Categories
Choir Church Finale demo

Feed Us, Lord

Brand-spanking new (as of 2 mintues ago), here’s a communion anthem for SATB choir and piano. As usual, I have virtually guaranteed that it won’t be published by composing a simple anthem with an unusually difficult piano part.

There’s a story about Beethoven in which he turns to a violinist who is complaining about some fingerings and he says, “Do you think I worry about fingering when the muse strikes me?” I wouldn’t go that far, but I think there’s certainly some room to challenge the church pianist a bit. Let me know if I’m being unreasonably cruel to the pianist in this piece. Come to think of it, we’re doing this song at COS on February 11, so I’ll let you know if I have a pianist mutiny.
Feed Us, Lord (pdf)
Feed Us, Lord (mp3)

Categories
Choir Live

New recordings from Canada

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.

Categories
Choir Church Contests Finale demo

Deeper than the Sea

I wrote this setting of Psalm 36:5-9 for the CRC sesquicentennial hymn contest. I lost. But then the Psalm came up in the lectionary, so I decided to create an arrangement for choir, piano and congregation that we’ll use January 14 at Church of the Servant. Chords are included so it can be accompanied by guitar and bass to get that “folk choir” kind of sound.

Here is the score: (I had to remove it–it’s now published by GIA)

Don’t have a choir? Don’t despair! Here’s the leadsheet for praise band: (pdf-praise)

And a rough demo in a somewhat Chris Tomlin style: (mp3-praise)