The Musical Diary of Greg Scheer

Easter isn’t all that far off. Here’s a new (as of 5 minutes ago) song co-written by Colin Gordon-Farleigh:
Bells Are Ringing! (pdf)

Bells Are Ringing! (mp3 generated by Finale)

Richard Janzen (www.musicshare.sk.ca) just sent me recordings from his Christmas concert, which included two of my choral pieces. Richard directs the Rosthern Junior College choirs in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. RJC is an independent Mennonite church high school (grades 10-12). His 35 voice choral sang Lo, How A Rose, and the 100 voice concert choir (which he lovingly refers to as his “mob” choir) sang We Three Kings. Listen to the recordings, then head on over and download the pieces from www.gregscheer.com so you, too, can pay a mere $30 for 135 octavos.

In 1996 I was asked by Roger Zahab–new music’s greatest friend–to compose a piece for the University of Pittsburgh Orchestra. The result was The Three Rivers Overture. After its spring premiere, Roger decided it would make a good piece for Pitt’s graduation. In fact, he used it for a number of years after that–maybe even still uses it.

Here’s a funny anecdote about money and music. At my graduation from Pitt, I got paid to play my bass in the orchestra, got paid to hire other musicians to fill out some sections, and got royalties on The Three Rivers Overture. The latter was the greatest source of revenue, because BMI calculates royalties based on number of instruments (full orch), length of piece (over 6 minutes) and number of people in audience (about 20,000). I was very pleased when I opened up my BMI check that year. The sad thing is that BMI changed their rules, so they no longer pay royalties on events–only concerts. So my source of easy money dried up…

The good news is that a new piece was born, even though it’s no longer a money maker.

The Three Rivers Overture, mp3 (performed by the Pitt orchestra)

The Three Rivers Overture, pdf

In October I got an email from out of the blue from a minister in the UK who was interested in having me set some of his hymns to music. Colin Gordon-Farleigh and I have been collaborating ever since. Today I finished our 10th song. It’s called “Let’s Stand Together.” Colin has given me permission to post our songs here at my music blog, so I thought I’d go ahead and start with the newest one. As usual, you have your choice: listen to the mp3 of the cheesy Finale playback, or print it out and play it yourself.

I’ve mentioned elsewhere about the CRC sesquicentennial (that’s 150, for those of you who are counting) hymn contest I entered a while back. I submitted three songs–one for each of the sesquicentennial theme scriptures–and got runner up for one of them. The winning hymn text was written by my CICW colleague Bert Polman. The text will be introduced to the denomination using the tune NETTLETON (”Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”). That’s a good tune choice in that it’s familiar (and a great tune), but I felt like it needed something special, so I wrote one:
Grace Through Every Generation (mp3)
Grace Through Every Generation (printed music)