Timothy "Cooper" Max graduated from BYU–Hawaii in 2008 with a degree in music composition. His music has been sung by the BYU–Hawaii Concert choir and performed at general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He previously served as executive director of the Houston Masterworks Chorus, a 75-voice ensemble, and today, he is a freelance composer in Houston, Texas. His story is one of persistence, healing and the determination to keep creating despite every challenge.
Opening Movement
Max grew up in Delta, Utah, and earned a two-year music degree at Salt Lake Community College. He then spent a year teaching English in China.
Max returned home to Salt Lake City, uncertain about his next step in life. While working at the Church's distribution center, his boss from Hawaii casually suggested he consider attending Brigham Young University–Hawaii.
“I applied and got in,” Max said, “and the rest is history from there.”
Sharps, Flats and a Shut Door
Max came to BYU–Hawaii in 2006 with one goal: to study composition under a well-known professor who had once worked at Temple Square. In his first week, he found the professor’s office and knocked on the door.
“I said, ‘I really want to study composition with you,’” Max recalled. “He looked at me and said, 'I'm sorry, but I’m leaving the island for good next week.’”
“I remember feeling so defeated,” he said. “I came all this way hoping this would work out.”
Just days later, Max met Dr. Daniel Bradshaw, and became the first ever BYU–Hawaii student to study composition under him.
“He ended up being probably the best composition professor I ever could have had,” Max said. “He gave me the right amount of pressure and support.”
Max soon joined the Concert Choir as it prepared for its 2007 Harmony with Aloha tour of China and Mongolia. The tour program included his own setting of “Ubi Caritas,” which he first wrote as an exercise for Bradshaw’s composition class. Bradshaw liked it enough to suggest it to choir director Michael Belnap.
“The choir brought it to life in ways that I hadn’t expected,” Max told BYU–Hawaii’s news site at the time.
“To this day, I consider the period from 2006 to 2009 one of the happiest points of my life,” he said.
A Neighborly Note
“When you’re younger, you idealize the islands a little bit,” Max said. “I remember after three or four months, I went through a period of feeling like I was trapped on the island.’”
He eventually became used to it. Then a much bigger challenge came at the end of 2008, when his father suddenly passed away just as Max was graduating.
“I felt like I couldn’t do anything to support the people who needed my support,” he said.
His neighbor Esther Macy, the director of Koʻolau Loa Children’s Chorus, gave him advice he still remembers.
“She looked at me and said, ‘Let the islands heal you,’” Max said. “Just be here, don’t overthink it, and let the spirit of aloha and the islands help heal you. And it did.”
Max worked for University Relations for almost a year, then left the islands to prepare for the next phase of his life.
Turbulence in Three-Quarter Time
Back in Utah, Max was unemployed for nearly a year until an unexpected opportunity arose.
“Even though I had a music degree in composition, I fit the bill to be a flight attendant,” he said. He spent three years with SkyWest, and a transfer brought him to Houston, where he lives today.
After years in the air, Max was ready to get back into music, and he took any opportunity he could find. At Lone Star College, he worked four different positions in the music department. Even when he returned to aviation as a flight concierge for a private airline, he never stayed away from music for long.
When the airline company was bought out in 2017, he taught piano lessons and became executive director of the Houston Masterworks Chorus. When COVID-19 hit, he knew he had to get creative to make ends meet, so he started a landscaping company and mowed lawns for a handful of years.
Since then, with a rental property helping pay the bills, Max has been writing music freelance.
Big Stages, Bigger Dreams
Max spent a full year writing his most ambitious work: a 70-minute oratorio for orchestra, choir and soloists about the final week of Jesus Christ’s life. His stake rehearsed it for months and has now performed it twice.
“It’s one of those things I hope will live on beyond me,” Max said.
His music has also reached some of the Church’s largest stages. One of his pieces was performed at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints General Conference. On Nov. 16, 2024, an Institute Choir sang his arrangement of “Joseph Smith’s First Prayer” at the Church Music Festival, and several of his pieces are available on the Church’s website.
His music keeps finding its way back to BYU–Hawaii. Nearly two decades after the Concert Choir sang his “Ubi Caritas” on tour, Dr. Erica Glenn’s choir at BYU–Hawaii premiered one of his compositions in May.
In Houston, choirs have been part of his story too. Today, the Kingwood Chorale, a 100-voice choir in Houston, is performing one of his pieces. He is also in the middle of writing a song cycle about birth, childhood, love, family and death.
Lessons in Harmony
“When you go into your education, you feel invincible,” Max said. “You think everything is going to work out exactly the way you plan, and it didn’t for me.”
He measures what he gained from BYU–Hawaii differently. “BYU–Hawaii helped me grow as a person emotionally,” he said. “I learned to understand people and cultures, and I learned about loving one another from the people there. It was such a kind place for me to be.”
Though he never once went surfing, he hiked often. “I remember feeling really attuned to the islands,” he said. “I still think about BYU–Hawaii all the time. It shows up in my dreams quite a bit.”
His advice to students starts with the people around them. “It’s one of the only places I’ve ever lived where you’re completely surrounded by all kinds of different cultures,” he said. “Learn about them, enjoy that, and develop friendships.”
For music and arts students, he recommends diversifying with something like business. And for everyone: “Just enjoy it while you can. Get into the mountains and spend time at the beach. But don’t mess around with your education either.”
Mostly, he wants students to remember what that closed office door taught him in his first week.
“Things don’t always work out the way you think they should,” Max said. “But a lot of the time, things work out better than you think they will, and that was certainly the case for me.”