Category: Choir

Sunday evening was Church of the Servant’s Lessons & Carols service. As always, it was the highlight of Advent and Christmas for me. The highlight for me from a compositional standpoint, was that after 12 years I finally got a good recording of “My Soul Will Magnify the Lord.” Take a listen and you’ll figure out why it hasn’t been performed or published much. It’s hard.

Also included were my arrangements of “On Jordan’s Banks (PUER NOBIS),” “All Earth Is Waiting,” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Check them out at http://www.churchoftheservantcrc.org/2009-lessons-carols.

As we enter that blessed season known to music ministers as “when will this ever end?” I find myself considering a Magnificat that is near and dear to my heart. I wrote “My Soul Will Magnify the Lord” while I was at Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. It’s part of a series of pieces based on the wonderful canticles found in Luke. The ingredients are choir, rhythm section, brass and soloist, all boiled up in a pop/rock/classical/jazz stew. And they’re all blazingly difficult to pull off well. (I’d get published a lot more if I could tame my muse.)

One of the most unusual features of this particular Magnificat is that it ends with the genealogy found in Luke 3. Crazy, you say? Like a fox, I say. No, really, it is strangely powerful to hear Mary sing about God’s mercy extending from generation to generation, and then hear their names sung one after another. One choir member at the time thought the idea was so unique that I should patent it.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good recording from the Bellefield performance, so all I can share with you as the “choir of Greg” version.  You can see the music here. I might include it in this year’s Lessons & Carols service on December 13 at 6pm at Church of the Servant, so if you’re in the Grand Rapids area you should plan to join us.

Last night at Church of the Servant we had our Lessons & Carols service. (You can read more about the service at the COS worship blog.) One of the songs the choir sang was my composition “Every Valley.” This is one that I’ve done before, but it was great to do it again, especially because Jordan Clegg was singing the solo part. He rocked, as did Carol and “The Little Choir that Could.”

Every Valley is part of a set of pieces tentatively titled The Christmas Canticles that are written for solo, choir, piano, rhythm section and horns. I’ve already completed Every Valley, Blessed Be, and My Soul Will Magniy the Lord. Someday I hope to complete the canticles with a Gloria and Nunc Dimittis, but it will have to wait until some imaginative and well-endowed choir commissions me. (Hint, hint)

Until then, take a listen to Jordan Clegg, the COS Choir and Carol Rienstra (piano) performing Every Valley.

In an earlier post I introduced a song called “Jesus, Precious Jesus” and promised a choral arrangement. Here it is. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad trait, but this song can range in performance style from a simple praise chorus accompanied by acoustic guitar to slow and funky Black Gospel. In this choir arrangement I took somewhat of a middle road, using the lush harmonies of Gospel but keeping the rhythms fairly straight. It’s a little sweeter and flashy than more typical style, but it’s growing on me.