The first performance of “Prayer of Jonah” took place in December at Western Seminary. The song begins at 27:54 in this video, but the whole enactment of the book of Jonah is well worth watching. The next performance will be at the Calvin Worship Symposium during the Thursday and Friday Vesper services, 4:15pm in Gezon Auditorium.
Category: Live
Update 9/16/20: Sheet music for this song can now be downloaded here.
It’s hard to believe that this piece is 23 years old! This setting of the song of Zechariah (Luke 1:67-79) was written when I lived in Pittsburgh and is performed here by the Duquesne University Choir under the direction of Brady Allred.
You can email me for music (edit: see link above). It comes in a variety of flavors: a cappella, SATB/Piano, or with brass and rhythm section; the rap is optional (and yes, I’m serious: there is a rap). You can also email me if you want to commission the rest of the movements that would complete this set. It’s going to be amazing and I know you want in!
I just found this video of Murray Freedman and the Westminster Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir singing my anthem, “As the Deer.” Good to know that my music has made it’s way to South Carolina!
Last fall I was commissioned to write an arrangement of the Chinese folk song “Wen Ti” (聞笛) for the 2018 Calvin Worship Symposium. This beautiful tune often appears in hymnals with the benediction text “May the Lord, Mighty God.”
The idea for this concluding communion service was to weave the song throughout the service with new texts that fit different liturgical moments. Scroll through the video above to hear the different sections of the piece:
11:47 Call to Worship: “Lift Your Eyes unto the Hills” (based on Psalm 121 and 124)
21:44 Assurance of Pardon: “God Is Gracious to Forgive” (evoking Colossians 1:12-15)
1:22:56 Doxology “To the One Who’s Shown Us Love” (from Revelation 1:4-6)
I’m currently reworking this for publication in GIA’s Calvin choral series.
I had the great pleasure of composing a new piece for the Rockford School orchestras this spring. Directors Erin De Young and Allison Holden wanted a piece that would work for their combined orchestras: 6th grade through 10th. That’s a huge range of ability levels.
Part of the fun of this commission was that I got to work with the students as I developed the piece. We started by talking about the composition process and getting a chance to hear each group play. Then I composed three sketches for them to try out and decide which they liked best.
We decided to go with “Swampzilla”–essentially a rock and roll piece for orchestra. “Swampzilla” is a fictional “hideous marsh man with a heart of gold.” The piece starts (programmatically speaking) with Swampzilla rising from the twilight mist, dancing surprisingly well for a creature that has just risen from the fetid slough. There’s a slower section in the middle, which is the love theme for Zilla and his love, Gator Girl. And then the two lovers dance off into the evening mists.
The premiere was incredible. The combined orchestra had over 200 players packed onto the stage, wings, and the first few rows of the audience seating! The score had simplified parts for the younger players and solo parts for the very best older players. They all got to slap their strings to create a backbeat. The auditorium was packed, too, with well over 1000 people. You can hear from the applause at the end that they loved it. It’s hard not to love 200 young people rocking out a piece called “Swampzilla.”
Categories
A Million Miles Away
I had the good fortune of receiving two commissions from school orchestras last year. “A Million Miles Away” was written for the St. Cecilia Concert Orchestra with Patricia Wunder conducting. As Maestra Wunder and I began brainstorming about what type of piece might fit her group, she explained that the rest of her program would be pieces based on stories–Telemann’s Don Quixote Suite, for example.
I decided to maintain that theme, composing a programmatic piece with a yet-as-undetermined story. Here’s how I described it in the concert’s program notes:
A Million Miles Away is a phrase that dropped into my mind as I began composing this commission for St. Cecilia. It certainly describes the desolate, open harmonies that were emerging in the early stages of the first draft. Knowing that my piece would be part of a concert of compositions based on stories, “A Million Miles Away” sounded like the title of a novel or movie without providing a full story. In fact, I’d love it if you would listen to the music and create your own story based on what you hear.
The piece is arranged in three sections–stars, sea, and sand. You can almost hear the pinpricks of light appearing in a black sky as the piece opens. Then waves begin to well up and break, splashing from one side of the orchestra to the next. Finally, the sounds become bone dry and blow away into nothing. The first and last sections are “aleatoric” sections that allow the performers a certain amount of freedom. For example, play the sequence of notes, but in any rhythm you want. It was challenging for the students to have that much freedom!
The above MP3 is a mock-up of the piece I created in Logic Pro. Below is a video of the concert.
Two more recordings of yesterday’s “Close to My Heart.” Above is Jordan Clegg leading the Fellowship Reformed gang in a beautiful rendition that includes penny whistle (played by Jackson Nickolay). Below is yours truly in a stripped down acoustic version.
Update 12/11/21: Sheet music for this song can now be purchased at gregscheer.com.
Update 12/11/21: Sheet music for this song is now available at gregscheer.com.
One of the fun things about doing music is that I get to meet people–virtually or in person–from all over the world. One of those musical friends is Jill Friend (actual name) from Sioux Center, Iowa. Jill periodically uses my arrangements for orchestra at her school and church. Below is a recording from Covenant CRC Church on May 20, 2018. I love to see videos like this, with all ages taking part in a church’s music. And I’m pleased that it was my arrangement of My Friends, May You Grow in Grace that enabled this intergenerational orchestra to play together. Thanks for sharing, Jill!
If you’d like to try this arrangement in your church, go to gregscheer.com to purchase the score.
Update 10/6/20: Sheet music for this song can be downloaded here.
Let me tell you the history of Psalm 40. Well, not the complete history; that stretches back a few millennia. But I can tell you the history of my musical rendition of Psalm 40; that only goes back two decades. I wrote the song in 1998 and made a demo of it around that time. In 2012, while working with the Choral Scholars on Cry Out to God!, we recorded the song using a new SATB and piano arrangement. In 2017, I entered the song in the Church of the Servant New Psalm Contest; lo and behold, it won! For the premiere, I wrote an arrangement for SATB Choir, Congregation, Piano, Flute, Violin, Accordion, and Flugelbone. (Yes, flugelbone. It’s like a flugelhorn, but in trombone range.) Here’s what I wrote about it for the January 28, 2018 premiere:
You may think that U2 has the corner on the Psalm 40 song market, but I would humbly suggest that there’s room for one more.
I wrote “Patiently” while I was working at a church in Tallahassee. Frankly, it was something of a desert experience for me. Psalm 40 expressed well both my complaints and hope. I love how the Psalm ties together proclamations of God’s good deeds, prayers for salvation, confession of sin, and even a prayer that God would shame the Psalmist’s enemies.
Bible study usually leads to music for me, so I began working on an idea for a song based on the Psalm. It was the first time I had tried to set a whole Psalm to music. At the time I didn’t know much about metrical and responsorial psalmody, I just knew that I liked how the music fit each verse and that it sounded good when the chorus kept coming back. Even though this song is not likely to make its way to the top of the CCLI charts, I was pleased that the contest judges felt it was a faithful and helpful musical rendering of the scripture.
I have a fond memory of a difficult afternoon on which I took a long walk through the hot Florida woods with this song keeping me company. I hope you find it returning to your mind, as well.
You can listen above to the MP3 of the Church of the Servant musicians leading “Patiently.” Check out the revised leadsheet, the congregational piano part, or the full choral arrangement at the link above. If you want the congregational piano part or the full choral arrangement, just email me. There’s got to be some church out there with a flugelbone! (Okay, it can also be played by trombone.)
One of my greatest joys is when a song takes on a life of its own and begins to travel to unexpected places and people. My setting of Simeon’s Song, “Lord, Now Let Your Servant Depart in Peace” was recently sung in Bahasa (Indonesian) and Chinese translations at GKY Mangga Besar Church in Jakarta.
My friend, Lucky, was behind this. I met Lucky in 2015 when I was in Indonesia and he was just about to head to Grand Rapids to study at Calvin Seminary. His family and mine became close while he was in town. I was sad to see them return to Jakarta, but knew that God had big plans for them back at the GKY Church. This Christmas he decided to introduce my song to his congregation, and you can hear that his people really took to it.
One of the things I loved about worship in Indonesia is that people sing with all their heart. In this recording, you can hear the pastors urging on the congregation, and the people responding with full voices. I believe I’m also hearing a pipa (a strummed Chinese instrument that sounds a little like a mandolin tremolo) in the chorus, which sounds surprisingly good.