What’s this?

It’s a section of this Substack containing an archive of videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. This is the final planned post, as explained below. A longer description of the section can be found on the About page.

Love, Come Down, arranged for SSA and Piano

From the publisher’s page:

Marrolli provides her own text imploring the presence of the Holy Spirit in times of stress and challenge, leading into the familiar words of Bianco da Siena's hymn. Fragments of Ralph Vaughan Williams's tune Down Ampney appear in the accompaniment from the very beginning (although strangely misquoted in the initial upward ascent), paving the way for the melody to appear complete in the voices with rhythmic variation (and repeating the alteration of the first measure melody). The texture blossoms into three-part harmony, maintaining the Vaughan Williams melody in the top voice. Treble choirs able to sustain three parts would find this anthem engaging, and its use extends far beyond the day of Pentecost.

—Jason Overall, The Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians, March 2025

We were small, and beset with technical difficulties here and there, but we did it! This was a special women’s chorus, singing just the offertory anthem, two weeks before the beginning of the regular choir season. We began with a Saturday workshop, a few weeks earlier, with great turnout, and the sopranos and altos almost evenly matched. This was folowed by an evening rehearsal a few days before the Sunday service, with the turnout that you see here, just six sopranos and four altos. Well, at least we fit well on the chancel.

The altos are the four mostly tall ones right of center, of which I am the first to the right of of the rear stained glass window (and the saxaphone), and we held our own against those sopranos. For me it was a wonderful way to finish out…

Behind the Scenes

I’ll pass on discussing the technical glitches this time. They’re obvious but they weren’t terrible. But this was my last planned anthem. I am not continuing with the choir when it resumes in the next couple of weeks. I recently turned 75—hard to believe—and, as I wrote about earlier, the decision has to do one way or another with multiple health issues along with driving at night. Otherwise I’d continue ‘till I dropped. But that’s messy if it happens on camera. Others in the section are at or approaching a similar place in life, and I’m not sure what is going to happen with it.

This is my third attempt at retiring from choir. The first was following Easter, 2017 at another church, and that break lasted a year and a half. The second was when my choir at yet another former church disbanded in 2020, in compliance with “the authorities”. That lasted only 10 months until, at my present church, I could no longer stand to sit there listening instead of being up there singing.

This time it’s for real. I do plan to continue in my other volunteer activities, including screens (ProPresenter operator), and to stay in practice, singing alto or soprano in the congregation.1 I am going to greatly miss being in the choir, but from the summer break onward I have been feeling relief and release from the stress of a time-consuming, difficult-to-sustain, and sometimes dangerous weekly routine. Case in point, I about fell over as we exited after this piece as I reached for my cane (propped against the chair behind me), but I cut the clip short so that it wouldn’t show here. My balance has improved somewhat since then, by the way, by a miracle I think.

It’s safer up on the risers where I can sit down if my balance goes, there are workarounds for the other issues, and I might still occasionally fill in if the number of other altos drops to two or three as it did here, and if I don’t have a time conflict. Maybe.

I hope these anthems have held meaning for those of you who had been dropping by here from week to week. Thank you.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, August 31, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing an archive of videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. I expect this to be the final post, as explained below. A longer description can be found on the About page.

O Rest in the Lord

From the publisher’s page:

Based on Psalm 37 and composed by Ken Medema. Pastoral feeling with classical overtones. Sensitively set with warmth in both the voices and accompaniment. Moderately easy SATB voicing, especially appropriate as a choral response after prayer.

This piece was a “quick learn” for our choir. I am a little surprised, however, at the statement above about “moderately easy SATB voicing“. It’s not a difficult piece, unless you have little time to learn it before singing it. We had little time, and quite a few choir members were not able to attend the the final weeknight rehearsal for it, which made for an “interesting” pre-service run-through. The difficulties were similar to those we encountered last week. We did however have our six altos (my section) when it came time to sing, and the six of us came through clearly in the recording.

I like the way this anthem turned out well enough to include it as my almost-final offering here (more below). Like last week’s anthem, we goofed in a place or two, but I still hear it playing in my head, and it is welcome to keep on doing that, goof free.

Behind the Scenes

I wasn’t expecting to be posting any more anthems after this one. This was our last Sunday before the choir breaks until September, and I don’t plan to continue with choir on a regular basis when they resume. There was, however, a special opportunity for the sopranos and the altos to sing an offertory anthem on August 31st, and I took part in that. The final post now is this one.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 18, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

Jesus, Only Jesus

From the distributor’s website:

Dramatic and effective, this contemporary ballad from Matt Redman's album Passion calls all to worship and adoration. The arrangement gradually builds from the restrained opening, proceeding to a crescendo of affirmation…

The arrangement we used follows Jesus, Only Jesus with All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name and then returns for the final words of Jesus, Only Jesus. We seamlessly jumped past All Hail the Power to the ending without altering anything by simply turning to the last page at the transition. I’m not certain of the reason for the change, but it may have had to do with the time available. We run on a tight schedule.

Lyrics (as sung)

There evidently were no lyric slides for this anthem beyond the title slide—I don’t know why—so I offer these, adapted for our arrangement from Matt Redman’s slightly different one.

Who has the power to raise the dead?
Who can save us from our sin?
He is our hope, our righteousness
Jesus, only Jesus

And who can make the blind to see?
Who holds the keys that set us free?
He paid it all to bring us peace
Jesus, only Jesus

Holy, King almighty Lord
Saints and angels all adore

I join with them and bow before
Jesus, only Jesus

Who can command the highest praise?
Who has the name above all names?
You stand alone, I stand amazed
Jesus, only Jesus

You will command the highest praise
Yours is the name above all names
You stand alone, I stand amazed
Jesus, only Jesus

Holy, King almighty Lord
Saints and angels all adore
I join with them and bow before
Jesus, only Jesus

You will command the highest praise
Yours is the name above all names
You stand alone, I stand amazed
Jesus, only Jesus
Jesus, only Jesus
Only Jesus

Behind the Scenes

This another anthem I am happy to still have playing in my head. I can tell you that there is a huge difference between listening to other people sing and singing in the choir yourself!

We first read through this anthem at choir practice a few days ago. The planned anthem was canceled for its second time (again, I don’t know why). We sampled several others, some of which we had recently read through, but this one was the favorite.

We could have sung a little better with additional rehearsal time, but not much. The multiple modulations (key changes) can make finding pitches at the transitions more difficult—try it sometime when you’re singing 4-part harmony, or polyphony—but it comes automatically with enough practice. So there were some glitches, but it sounded great from where I was standing.

I don’t know if I will be posting more anthems after this one. Next week is our last Sunday before we break until September, and it will be a choir, bells, and orchestra service. If the anthem recording turns out well, and if I like the anthem itself enough, I’ll post it. Another recnt anthem, while it was a choral arrangement of a fine hymn, just didn’t inspire me enough to put out the effort to present it here.

As I mentioned last time, with my 75th birthday coming up in August I am having to again evaluate whether I am still physically up to rehearsing and singing every week. This is my third year to make such an evaluation.

I have sung in church choirs on and off since 1992—about 21 choir seasons across six choirs and 33 years—and I really don’t want to give it up, but I may not have much choice. My balance has been deteriorating ever since I took a nasty fall eight years ago. I developed new problems in my legs a year ago, after already having had problems with them for decades, and I am walking with a cane again, one that I’ve owned and used intermittently for 30 years. At least I’m experienced at using it.

All of this does not mix well with climbing up and down those risers. And then for rehearsals there’s driving at night on the increasingly dangerous roads leading to the church, though I could pay for rides. I’ve wanted to continue singing rather badly. But there is more to this story, not involving physical ailments. It’s not about this church specifically—it applies to every church I have belonged to, whether conservative or liberal, and I have belonged to both kinds.

If I am successful at freeing up more of my time, I may write about this other concern in my main blog, . It’s a delicate subject.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 11, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.

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It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

Now the Green Blade Rises

Adapted from a sampling of reviews:

"Now the Green Blade Rises", an Easter hymn, first appeared in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928, with text by John MacLeod Campbell Crum and music from the ancient French carol "Noël Nouvelet". It reflects metaphorically upon the resurrection of Jesus as wheat growing from buried grain.

More information: History of Hymns: "Now the Green Blade Riseth"

Lyrics (modern version)

Now the green blade ris­es from the bur­ied grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth ma­ny years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him, Love whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d nev­er wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps un­seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Up He sprang at East­er, like the ris­en grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my ris­en Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are sad­dened, griev­ing or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.

Behind the Scenes

This was said to be a record year for attendance. What you see here is from our Sunday traditional service, a link to the livestream of which can be found at the end of this post. We had another traditional service the evening before, and there were two contemporary services on Sunday as well.

This anthem was both enjoyable to sing and challenging to learn. It proved to be more difficult than it looked. The audio in this recording sounded a little off to me, but good enough to post. There’s a demo on this distributor’s page if you would like to listen to that. I also noticed that there appeared to be no camera operators. That contrasts with three manned cameras, one roaming on a monopod, on this day in the past. I don’t know what is happening there.

The choir was smaller this year for a variety of reasons. Usually it peaks on Easter Sunday and shrinks dramatically the following week, and it may still do the latter—we’ll soon find out. We have just three Sundays left when we sing and before we break until September. There is no traditional service the first Sunday in May.

I am posting this anthem late because the video downloader extension for my browser quit working again, when YouTube yet again changed the recorded format. The developers of the extension released an update today and I was able to download again.

I plan to post the remaining anthems for this season, if all goes well. After that, I don’t know. I will decide later on. The bigger decision, which comes up each year when we return and I am a year older—75 coming up—is as to whether I am still physically up to rehearsing and singing every week. Having sung in church choirs throughout much of the past 33 years I don’t want to quit but, like some of the other members, I may not have much choice.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, April 20, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

Call to Worship Anthem: The Name of Jesus

By Craig Courtney. Lyricist: John Newton / Edward Perronet.

From the distributor’s page:

John Newton's beloved hymn text All Hail the Power of Jesus Name just dances off the page in this inventive setting … . … A marvelous and creative musical experience on a well-known hymn.

This is one of the more unusual anthems we have sung in my time with this choir. I didn’t quite know what to think at first, but once we got the hang of it, well, like it said above, marvelous and creative!

Accompaniments were available for clapping groups or hand drum. We had the bell chorus this day and, percussionists that they are, they clapped for us.

Offering Music Anthem: Be Gone, Unbelief

By Wesley Peters.

From the publisher’s page:1

[A] wonderfully catchy sea-shanty-inspired setting of John Newton text: "Be gone, unbelief, my Savior is near....with Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm."

As we began rehearsing and learning this anthem, it felt a little like being on a rocking boat. It took some doing to learn, but was quite enjoyable to sing before the congregation.

Closing Anthem: O Sacred Head

By Mary McDonald.

From the Publisher’s Page:

The captivating lyrics of the 17th century Passion Chorale still resonate today as we reflect on the somber final moments prior to Jesus’ death. Paired in this setting with the minor tonalities of the tune PROMISED LAND, along with an original refrain, the depth of emotions are effectively conveyed in both word and song.

This anthem looks forward to Good Friday (when the choir will not be singing). While it doesn’t show in the video—the cameras compensate for it—for contrast, the house lights were blacked out (there are skylights and windows), and the chancel lights were adjusted to highlight the choir.

Behind the Scenes

What goes on behind the scenes for a day like this is weeks of rehearsal and refinement. And there’s more coming for Easter, when we have services Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

As I mentioned earlier, there was a lighting change for the final anthem. Being the lighting person as well as a choir member, I was surprised to learn about this just a few days beforehand. It was a simple transition, fading out the house lights at the beginning and re-balancing the chancel lights to favor just the choir.

I didn’t have enough time in advance to set up and test a programmed sequence, so I set up the alternate pattern on the individual manual faders instead and had the screens operator bring down all four of the regular preset faders when we began the scene, leaving just the manual faders active so that they showed through. It’s simpler than it sounds, and that’s what I told her.

It is simple in principle, but I had to get up unusually early (4 AM) and come in and work out the alternate pattern by trial and error before the bells and choir arrived for the pre-service run-through. This required balancing four channels of dimmable electric lighting against the skylight, stained glass rear window light, and fixed stage lights (non-dimmable), to achieve a pattern that would appear as even on camera while ensuring that all the choir members could see their music clearly. Simple, but not so simple. It seems to have worked.

I finished this post except for final edits on Sunday afternoon while still recuperating from the day but before I could publish, the day caught up with me and I dozed off at the keyboard for a long, long time. But this is what can happen when your work chair is a nice, comfy recliner.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, April 13, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

In the Presence of Jehovah

From a distributor’s page:

…this spiritually dynamic offering captures the mystery and majesty of personal worship. Easy to learn, but hard to forget, this gospel classic will inspire and uplift.

Behind the Scenes

Well hooray! We do have a livestream recording this week, though I can’t predict what will happen in the future. The balance was quite good between our soloist and the choir. There are some audio issues still, particularly with the kick drum, but I was on the verge on tears listening to the playback, from the music itself, not the audio quality.

I was running screens for this one—turning the slides—rather than singing, but we still had a good turnout of altos. Screens is a high concentration, occasionally nervewracking job where I don’t get to become emotionally involved, let alone cry. For the livestream it consists of timing the lyrics displayed at the bottom of the screen. The main (audience) screens, displaying lyrics over animated backgrounds, may sometimes be caught by the cameras, but not this time that I could see. Here’s how it looked from the screens console, early this morning.

The lyrics timing was a little choppy because I had limited opportunity to practice the precise turns. I noticed that there were also issues with how the lyrics looked, but I don’t create the slides and I don’t have time to proof and correct the “lower 3rds” feed to the livestream booth, so what you see is what I receive from the team, and the present console configuration does make lower thirds somewhat difficult to proof.

Next up, Palm Sunday.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, April 6, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

Because nearly all of my posts in recent months have been in this section, I have added it back into the main post listing, but you can still turn off notifications for this section if you wish.

The Narrow Way

This brief little anthem has so much to say. In the lyrics, it captures what we are here to do.

Publisher's page - “A lyrical setting of an 18th century prayer.”

Behind the Scenes

I haven’t posted here in the anthems section in a while because of ongoing technical problems, not to mention much of the choir being out sick the past two Sundays. The anthem two weeks ago had livestream audio issues that made me reluctant to use it, as I recall. All I remember clearly is that we had only two altos (I was one), plus two more that we ‘borrowed’ from bells and orchestra just for the anthem, that had almost no time to learn the music, which was not easy to learn. I searched for a musical term to describe what the alto part was doing and came up with “parallel polyphony”. That sounds about right.

I would normally have been running screens that week, but under the cirumstances I swapped with someone else on that team and I will be running screens this following week. I will still post the anthem, if the recording quality is good.

Last week’s audio was worse — there was no audio! The tech team managed to align the video with a local recording (or something — I didn’t ask). They uploaded it as a regular video, deleting the silent livestream, and that turned out well except for the anthem, where the choir mics didn’t sound like they were on for much of the piece. The anthem’s ending was good, though. At least we had four regular, rehearsed altos, even if our part couldn’t be heard.

I was very pleased with the audio quality this week. And by the way, if anyone new here wonders where I am, it’s top row, one seat left of center. The tall, strange-looking one that has trouble standing up, seeing the music, and holding the music folder. But I like to sing, and FYI I’m not the only tall alto.

And one more thing, if you ever wonder why I cut these excerpts the way I do, it is because the services run on a tight schedule, and the scenes are so close together that they overlap slightly. I limit the video shown here to just what belongs with the choir anthem.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, March 16, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn it off there.

What is Love

From a distributor’s page:

[A] traditional anthem of service and dedication from the Phillip Keveren Choral Series.

A quite moving piece, nuanced and somewhat challenging to sing.

Behind the Scenes

While we have recently been doing “rehearse once then sing”, we spent a rather surprising amount of time on this anthem, over several rehearsals, learning the precise cutoffs and pauses, as well as the dynamics.

Our final weeknight rehearsal was unusual too, in that our director/worship leader was out sick! But our accompanist took over, accompanying and directing (try that sometime, from behind the upright practice piano), and it went very well. The director was back Sunday, directing the anthem and playing guitar for the hymns, while still recovering. Try that sometime.

There is an optional cello accompaniment for this piece and we had hoped for that, but our cellist was not available.

By the way, our choir did not sing last week—we had a guest choir instead and they did a lot of singing, but I did not post any of that here.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, February 16, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Wonderful Words of Life

Our choir put this piece together last week during rehearsal, using a hymn from one of our hymnals (I wasn’t able to confirm which one it was). Our director presented us with a starting adaptation, and then we played around with different variations until we arrived at this one. I was quite happy with it, although I wasn’t singing—it was my week for running screens (slides).

There was a mishap in the livestream booth—somebody left the choir mics muted for a while at the start of the first verse, which was sung a capella. More about the audio below.

Behind the Scenes

Because I was running screens this week, from pre-service run-through onward I was sitting right next to the audio console, listening during the run-through using my headphones connected to directly to the mixer (via a Behringer P1, if anybody cares).

With my direct feed, I did not hear the livestream glitch, but I noticed the same peculiar distortion from the choir mics that was present in last week’s recording. I told the sound guys about it, and they were on it right away. It took three of them a while to find it, but they hunted it down and fixed it, an equalization issue. What a difference!

It was quite a surprise, then, when I returned home, downloaded the video, and discovered the choir mics being muted. I am glad they caught it early!

There were also problems with the livestream lyric captions. I don’t prepare the slides, I just correct and run them, and there were quite a few corrections to be made, affecting about half the songs. There was no time left after that to check the livestream captions, so that came as another surprise, and I don’t know what happened. I did check and fix captions for the various corrections that I made, but this song didn’t need any.

There is a lot of hardware and software involved in producing these services, and we are a medium-size church with resources to match, not a big-budget megachurch. I can think of two paid staffers on the team—the rest of us are volunteers. These things happen, and we resolve them as we are able. I am quite satisfied with how it is going.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, February 2, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

You Alone Are God

From the distributor’s page:

This expressive, powerful original starts softly in a prayer-like fashion and slowly builds to a soaring, majestic affirmation of faith before closing with a return of the prayerful opening mood.

I overheard comments afterward about how people were moved by this beautiful piece. We, the choir, loved it from our first read-through. The lyrics are taken from seven passages of scripture, Revelation 1:4-8, Psalm 145:1-21, Isaiah 6:1-13, Exodus 15:1-18, Psalm 47:1-10, Psalm 48:1-15, and Revelation 5:11-14.

Behind the Scenes

The tenors and basses were sounding especially good this morning, and with our full alto section present we balanced the sopranos well. The arrangement gave us altos plenty of our “special” parts, and they came through clearly. Yay!

The audio wasn’t quite as clear as I could have hoped for, and the piano sounded as though a noise gate were being applied, and there was, but it was originating from my local sound system—oops. The technical issues with audio at the church are being worked through bit by bit.

An orchestral arrangement was available for this anthem, and we had the full orchestra this week, but we sang with piano accompaniment and I feel that worked out for the better. Our choir isn’t large enough to balance well with the orchestra. A scene from a rehearsal a couple of years ago comes to mind: Someone in the choir calls out “play softer” to the orchestra and a reply comes back, “sing louder”. That kind of conversation goes nowhere fast, and we generally don’t sing our anthems with orchestral accompaniment, although we do sing with the smaller ensemble.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, January26, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

This Little Light of Mine

From the publisher’s page:

Howard Helvey offers us a new arrangement of this well-known spiritual that literally sparkles. Passing the melody between the voices, adding slight rhythmic variations in phrases, a brief foray into a newly-composed refrain and a jazz-based accompaniment all add up to pure enjoyment for your choir and congregation or audience.

I can’t really add to that. It was a lot of fun for the choir, and well-received by the congregation.

Behind the Scenes

This was the choir’s return after the end-of-year break, and we had just one rehearsal beforehand. Some had undoubtedly sung this one before, but there is only so much most of us can remember of something with such complex harmony and heavy syncopation. I don’t know about the other sections, but some of us altos had to improvise slightly in a place or two. Our harmony was not an easy read, especially the part with the C♭ and F♭ accidentals, if you know what I mean (if you don’t — never mind, some things are hard to explain).

This is the only choir I have belonged to, out of six altogether, that could do this after one rehearsal.

I would have posted this sooner, but I had new problems with the editing software that I have been using for several years. It crashed on me, and it eventually produced a humongous file containing only 2 1/2 minutes of music. I started over from the original download today, and was able to finish without crashing or file bloat. Whew!

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, January12, 2025
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Take It To the Lord in Prayer

From the publisher’s page:

This rousing gospel presentation is built around the hymn, 'What A Friend We Have in Jesus,' and will have your choir singing from their hearts. A touch of the old gospel song, 'Just a Little Talk with Jesus,' brings a sweet moment of nostalgia to this dynamic anthem.

Not much else to say here. This is a quite enjoyable piece to sing, and qute appropriate for the final week of a sermon series and all-church study about prayer.

Behind the Scenes

Not much to say here either. I would have preferred not to have lost my balance and landed back in my seat at the intro. No harm done, but I think I need to have a talk with somebody about what brought that on.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, October 13, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Come Away

This piece snuck up on me. It seemed like a simple, easy anthem. Rated medium difficulty, we sight read it easily and learned it in a week or so, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought. But then I practiced it at home for screens. That was my job this week instead of singing, and the lyric caption timing is my contribution. After that practice it kept playing in my head, over and over. I can’t quite put it into words, but there is something about it I really enjoy.

The composer’s story, which you can read here, is rather unique.

Behind the Scenes

Since this piece was so easy to learn, sing, and run slides for, there isn’t much to say about that this week. The choir was small, with only four altos (my section) and not that many more sopranos, but it balanced and they sounded good. The recording sounds good too. It helps that the choir mic placement is better when we don’t have the bells.

We are continuing to modernize our equipment. Having switched over to a Waves mixing system (I’m not sure what specifically to call it just yet), we are starting to offer personal mixes to musicians that can use that. Personal mixes allow musicians to choose the mix they hear in their monitors (earbuds, headphones, or speakers). That’s not a thing for the choir — we have to actually hear each other directly so we can blend, but I or someone else in the choir now could set the mix and level for the choir’s floor monitors during the pre-service rehearsal, if we decided to do that.

It is a thing, however, for the two hearing-impaired screens operators—half our team—of which I am one, and it was a special experience. I was able to keep my headphones on the whole time (which keeps out distractions) for the first time ever. I mixed hand and headworn mics, choir mics, and my video sound feed on top, and keys and winds below. I muted brass—I can hear enough of them even with the headphones on. I’ve done lots of this in the past for other people, but this was the first time doing it for myself.

This does complicate my screens job, which already involved both hands and uninterrupted concentration, because now I have an iPad for my mix that I adjust using my third hand. No, I don’t have a third hand. I usually have at least one hand free, but I have to break concentration momentarily and look over at the device in between slide turns if I need to tweak the mix, like when I had one of the worship leaders muted after she switched mics. But it worked.

The special part came when the service began and the congregation began to sing. We have a personal monitor box for screens, for the two of us that use headphones, a Behringer P1 that we use to set headphone level and balance (it also has a limiter for ear protection). I have one good ear, and I use the balance control to even-out what I hear, and I am used to that arrangement. What I am not used to, and it was a wonderful surprise, was suddenly hearing everything, worship leaders, choir, instruments, and (of all things) the congregation too! Blended and clear. Wow.

I had three videos to run this morning, and it was also very nice to be able to hear those clearly. The overall experience — music, sermon, videos, and communion — was one of being immersed in the service even more than if I had been in the congregation. I’m jazzed.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, October 6, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Lord, I Stretch My Hands to You

This was our monthly Choir, Bells, and Orchestra Sunday, and we sung it with the bells and flute.

This is a special anthem for me. It is a musical prayer. I wasn’t familiar with it before we rehearsed it, but after absorbing the notes and beginning to focus upon the words, I realized that the elements of this prayer are, nearly word-for-word, things that I often pray myself. I don’t know what to say about that, other than that it is reassuring.

It was special in another way, being the first anthem I have sung with this choir that I fully memorized, music and lyrics, freeing me to watch the director and overcoming my limited vision. I hadn’t done this in more than ten years, and I hope now to do it often.

It would be much easier to drop out and leave it all to the younger people — climbing around on risers, driving at night, hearing instructions through the noise, and just being able to see the music clearly — as others my age and older have had to do. (For that matter, whole choirs are disappearing all over.) But I have been doing this over the past 32 years, and it’s about the only thing worth mentioning that I still do. Continuity.

Behind the Scenes

Our recordings are improving, bit by bit. During the weekday rehearsal it was finally established that the sound team — the way they were trained, I guess — had been using simple cardioid microphones for the choir. Without going into detail, this means that portions of the choir were being picked up strongly while other portions were not (including two of our 5 or 6 altos — my section), and that phasing issues were possible as well.1 I suspected this all along, but couldn’t believe they would do it.

When I heard this, I suggested X-Y microphones2 or hanging mics, and I think they are considering those possibilities now. The problem either way is that when we have the bells, there isn’t room to place X-Y mics where they need to be, and hanging mics might pick up more than their share from the bells (though I think good placement with angling might solve that). But this is a church, not a recording studio, and we have limited space.

The mix is improving. Choir vocals are working their way toward the top where they belong. I noticed that the flute was hot in this recording, but one thing at a time. I am glad that it came out this well.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, September 29, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

Publisher’s Page

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Lord, I Run to You

From the Distributor’s Page

Consider the trustworthiness, strength, and sufficiency of the Lord with this worshipful selection from Help Is on the Way that opens reflectively and builds to a passionate moment of praise for our one and only source of help.

We are back, with the start of our 2024-2025 choir season. This is a beautiful anthem, that I loved singing, but I have to warn you that we have a new state-of-the-art mixing system that had only been installed the week before and was not ready to go. I haven’t talked with any of them yet, but I can hear from the recording that when the crew attempted to adjust the sound level at the start of the piece, they encountered severe feedback and had to proceed at low gain.

I applied a digital boost to the level in this video, which seemed to help a little. [Edit: it was a 100% boost, and actually that seems to have worked well, listening now to the published video.] I wouldn’t usually do this, but if you would like to hear a good recording of the anthem, a publisher’s demonstration video is available on YouTube here. It’s what I used for practice at home.

I can tell you that where I was on the risers the sound level was quite high, and that may have been the source of the problem. I had this piece 90% memorized (100% of the notes), so that I would only need to glance down at the words, but the chancel was so loud that I was glued to the music anyway, because of the distraction.

We have had more than our share of mixer problems over the past year or so, and the new system is quite welcome, just not quite ready, and the choir monitors were too hot, and there wasn’t sufficient time to test everything well. The sound techs certainly tried, though.

This replacement is part of a larger overhaul to bring our system into the 21st century—this sanctuary is something like 40 years old—and bring the chancel (i.e. stage) levels down. The old Soundcraft Vi6 mixer was something like 20, and it died for the second time December 23rd and was unrepairable. We were using a temporary 32-channel replacement, a Behringer X32, but with choir, orchestra, and bells, drums, piano, and organ, between all the returns and sends the X32 was not sufficient.

There are good people working on this, and we’ll have it going soon. I am more concerned about our anthem for next week, for which the sheet music is a low-quality way-too-small copy with bits and pieces cut off here and there (yes, we did buy the licenses) and very confusing for the choir to follow. The anthem itself is good, but if we can’t read or follow the sheet music, we may not be. I am going to have to try to enlarge the pages.

Our tech team volunteer situation has improved greatly, with the addition of a new experienced sound tech, and a new screens operator who is now experienced, having trained and survived during the summer when everything is crazy. (Survived, literally, but telling about that part might be too personal.) This means I will be back to running screens about once a month, and singing with our shrinking alto section more often.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, September 15, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

I Love You, Lord

From the Distributor’s Page

In this ring & sing setting by arranger Arnold Sherman, the beauty and simplicity of Laurie Klein's ever-popular praise song is perfectly captured as he combines it with the classic hymn My Jesus, I Love Thee.

With this anthem we complete our 2023-24 season. We’ll be back around the beginning of September, give or take. Additional anthems had been planned for May but we ran out of rehearsal time!

The sound turned out well. I can hear the altos, clearly! We had some nice moving parts in this one, too. It was fun watching the bell players — they would sometimes rearrange themselves between pieces. I’m not sure what that is all about, but they can move quickly. One of them also plays the tuba, and he had farther to go.

Well, that’s it for now. I expect to resume posting in this section when the choir resumes singing.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 26, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

What’s this?

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

Father of Light

In memory of Jonathan Richard White, July 31, 1984 - August 10, 2003.

From the sheet music notes (also found here):

“Father of Light” is another stirring choral work written by Craig Courtney. Like “Let There Be Light,” it also addresses the creative power of God, but it focuses mostly upon His providence—especially in times of trouble. The lyrics were written by Susan Bentall Boersma and are loosely drawn from Psalm 56.

This piece was commissioned by the Sanctuary Choir of Third Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia, in memory of Jonathan Richard White, the son of its music director John Stone White. Jonathan was a teenager who struggled with long-term depression and who, despite his persistent faith in God, in the end took his own life.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, Jonathan’s family came to more deeply appreciate the magnitude of his struggle, as witnessed by what he wrote in his journal and Bible, and they noted that he returned frequently to the Psalms to find comfort in his distress. In contrast to the sadness surrounding this young man’s death, Courtney’s writing in this piece is uniformly strong and triumphant.

“Father of Light” opens with a vocal solo—indicative perhaps of a personal statement of faith—expressing confidence in God’s leading and protection.

This solo is followed by unison singing in the lower voices which echoes the sentiments of the soloist. As the piece progresses, more parts are added and the harmonies become richer, until at last the music moves into a higher key, the piano drops out, and all the voices reiterate the words of the opening solo at a loud dynamic.

A final entry of the soloist brings this work to its close and reminds the listener that God is sovereign in all things—even great suffering.

~ Notes by Chad Houk

Distributor’s Page

This work was surprising difficult for the choir to learn. It is heavily syncopated, laced with moving parts and, as I soon discovered, varied in its harmonization even when repeating the same words. It is a beautiful piece inspired by a very sad situation.

We presented it slightly differently from the above description, bringing in the full choir at the end of the first solo, rather than just the tenors and basses as indicated in the score. In the past it had been sung with the full choir entering earlier, before the marked end of the solo.

The lyrics are special for me, because I had gone through roughly 28 years, in my younger days from about age 12-40, of something not unlike what Jonathan Richard White ultimately succumbed to. I didn’t give in, but it was very close but for an intervention that occurred near the end of that time. If I had been born to a later generation as was he — he was 34 years younger — I don’t know.

While I thought I had put that behind me thirty years ago, I found myself crying at the place where we came in (after “when I cry…”, below). I had practiced at home, coming in at the earlier place (“in the midst of my fear”, below), and that was even worse to the point where I wasn’t sure I could even do this. Crying while singing is a mess to be avoided. With the later entry and enough times through in practice it turned out OK. But wow.

Partial lyrics, from the publisher’s preview…

All praise to the name of the Father of light,
One who listens and hears when I call.
Every step He ordains, I shall walk without fear.
In His light I’ll not stumble or fall,
In His light I’ll not stumble or fall.

What can mortal man do while I’m safe in his hand?
He is God - on His word I rely.
In the midst of my fear I will trust in His name,
For I know He will hear when I cry.

He knows all of my feelings, the depths of despair,
All the limits my soul can endure.
I will trust in His Name, I have nothing to lose,
for in Him all my hopes are secure.

All praise to the name of the Father of light, …

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 19, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

I Will Extol the Lord

A short, fast-moving anthem based on Psalm 145:1-2, and a joy to rehearse and sing.

Extra: I don’t ordinarily excerpt Children’s Choir pieces, but here is a link to the livestream recording for what they sang this morning. These kids sing harmony!

This was my screens week, running slides and captions, and I can tell you this piece really moves! I was surprised — playing back the recording — to see that the slide transitions were set for a slow dissolve instead of our usual 0.2 second dissolve. It looks a little odd to my eyes, but it works. It is kind of strange, using a slow dissolve with such fast music. The indicated tempo for this piece is 132 beats/minute in 4/4 (“lively“). The first line of lyrics looks like this:

It’s around half 8th notes (counting tied 8ths as quarters), especially for sopranos and tenors, and those would clock at 264. And it’s syncopated. This is fun choral music!

I provided special lighting for the kids, as best I could given that we have so many spotlights with burned out bulbs, another issue I’m working to get resolved. Somehow. The cameras compensated partially, and I think it turned out reasonably well.

Our run-through this morning was delayed because the kids had to be up first (no doubt because they were singing for all three services), but the CD for the accompaniment was nowhere to be found. It finally arrived from the early service, but then for some reason the CD deck wasn’t connected to the mixer. In fact, it wasn’t even plugged in. All in a Sunday morning’s work for the tech team.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 12, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

We Believe

A portion of publisher’s description, from the arranger’s page:

Chris Anderson’s modern hymn text with a strong creedal, trinitarian emphasis provides a powerful statement of faith...

The anthem begins slowly and softly, and builds and builds. It’s exciting to sing, and there is genuine feeling behind it.

The man playing the tuba here also played the bass bells (not at the same time). I guess he likes large, heavy instruments!

I don’t yet understand what is happening with the livestream mix, which was once quite good before our mixer died for the second time and a too-small temporary replacement had to be substituted, but perhaps I just described the problem. The substitute is a very capable mixer, but lacks enough channels to properly mix choir, orchestra, and bells. If that is a problem, I have a possible solution for it.

There may be other things going on as well, and both house and livestream appear to be affected. If the problems remain unresolved and I can obtain the OK, I hope to look into it once we are finished with choir for the season, at the end of May.

I had wanted to also include two instrumental pieces in this post, the bell chorus prelude and the orchestral sermon response, but because of the sound quality issues I did not. They can be found, such as they are, at the full livestream link below.

With the audio issues resolved, I would love to mount a small camera behind the choir, aimed at the bells, for a view that ordinarily only we (the choir) can see. It’s amazing to watch these ringers.

The lyrics for this anthem:

We believe in God Supreme,
Ever present, never seen;
God Most High, who reigns above;
Father nigh, whose name is Love.
We whose prayers to God ascend
Praise creation’s Source and End.

We rejoice in Jesus Christ-
God’s own Son, our Sacrifice;
Very God, yet virgin born;
Sinless, yet for sinners torn.
We whom Jesus died to win
Know He lives to come again.

We adore the Spirit free-
Author of our unity.
Giver of the sacred Word,
Wellspring of the second birth.
We whom He indwells and fills
Yield our hearts and minds and wills.

We, the Church, affirm our faith
In the Triune God of grace;
Kingdoms fall and ages change;
Faithful, changeless, God remains!
One in Christ, we lift one voice!
We believe, and we rejoice!

-Chris Anderson

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, April 28, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.

It’s a section of this Substack containing videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. A longer description can be found on the About page. If you subscribe to this Substack but don’t wish to receive notifications for this section, select Manage Subscription from the upper-right menu and turn this section off there.

We Walk By Faith

The publisher’s description, from a distributor’s page:

“We Walk by Faith” is a powerful anthem of faith in the strength and steadfastness of God. This scripture was read at the National Cathedral service following the tragedies of September 11, 2001, and Jan Sanborn's passionate music is truly inspiring. “We Walk by Faith” is a triumphant declaration that we, as Christians, will not be overcome by evil or adversity. We will stand together, united with Christ, for we know of a greater glory that cannot be seen or imagined.

This is the third time we have sung this anthem since I joined this choir, and I am happy for the opportunity to sing it again and again. This recording turned out well.

I was more than a little aprehensive when our rehearsal call time arrived and I was the only alto, but I felt certain that one or two more would arrive, and I moved down from my usual spot on the third row to the first row to wait for them. I am not soloist material. Sure enough, two more arrived. Conveniently, we had practiced this way together the previous week, the same three of us.

I am also not the ideal person to put on the front row — the woman who was behind me is short and I am tall — but this is a simple trick for “growing” a small section. The three of us were close under two of the three microphones, and we held our own against the sopranos. We had done this before, and this time we just did it, without any need for discussion. I feel that we balanced out well.

We are finishing out this choir season, which recesses during late spring & summer following the May 26th service. We also are not singing on May 5th because there are only contemporary services that Sunday — no traditional service. Nevertheless, we are practicing a sizeable collection of anthems, and it looks as though we could be singing more than one of them each remaining week.

Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, April 21, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.