2 Anthems for Palm Sunday
Hosanna in the Highest by Craig Courtney and May Jesus Christ Be Praised by Claude L. Bass
Our call to worship. The children weren’t singing in it this year, but this is a favorite of the choir and bells. It’s a wonderful sound, expecially if you happen to be in the middle of it!
From the distributor’s page:
Combining children, brass, and handbells with a full majestic organ accompaniment and expansive SATB vocal parts result in a musical celebration of epic proportions! …
Our offertory anthem, a rendition of When Morning Guilds the Sky.
Here’s something a little different from behind the scenes. I don’t often have opportunities to take photos, let alone shoot videos, but using my phone and standing at the top center of the risers I captured 23 seconds of the bells while they were practicing the prelude, before I had to go do something. I think I see one of them switching bells at about the 5 second mark. I mentioned that last week as one of the reasons for the gloves. It’s a very quick switch. (Or I am seeing things.)
And by the way, the organ console is visible at the far left (from this view) at the end of the video. It’s an old Allen electronic organ. The speakers are under main the screens to the right and left of the choir (not visible in these videos).
You can see and hear the complete prelude here, viewed from the front. This link points into the livestream recording at the start of the prelude, continuing on with the call to worship, above, and the rest of the service.
If you were to keep going past the prelude at the above link, you might notice a certain choir member standing up quite late. All will say is that something was holding me down, and I hope that never happens again. I was rattled enough after that that I couldn’t remember where the starting page in the music was. Fortunately, we’ve performed and practiced it enough times that I didn’t need to see the opening bars.
Many of the choir members have been singing these pieces for a long, long time. I don’t have that advantage, leaving me rather dependent upon sight-reading the music using my not-so-good eyes. I fit in extra practice time at home, sometimes when I can.
The left-hand camera was fixed in place. They were short-handed, with just one operator, in the center. Everything else was covered for once — we even had all seven of our regular altos.
This coming Sunday it looks like we have a stack of anthems to sing, for two services, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. One of them sometimes makes me cry. Got to watch out for that.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, March 24, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.
