What is Love
Composed by Jason Dyba and Shelly E. Johnson. Arranged by Phillip Keveren.
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 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.
