This is, literally, my musical diary–notes fresh from my pen and recorded in a few hours. You can find my finished works elsewhere; here, it's all about capturing the moment!
Carlos and I being served drinks by a statue in Indianapolis.
Update 10/28/21: Sheet music for this piece can now be purchased at gregscheer.com.
My friend Carlos Colón directs worship at Baylor University. He recently asked if I had anything for string quintet that might work as an interlude for an upcoming Advent service. And he needed it quickly. I sent him a few ideas, including this fugal intro to the Advent hymn, “Savior of the Nations, Come.” I thought I was going to be able to simply adapt what I had written before, but once I got started it was clear that I needed to rewrite it from the ground up. Two days from inquiry to completed score. That’s how I roll.
Lately, a large part of my work for the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship has been translating and arranging Hispanic worship songs for the forthcoming bilingual (Spanish/English) hymnal. These songs have included everything from the smooth pop praise of Marcos Witt to the joyous coritos that travel from church to church in Latin America and the USA, often changing as they go. I’ve completed almost 50 songs and have at least another 25 to go before my work is done.
To give you a taste of the project, my boys and I recorded “Oh, Jerusalén, que bonita eres / Oh, Jerusalem, How You Shine with Beauty.” The MP3 is above. You’ll just have to wait until the hymnal is published to see the music!
The Scheer Boys: they’re not only your favorite boy band, they’re a biking team!
One of the most satisfying things about writing music for the church is to see how different songs migrate. “Abana/The Arabic Lord’s Prayer” is quickly becoming one of the most popular global songs I’ve translated and arranged. It was already a beloved song among Arabic-speaking Christians, and it strikes a deep chord with Western churches that are trying to embrace the communion of saints in an age of division.
My friend Denise Makinson at Southwood Lutheran Church in Lincoln, NE recently sent me this fine recording of her choir and instrumentalists introducing “Abana” to their congregation. Wonderful!
When I contacted a few people who had requested it over the years, Connecticut conductor Sue Riley told me she no longer had a women’s choir but would love to sing it with her mixed church choir. So I got back to work and produced an arrangement for SATB choir, piano, and flute.
While I was at it, I created a new translation. The existing translations (Suppe: Lord, you have come to the lakeshore, Jabusch: Lord, when you came to the seashore, Marshall: You have come down to the lakeshore) all have awkward phrases and misplaced emphases that the draw attention away from the simple beauty of the song. I wanted a translation that was smooth as butter:
1. Lord, you have come to the harbor
Seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy,
But only asking that I would follow.
O Lord, you have smiled upon me. You have sought me, and called me by name. Now my boat lies on the shoreline behind me, For with you I will seek other seas.
2. You know I’ve nothing to offer:
I’ve no treasure, just nets for fishing,
And two strong hands you made for working. Refrain
3. Lord, I will give you my labors,
Share my strength with those that are weary,
And share your love, your love unending. Refrain
4. You call me on to new waters
To seek those who are waiting and thirsting.
O my dear Jesus, I gladly follow. Refrain
Señor, me has mirado a los ojos, sonriendo has dicho mi nombre, en la arena he dejado mi barca, junto a ti buscaré otro mar.
I recently completed a full choral arrangement of Wendell Kimbrough’s “Rejoice in All Your Works.” (Which reminds me that I’ve forgotten to post it here on my blog.) Paul Ryan led it at Sunday’s LOFT service at Calvin College with a full band and the Campus Choir. Pretty cool. It starts at 13:28 minutes into the video below.
I’m just coming down from the mountaintop known as the annual Calvin Worship Symposium. Beyond the 4 sessions and 2 services I helped lead, I contributed an arrangement to the service led by Bruce Benedict and the Hope College worship team. At 18:15 in the video below you’ll hear my string arrangement of Bethany Brooks‘ “Sanctus.” Bethany wrote a fine song–simple and stately–and I knew the best thing I could do is simply stay out of they way.
While tracking down recordings of my arrangements from this year’s Calvin College Lessons and Carols service, I was also able to locate a recording of “Pentecostal Splendor” from the service in 2014. The vivid imagery of the text by John E. Speares and the rugged melody by Dale Wood gave me plenty of material to work with. It sounded splendid with a huge choir, pipe organ*, and brass quintet. You can email me for a score or read the full program here: http://worship.calvin.edu/resources/resource-library/a-pentecostal-christmas
*I should mention that the organ sounds splendid in part because of how well Norma Malefyt played it, but also because she spent a good deal of time with me working on how to write well for the instrument.
The second piece I was asked to arrange for Calvin College’s 2016 Lessons and Carols service was “What Adam’s Disobedience Cost.” This hymn text by Fred Pratt Green (V5 Carol Bechtel) is not all that well known, but it fills an important niche in the church year, matching the reading about the fall of humanity in Genesis 3.
It is also a wonderful tune, DETROIT, which I fist learned from the amazing early American hymnal The Southern Harmony, 1835. Part of the difficulty with arranging this tune is that I had already arranged it once before in a very different context. In the end, I was able to conjure up an entirely different approach which fit the choir, organ, and reverberant LaGrave sanctuary well.
You can see the whole program here or email me to see the score.
This Christmas I had the honor of contributing to Calvin College’s Lessons and Carols service. They commissioned two pieces. The first was a musical collage paired with the scripture about Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven. I was asked to set the Negro Spiritual “Jacob’s Ladder” with numerous Glorias: Taizé’s, “Angels We Have Heard on High,” and Pablo Sosa’s. For three choirs and organ. That was not enough of a challenge, so I threw in the verse about Jacob’s ladder from “Nearer My God to Thee.”
You can see the whole program here or email me to see the score.
I’ve been making my music available online for two decades; in fact, I was one of the first church music publishers online. And Richard Janzen was there from the beginning. Richard directs the choral program at Rosthern Junior College in Saskatoon where he has been programming my pieces every few years since before his students were in diapers. Indeed, he has the distinction of premiering more of my works than anyone else in his country. The latest is his choir’s recent rendition of my “We Three Kings.” Thank you, Richard and others like him who support independent artists!
