Rehearsals are well underway for “A Celebration of Hymns” on May 18 and excitement is building! I’m so grateful that several friends from the choir at Covenant UMC have joined us to sing at the event, along with other members of the Glen Mar community. It should be a joyful noise! As a preview, the Glen Mar choir will be singing “Come, O Children” this Sunday, May 5, during worship. Please join us in person or online!
A Setting of Romans 8: “For I Am Convinced”
For me, and for most of adult life, the closing verses of Romans 8 have formed the core of the Christian gospel. So the idea of setting these verses (Romans 8: 31-39) to music has always been an attractive yet seemingly unachievable goal. The text is too profound, too weighty, and honestly too rhetorically complex to be trivialized in a song… or so I thought. Imagine my shock, even horror, to watch ideas form that would wrap this text in the whimsical airs of a Broadway-style show tune! I resisted the ideas at first, but what won me over in the end, I think, was the abiding sense—from years of small group study and myriads of stories from pastors—of how hard it is for us to believe that God’s grace is a free gift, and how unworthy of it so many of us feel. So the ideas became a dialog between a solo seeker, wanting to believe but full of self-doubt, and a choir that was trying, and largely failing, to be helpful. (I was somewhat reminded of Job’s “helpful” friends.) In the end, it was the text itself, the Word, the core of the gospel, that won the day.
Here’s a livestream video from March 17, 2024. I hope you enjoy!
Come, O Children
Yesterday I led the Sanctuary Choir at Glen Mar Church in presenting “Come, O Children”, my first original choral composition. A live recording is available. The text is based on Psalm 34, a personal prayer of thanksgiving for God’s deliverance from a crisis. The music arose from my own thanksgiving after I dodged a personal crisis of my very own, and in searching for an appropriate Scripture, I soon found this beautiful Psalm that was largely unfamiliar to me. No longer! Here’s the adapted text as it appears in the piece:
Come, O children, come to me. I will teach you; listen to me. Depart from evil, and do good. Seek peace, pursue peace. I will bless the Lord, my God, I will bless the Lord. I will bless the Lord, my God, forevermore. Magnify the Lord, magnify with me. Exalt His name. Come with me! Taste and see that the Lord, my God, is good to me. I sought the Lord, my God, and the Lord, my God, did answer me. I sought the Lord, my God, and the Lord, my God, delivered me. Look to God and be radiant, so your faces will never be ashamed.
Welcome!
I’ve just released this site along with my first CD of piano music! As some of you know, it’s been a while coming, but it’s finally out! You can read more about the CD on my Music page. From there you can either purchase the CD or download/stream the tracks from most popular platforms. I hope you enjoy these, and I’m happy to hear from you either from my Contact form or on my new Facebook page.