. That little bit of playing led me to composing, and then to some performing. But I've never studied piano music beyond those childhood lessons. In this and other respects I happily consider myself more of a folk musician. Top

Can you play by ear?
Playing by ear is a tremendous gift that I simply don't have. I have known people—an elderly housewife, a folklore professor, a school-age boy—who could read scarcely any sheet music but could play almost anything by ear on the piano and make it sound magical. Such people amaze me. Top

Do you write down your music?
Although I don't really enjoy it, I have to write down much of my music because my memory, like the old gray mare, just "ain't what she used to be." I rely heavily on technology—a digital keyboard that communicates with notation software on my computer. Top

Are your compositions available for purchase as sheet music?
Actually, I'm now giving away some vocal music (see the Sheet Music Rack in the Store), but I'm neither selling nor giving away much instrumental music. As you may know, creating a high-quality instrumental score is labor-intensive and requires much expertise. Frankly, I'd rather be composing a new piece of music for performance than preparing an old one for publication. Top

How do you go about composing?
To tell you the truth, in many ways I don't know what I'm doing, technically, when I compose. Beyond the essentials, I'm not very knowledgeable about music theory and composition. I just follow my intuition and my fingers, and the music wells up, sometimes in a gush, sometimes in a trickling of "fits and starts". Often there's a particular inspiration behind a piece—a moment in family life, or an event in the world beyond; a phrase from a book or poem; a dream; a deep emotion that won't let me go. I sit down on the piano bench, try to center myself in that inspiration, and then start tinkering around on the keys. Usually it doesn't take long for the music to let me know where it wants to go.

When I have no such inspiration, the process remains pretty much the same. I park myself on that bench and play. "Play" in the sense that a child does, without purpose, without evaluating what's happening, without an eye on the end of things. Just be there and do what's in front of you. The spontaneity of this process gives me great joy, great peace. By contrast, the more self-conscious I become while composing, the more labored and affected the process becomes, and I'm far less satisfied with the music I create. I'd rather the music come from someplace other than mere ego. Someplace deep. Probably for this reason I only work on composing one piece at a time. When the thing exhausts itself, I'm free to move on. Top

How long does it take you to compose a piece?
No piece of music I write is ever completely finished. The compositions have lives of their own. They're always asking to be changed, even if just a tad. But if you're asking how long it takes to compose the bulk of a composition, well, my best estimate for a vocal song is a few hours; for a piano solo, maybe a week, on average, if I'm able to be at the piano a couple of hours each day. (Motherhood requires making much time for other kinds of play!) Top

What have been the biggest influences on your music?
I don't mean to dodge the question, but it's impossible to answer. I firmly believe, I know, that everything I am and do and experience in one moment influences everything I become and do and experience in the next. The world—existence—is very full; fuller than any human being can fully grasp. Yet through me and other composers and musicians, that incomprehensible world somehow squeezes itself into notes, melody, harmony, rhythm, music.... The world grasps us. Just how that happens, I can't say. It's mystery, and I'm content to leave it at that. Top

How long have you been composing music?
My first try at composing a song was in elementary school. (That short, messy, fragment of a score, seen left, has somehow survived all these years. Written in the voice of a free black during the time of slavery, that piece of music must mean something to me!)

That first attempt was followed by some casual songwriting for piano and voice during high school and some very sporadic activity during my adulthood. Nothing serious. Then, early in 2002, my husband and I learned that our son Nathan had been conceived. As a child will do, Nathan changed my world, even from the womb. All at once I had to compose. I needed to compose. Dozens of children's songs poured out during my pregnancy. (With the help of some friends, a small number of those songs became Beautiful is the Moon, a children's CD that you can still listen to on this website, though it's long been sold out.)

After Nathan's birth, I lost all desire to write children's music, but the composing fire had been lit. Soon I started experimenting with writing music for solo piano, and the fire just blazed up. It just keeps burning. All this work is an absolute joy. Top