This choral anthem will be coming out on GIA soon. Six years in production, it’s gonna be good… Here’s a recording of a read-through of the choral anthem, sans narration sections.
Category: Choir
Update 2/8/22: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
I’ve blogged about “From the Dust” before, but I’ve had no recording of the choral arrangement until now.
This one didn’t make it into Psalms for All Seasons and has been rejected by one publisher to date.* But I still hold out hope that it will find a good home and be loved for a long time.
*However, the rejection letter was personal and touching: Thank you for submitting your work ‘From the Dust You Shall Raise Us Up’ for our review. We regret that we are unable to accept this for publication at this time. Thank you for allowing us to review your material. We hope that you will give us the privilege of reviewing more of your work in the future.
Once again, this song is not new to my blog, but this is a new recording. And as a Psalms for All Seasons reject, it fits squarely in this series of Killer B posts: MP3.
Update 10/2/20: Sheet music for this song and arrangement can be downloaded here.
Hands down, one of my favorite hymns is “The King of Love My Shepherd Is.” I wrote an SSA arrangement of this which found a home in the Augsburg Choirbook for Women. More recently I re-arranged it for SATB choir. Here is is: MP3.
This choral/congregation setting of Psalm 13 began its life as Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed (which, by the way, I think you should sing in your church this upcoming Lent). When TCS and I were doing the initial reading sessions, I decided that the arrangement of the tune MARTYRDOM would fit both texts. This tune and text combination appear in Psalms for All Seasons, but not this arrangement. You can only get that right here: MP3.
Chris Smit was such a hit singing “Peace in the Valley” at Church of the Servant’s Lessons & Carols service a few weeks ago, that a repeat performance was demanded for the Christmas Eve Service. Sadly, he lost his voice a few days before the service, so his understudy–me–filled in. I felt ill-equipped to follow the footsteps of those who have sung the song in my churches in the past–Chris and Charlotte Kerce–but I stepped in and did what I could. Here’s the recording.
Back when I was doing my masters at the University of Pittsburgh I studied conducting with John Goldsmith, the director of the Heinz Chapel Choir. Besides being a great singer, scholar and teacher, he was kind enough to try out my arrangement of “Lo, How a Rose.” He must have liked it, because 20 years later he included it on the Heinz Chapel Choir’s new CD, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”
Nothing John does is half-baked. This recording is no exception: MP3.
If you like what you hear, why don’t you head on over to www.gregscheer.com where you’ll find the full arrangement. It can be sung a cappella, with piano, or even with string orchestra. And for $15 for your whole choir, you can’t go wrong.
My latest commissioned composition, “The Christian’s Farewell,” was premiered Saturday night in Waco, Texas in the “Southern Harmony” Concert at Baylor University’s Armstrong Browning Library. The musicians did a lovely job! You can see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KDyiU3a3LM.
Check out videos from the whole concert here: http://elsalvadormusical.blogspot.com/2011/05/southern-harmonyconcert-at-baylor.html
From 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.
In December I blogged about an arrangement of mine that we used in this year’s Lessons & Carols service at Church of the Servant. The hymn “The God of Abraham Praise” fits beautifully with the reading about the calling of Abraham, so I arranged it for string orchestra, oboe and flute. It worked so well that I convinced Robert Nordling to commission a full arrangement for the Calvin College Orchestra. It will premiere Saturday, March 5 at 8pm in the Covenant Fine Arts Center. I hope to see you there. In the meantime, you can listen to Finalified MP3.