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.
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.
