Music Notes 2-4-24

This week we welcome back our marvelous band, who will bring us a smorgasbord of musical styles to support the worship.  Tell your friends, bring them to church.

Written in 1984, Canadian song writer Leonard Cohen struggled with his song “Hallelujah”, writing as many as 80 verses before paring it down to the song we know.  It was named one of the 500 Best Songs by Rolling Stone magazine, in 2005 Chart magazine named it the 10th best Canadian song, and on December 21, 2008 became the first song in 51 years to be both #1 and #2 on the UK Singles Chart.  But, it’s John Cale’s soulful rendition used in the movie Shrek that most of us know and love.  His passing, at the age of 82 at his home here in Los Angeles, caused a surge in interest in his music, with sales skyrocketing.

On September 26, 1976, 14-year-old Larry Mullen, Jr. placed a note on the bulletin board of Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, Ireland, looking for members to form a band.  6 people responded.  They began as Feedback, performing covers of other artists’ music, then in 1977 changed their name to The Hype with 5 members.  In March of 1978, they phased out their fifth man and changed their name to U2, playing their own original material.  Their 1st big break came when they won a competition on St. Patrick’s Day, 1978, which provided them with the opportunity to record a demo that would be heard by CBS Ireland, a record label.  Since then, U2 has gone on to release 13 studio albums and have become one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, selling over 170 million albums worldwide.  They have won 22 Grammy Awards and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.  Rolling Stone ranked U2 as 22nd on their list of “100 Greatest Artists of All Time”.  Love Rescue Me was part of the album Rattle and Hum, which was released in 1988.  The album explores American root music and incorporates blues rock, folk rock, and gospel elements in the music.  In November of 1987, Bono met Bob Dylan and they wrote a song together called Prisoner of Love, which later became Love Rescue Me.  The original recording was recorded with Bob Dylan singing lead vocals and was recorded at Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, which had been home to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, to name a few.  Dylan asked that his version not be included in the album because of previous commitments.

Hailing from the small coastal town of Bangor in Northern Ireland, the Rend Collective is a group of “twenty-somethings” that gathered at Rend, what the band describes as “a ministry for spiritually hungry young adults, desperately seeking an authentic, raw and real expression of church, which was informally pastored by bandleader, Gareth Gilkeson.”  Their first album – Homemade Worship by Handmade People – was released in 2012, and was followed by a string of hits in the contemporary Christian music world.  Their music is based around older instruments - their native Irish folk instruments, old rock and roll guitars and assorted other whimsical musical toys - and has a raw, uninhibited style that gets the toes tapping and the feet stomping.  They don’t call themselves a folk band, but insist rather “We are not actually an indie-folk band - despite all the beards and bow-ties and banjos. We are a celebration band. It’s just a coincidence that folk music and celebration make a great pairing!”  Their song My Lighthouse is a classic foot-stomper that never fails to engage the listener.  

David Wallace Crowder, who goes by the mononymous stage name Crowder (in the finest tradition of Cher, Madonna, Adele and Prince), was the lead singer in the now defunct David Crowder Band, a contemporary worship band that disbanded in 2012.  He has since gone on to a solo career, releasing his first solo studio album in 2014, under the sixsteps/sparrow label, called Neon Steeple.  Come As You Are, one of the cuts from that album, peaked at #3 on the US Christian Songs chart and went on to receive a Grammy nomination in 2015 for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song.  His song I Am A Seed was released on the 2012 album Give Us A Rest (or A Requiem Mass in C [The Happiest of All Keys]).

Dan Schutte is one of the most renowned of the contemporary composers in the Catholic world and is one of the founding members of the St. Louis Jesuits, who popularized a contemporary style of church music set to sacred texts sung in English.  This was a result of the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960’s (also known as Vatican II), which revamped and reformed the Catholic liturgy in an effort to bring it closer to the people (before that, the mass was sung in Latin and the priest kept his back to the congregation throughout).  He is based in San Francisco, has written over 120 popular hymns and mass settings, and continues to be one of the most influential figures in the world of contemporary Catholic liturgical music.  His most famous composition is Here I Am, Lord, based on texts from Isaiah and Samuel.  Despite its Catholic origins, it is found in most Protestant hymnals and has been translated into over 20 different languages.  In 2008, a survey conducted by the United Methodist Church found it to be 2nd favorite after Amazing Grace.

Music Notes 1-28-24

Next week we’ll be welcoming back our marvelous band to our worship.  We have some wonderful music planned, including Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and U2’s Love Rescue Me.  I would encourage you to come over after the service and chat with the members of the band.  They are all giants in the music industry here.  Jeff Colella, the pianist, was Lou Rawls’ music director for 16 years, and has several albums available on his website.  We are talking about featuring him with a piece from one of his albums for the postlude when the band is with us on March 3rd.  Drummer/percussionist Ed Zajac is a working professional in town and plays on movie soundtracks and in pit orchestras for musicals.  He is also a singer who has sung on the soundtracks of movies like Star Trek Beyond, Tomorrowland and Jurassic World.  When I started at the church, I brought him over to see the facility, and after taking one look at the sanctuary, stated that we couldn’t put a drum set in the sanctuary – it would overwhelm the room.  After several weeks of thought, he designed and created an ingenious kit that gets the flavor of a drum kit without the physical size or volume.  Bassist Bryan Fougner, who also comes out to sing with our choir when he’s in town (and when the band isn’t playing) has toured with Pat Benatar and has shared the stage with bands like Kansas, Loverboy, STYX, Grand Funk Railroad, Joan Jett and the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.  My favorite story about Bryan is when he was playing with a Metallica tribute band.  While he was onstage, during the concert, instead of tuning his in-ear monitor to the music of the band he was playing with, he had it tuned to the online bible study that my wife was conducting and would contribute his thoughts between songs.  Guitarist Stan Ayeroff has been a friend and colleague for many years.  Years ago, he hired me to provide singers for a Christmas party at the home of Gene Roddenberry and the dance band he provided was the Tonight Show band.  He’s an acoustic guitar specialist but has played and recorded with Roger Daltry of The Who, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and has a YouTube channel where you can hear him playing solo pieces on his acoustic guitar.  He was especially prolific on YouTube during the lockdown, and has published several books on guitar, including several books of arrangements - his book of arrangements of Christmas carols for classical guitar is considered to be definitive.  I took Eileen to the Canyon Bistro in Topanga to hear him play for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago.

Hillsong Church is a Pentecostal megachurch based in Sydney, Australia.  Founded by Brian and Bobbie Houston in August of 1983, the church grew to the point where the word “megachurch” is utterly redefined by them, with campuses in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Newcastle, Gold Coast and Noosa.  In addition, they have international churches in London, Bermondsey (Greater London), Oxford, Guildford, Kent and Newcastle (United Kingdom), Cape Town and Pretoria (South Africa), Kiev (Ukraine), Paris, Lyon and Marseille (France), Konstanz and Duesseldorf (Germany), Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Moscow, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey and 3 campuses in Arizona.  The band Hillsong United was formed in 1998 from close friends within the Hillsong youth ministry (called “Powerhouse Youth”).  So many songs were being written within the youth ministry that it was suggested they make an album.   Their song Oceans was released in 2013 on their album Zion and was certified Platinum – 1,000,000 copies sold.   It’s considered to be a “Top 10” song in the world of Christian contemporary music, and you can find it on YouTube here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GGFb6LcX3U – if you’d like to listen to it.  It’s a profound, contemplative song that invokes images of nature and spirituality.

Felix Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1809 and was only 38 when he died in Leipzig in 1847.  During that short period, he became one of the most renowned composers of his time and was responsible for renewing interest in the music of J.S. Bach.  Today, we know him for his incidental music for the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night’s Dream (within which is the tune we all know as the traditional “there goes the bride”, while the traditional “here comes the bride” tune was written by Richard Wagner for his opera Lohengrin) and the melody for Hark, The Herald Angels Sing.  He was an admirer of the oratorios of Bach and Handel and organized the 1st performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion since Bach’s death.  He was commissioned to write an oratorio for the Birmingham Festival in 1845, and created the oratorio Elijah, based on text by Julius Schubring.  He wrote it twice, once in English for Birmingham, and then revised in German, being careful to make the music fit the intricacies of the languages.  The Birmingham version was debuted August 26, 1846, and the German version was first performed on his birthday, February 3rd, 1848, a few months after his death.  He Watching Over Israel is arguably the most famous chorus from the work, being #29 in the work and based on Psalm 121 and Psalm 138.

Music Notes 1-21-24

This Sunday we feature our marvelous tenor section leader, Jose.  Jose Meza holds a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance and a Masters in Music Industry Administration from California State University, Northridge. Some of his performed soloist concert repertoire include: Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, Handel’s Messiah & Dettingen te Deum, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Magnificat & Wachet auf, Schubert's Mass in G, and Mozart’s Requiem.  José has received the Desert Opera Theater Scholarship and the David & Judith Scott Voice Scholarship. He has also been a winner in the Pasadena Schubertiade Lieder Competition and in the Center Stage Opera Vocal Competition. José has participated in summer programs with Opera San José, Angels Vocal Art, and CSU Summer Arts.  Currently, Jose is the Education Programs Manager at Los Angeles Master Chorale and leads The Sunday Night Singers, a non-profit community choir in Palmdale, CA. He has been the tenor section leader at First Presbyterian Church, Encino since January 2018. 

The Brooklyn Tabernacle is a non-denominational, multi-cultural church in the heart of downtown Brooklyn that began as a small congregation worshiping in a rundown building, and has grown into a congregation of over 16,000.  The husband and wife team of Pastor Jim Cymbala and music director Carol Cymbala took over leadership of the 30 member congregation in 1971.  By the 1980’s, the church had grown enough to purchase the 1383-seat Carlton Theatre and convert it into their sanctuary.  By 2002, they had outgrown that facility and purchased Loew’s Metropolitan Theatre, a former vaudeville theatre, and renovated it into a state-of-the-art, 3,200-seat worship facility.  The choir began with just 9 members in 1971 and grew with the church.  Carol Cymbala began writing music for the choir, and they recorded their first album in the 1980’s.  Now numbering over 280 members, their music is sung all over the world, and they sang at the 2013 inauguration of President Obama.  Jesus Will Make A Way was written and arranged by Carol Cymbala and was released in 1992 on the album Only To Him.

Matt Maher is a Canadian Christian artist who was born in Newfoundland, studied jazz on a scholarship from Arizona State University in Tempe and now lives in Nashville.  He’s written and released 7 studio albums to date, 3 of which have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Album chart, and 4 of his singles have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Songs chart.  A practicing Catholic, he was asked to lead worship for crowds of thousands at the Rally for Youth and Seminarians in Yonkers, New York during the visit by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, and in 2013 he sang Lord, I Need You for an audience of about 4 million, including Pope Francis, for World Youth Day in Rio de Janerio.  His song Your Grace Is Enough was released on his independent album Welcome To Life on January 1, 2003, and then re-released on his first major studio album Empty & Beautiful, where it peaked at #4 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart.  

Come Thou, Almighty King is a classic hymn with a murky authorship.  The earliest known publication of this hymn is a leaflet that was bound into the 6th edition of George Whitefield's Collection of Hymns for Social Worship, 1757.  In this leaflet, the hymn had five verses of seven lines each, and was titled An Hymn to the Trinity.  The leaflet also contained the hymn Jesus, Let Thy Pitying Eye by Charles Wesley, and because of this hymnologist Daniel Sedgwick attributed Come Thou Almighty King to Wesley as well.  However, there is no record of this hymn in any of Wesley's collections of hymns, nor is there any hymn known to be Wesley's that uses the same meter as this hymn does.  These days, Come Thou Almighty King is usually sung, as it is in our hymnbook, to the tune Italian Hymn (also called Moscow or Trinity), which was written as a musical setting for this hymn by Felice Giardini at the request of Countess Selina Shirley. This hymn tune along with three others of Giardini's were first published in Martin Madan's Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1769

Music Notes 1-14-24

This week we welcome back the band for a service filled with joyous music.  There’ll be a little something for everyone, from Latin rhythms to big band swing to modern classics.

We will be singing a couple of modern classics this Sunday.  The first is Ten Thousand Reasons, by Matt Redman, a big powerful ballad, and the second is And All The People Said Amen by Matt Maher, a true foot stomper.  Take a minute before Sunday morning to listen to these tunes - you’ll love them.

Take My Hand, Precious Lord is a classic gospel hymn written by Thomas A. Dorsey, who is generally considered to be the father of the gospel hymn.  He wrote the words in his inconsolable grief after finding out that his wife, Nettie Harper, and infant son, August, had both died during childbirth in 1932.  He later adapted the melody, drawing largely on the 1844 hymn tune Maitland.  It was the favorite song of Martin Luther King, who frequently asked Mahalia Jackson to sing it at gatherings to help inspire the crowd.  In fact, King’s last words, before being assassinated, were a request for it to be played at a Mass he was scheduled to attend that night.  Leontyne Price sang it at the funeral of Lyndon B. Johnson, and Aretha Franklin sang it at the funeral of Mahalia Jackson.

Written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother was a hit in 1969 for the “British Invasion” group The Hollies (named for Buddy, and for Christmas), and in 1970 for Neil Diamond.  The history of the unusual title goes back a long way, however.   In 1884, James Wells, Moderator of the United Free Church of Scotland, in his book The Parables of Jesus, tells the story of a little girl carrying a big baby boy. Seeing her struggling, someone asked if she wasn't tired. With surprise she replied, "No, he's not heavy; he's my brother.”  In a 1918 publication by Ralph Waldo Trine titled The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit, he relates the following anecdote: "Do you know that incident in connection with the little Scottish girl? She was trudging along, carrying as best she could a boy younger, but it seemed almost as big as she herself, when one remarked to her how heavy he must be for her to carry, when instantly came the reply: 'He's na heavy. He's mi brither.'"  Then, the first editor of Kiwanis magazine, Roe Fulkerson, published a column in September 1924 carrying the title "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother", the first use of the phrase exactly as it is rendered in the song title.  In the 1940s, the words, adapted as "He ain't heavy, Father, he's my brother", were taken as a slogan for Boys Town children's home by founder Father Edward Flanagan.

Matt Redman is an English Christian worship leader currently based in Brighton.  He has won 10 Dove Awards for everything from Worship Song of the Year 2005 (for Blessed Be Your Name) to Songwriter of the Year 2013.  His album 10,000 Reasons was released in 2012 and the title track went on to be #1 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, where it remained for 13 weeks.  10,000 Reasons also won Grammy Awards in 2013 for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song and Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance.  

Matt Maher is a Canadian Christian artist who was born in Newfoundland, studied jazz on a scholarship from Arizona State University in Tempe and now lives in Nashville.  He’s written and released 7 studio albums to date, 3 of which have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Album chart, and 4 of his singles have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Songs chart.  A practicing Catholic, he was asked to lead worship for crowds of thousands at the Rally for Youth and Seminarians in Yonkers, New York during the visit by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, and in 2013 he sang Lord, I Need You for an audience of about 4 million, including Pope Francis, for World Youth Day in Rio de Janerio.  His song And All The People Said Amen was the title track for his first compilation album, released in 2013.  The album charted at #5 on Billboard’s Christian Albums.  

Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart was written by Henry Smith in 1978. Following the introduction of the song during a worship service at the Williamsburg New Testament Church in Virginia, a military couple reintroduced it to a congregation in Germany.  The song eventually caught the attention of executives at Integrity Music. When Integrity's Hosanna! Music copyrighted the song in 1986, the author was unknown.[8] After Don Moen’s Give Thanks album was released in 1986, the song was brought to the attention of Smith, who contacted Integrity with authorship information. Integrity later included songwriting credits on all subsequent releases, along with a writer-publisher agreement. As of 2010, the song has been recorded by over 50 companies and published in songbooks around the world.

Music Notes 1-7-24

As we ring in the New Year, I would like to wish you all a very happy New Year, and express my gratitude for the kindness and warmth you have all shown me in my first 10 months at 1st Pres.  It’s been a busy year, with a lot of refurbishing, restoring and renovating of the music department.  And now that it’s mostly done, we can focus on the future.  I’m looking forward to a wonderful year of music and worship, of working with our marvelous choir and all the talented people we have involved with the worship service.  

Starting this Sunday, we are going to start adding a contemporary worship song to each service.  If you don’t follow that particular bandwagon, I’ll be mentioning the name of the song here in this article each week, so you can check it out on YouTube so you’ll be ready to sing on Sunday.  This week, we’re singing a barn-burner called Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone by Chris Tomlin.  The familiar half is easy, and the other half is very singable.  I think you’ll love it.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is another of history’s most renowned composers.  Born in 1756, he was a true prodigy and his father Leopold, a composer and music teacher, began teaching him pieces on the harpsichord at the age of 4, and he picked them up and played them flawlessly.  By the age of 5, he was composing small pieces that his father wrote down, including, believe it or not, the tune we all know as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star (he wrote it as a Theme and Variations!).  By the time he was 5, his father had begun taking him and his older sister, Nannerl, on concert tours as child prodigies, and he composed his first symphony when he was 8.  On one such trip to Rome when he was 14, he heard Gregorio Allegri’s choral work Miserere, a closely guarded Vatican treasure of the Sistine Chapel Choir, and wrote it out from memory.  Instead of being excommunicated, as was the required punishment, the Pope was so impressed that he gave Mozart a commendation.  He met Joseph Haydn in 1784, and they became friends, occasionally playing together in an impromptu string quartet (a string quartet jam session).  Ultimately, he went on to write over 600 pieces of music during his short life, many of which are considered to be pinnacles of symphonic, concert, chamber, operatic and vocal music.  The movie Amadeus, adapted from the stage play, creates a fictional story around his relationship with composer Antonio Salieri (who, in real life, was one of the few who attended his burial and who actually paid for Mozart’s funeral) and the writing of the Requiem, which he never finished (that story is indeed fiction).  The most recent hypothesis regarding the cause of his death in 1791 is a severe kidney ailment, which probably could have been resolved by him drinking a lot of water (but the medical technology of the time was to bleed him with leeches).   Ave Verum Corpus is a short motet for choir and strings that Mozart wrote for his friend Anton Stoll, who was the musical coordinator for the parish of St Stephan in the town of Baden Bei Wien, near Vienna.  The year was 1791 (6 months before his death), and he was in the middle of writing his opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), while his wife, Constanza, pregnant with their 6th child, was staying at a spa in Baden.  Exquisitely beautiful, it is considered to be one of the most perfect pieces of music ever written.

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 1st 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.  His song Amazing Grace/My Chains Are Gone was part of the album See The Morning, his 4th studio album that was released in 2006 and arguably was the album that established him as one of the bright lights of the contemporary Christian music world.  In this song, he takes the beloved classic and adds a “chorus” to it, treating the words of Amazing Grace as if they were the verses.