The Musical Diary of Greg ScheerFrom the Dust You Shall Raise Us Up (Solo, SATB Choir and Piano)
I posted a song at the beginning of Lent called From the Dust You Shall Raise Us Up, with verses taken from Psalm 103. Here it is again, this time arranged as a choral anthem: MP3, PDF.
The Best Book to Read Is the Bible: MP3, PDF
At Church of the Servant we have a Basic English Service geared toward the many refugees and immigrants in the community who need a place to worship, but are still learning English. It’s a wonderful, collaborative effort between lifelong and recent Americans. One of my BES friends told me he’d like to sing a song that he learned at church in Nepal. He sang it into my mini-recorder and I transcribed it and made a simple arrangement that will allow our pianists to lead it.
A bit of internet searching seems to indicate that The Best Book is something like The B-I-B-L-E, but not as popular. Lots of bloggers refer to it, but I couldn’t find any music or recordings. I still have some questions about how the song goes, so if you know this song please contact me and let me know if I got it right!
I feel bad that I haven’t updated my blog in over a week. On the other hand, my last post was the day before Palm Sunday, and you can’t really blame a church musician for blogging less during Holy Week. Though I’m not working on any big projects, my production hasn’t completely stalled. Over the next few days I’ll post some odds and ends from the last week. Here’s the first:
String arrangement of Michael Joncas’ Psalm 118/This Is the Day. (MP3)
Every Easter the lectionary calls for Psalm 118 as the Psalm of the day. As always, I try to find just the right setting for the musicians I have. In the past I’ve done Psalm 118s by Taize (this year’s plan B), Patrick Geary (exciting, but I’ve done it too much recently), Lawler/Guiao (needs 2 trumpets; I had strings), and me (too hard). I came across Joncas’ bouncy “This Is the Day” and decided to give it a try. Since I had string ensemble available, I wrote a quick arrangement that had a number of options I could use on the fly. During the Easter rehearsal, we decided that recorder melody against pizzacato string accompaniment would make a great intro. The strings come back again on each congregational refrain with descant.
In a previous post, I tantalized you with the premiere date of The God of Abraham Praise. That date has come and gone, and now I’m pleased to present you with a recording from the event. Without further ado, I give you the Calvin College Orchestra playing The God of Abraham Praise.
I’ve written before about my love of the hymn What Wondrous Love Is This. That previous post included a stripped down recording of me singing the song, accompanied by guitar. This time I’m posting a more complex arrangement for piano. We used it last Sunday at COS as an accompaniment for congregational singing. After seeing how hard my pianist had to work (and hearing how sick of hearing it his wife became) and experiencing the difficulty the congregation had finding their note into the last verse, I think I may recast this as an instrumental anthem for piano and treble instrument. But I’ll let you be the judge. The piano is quite light in the recording, so you may want to look at the PDF while listening to the MP3.