Music Notes 6-14-26
This week we welcome back our wonderful band. After last month’s big band extravaganza,
we’re going a bit more eclectic – ballads, country, rock and roll, swing…running the gamut.
Come and join us for the celebration.
Evergreen was the main song to emerge from the 1976 version of the movie A Star Is Born
starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristopherson. The movie, the 3 rd iteration of the “up-and-
coming-artist-gets-discovered-by-a-declining-star” story (the first was with Janet Gaynor and
Fredric March in 1937, and second in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason) follows the
story of a declining rock star who discovers a talented singer in a small club. They fall in love,
he records and promotes her, then dies in a car accident. The big song, Evergreen, was written
by Barbra Streisand herself, with words by Paul Williams, who was the hottest lyricist in
Hollywood at the time (he was behind the music for the Muppet Movie), and won the Oscar that
year for Best Original Song.
Mark Hayes is a composer/arranger/pianist based in Kansas City whose music is renowned
around the world. He got his degree in piano performance at Baylor University, moved to
Kansas City to work as a music editor for Tempo Publishing, and now spends his time writing
music for the church and traveling around the world as a clinician and guest conductor. When I
met Mark in the late 80’s, I was struck by his pianistic skills – more specifically, the way he
manhandled the piano into submission to produce the most wondrous sounds. Mark’s writing is
superbly crafted, with influences of black gospel and jazz. He’s one of my favorite
contemporary writers, and if you play piano and want some music that will both challenge you
and satisfy your appetite for delicious piano music, pick up a book of Mark Hayes piano
improvisations. You’ll love it. The anthem for this week – Swingin’ With The Saints – is one
we’ve done before (a couple of years ago). It was written in 1981 and combines two old favorite
hymns – Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and When The Saints Go Marching In – and makes them
groovy.
Chris Tomlin was born in Texas in 1972 and learned to play guitar by playing along with Willy
Nelson recordings. He has become one of the dominant forces in contemporary Christian music,
and in 2012 CCLI announced that his songs were played 3 million times in churches that year.
His 2013 album Burning Lights debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, only the fourth Christian
album ever to open at No. 1, and he was pronounced the most sung songwriter in the world that
year. In 2018, he was the 1 st Christian artist to receive the “Billionaire” award from Pandora for
reaching one billion Pandora streams. The song God Of This City was written by a worship band
from Belfast, Ireland called Bluetree. They composed the piece (and I’m not making this up!) in
Padia, Thailand at a bar that also doubled as a brothel. Chris Tomlin heard the song at concert of
worship bands in Belfast when the band took him aside and played the song for him. He was so
inspired by the message that he gave the song his own unique treatment and recorded it on the
2008 album Passion: God Of This City, which won the Dove Award in 2009 for Special Event
Album of the Year. The song Indescribable was written by songwriters Jesse Reeves and Laura
Story, and debuted on the album Arriving in 2004. Indescribable is listed in Christian Copyright
Licensing International’s (CCLI) list of Top 25 Worship Songs of 2007 as #22. In 2008, it was
listed in The Countdown Magazine’s list of Top 20 Praise and Worship songs as #6.
Hero is a song written by Maria Carey and Walter Afanasieff in 1992 for the Dustin
Hoffman/Geena Davis movie of the same name. However, after being convinced by Sony
executive Tommy Mottola to keep it for herself, she changed some of the lyrics to more precisely
fit her personality. Lyrically, the song is regarded as one of Carey's most inspirational and
personal ballads, with its protagonist declaring that even though people may feel discouraged or
down at times, in reality, they are "heroes" if they look inside themselves and see their own inner
strength; in time, it will help them "find the way". It was ultimately released on her 1993 album
Music Box.