You Alone Can Rescue
Words and music by Matt Redman - Arranged by Gary Rhodes
This was another quite harmonious piece, which comes across better live than on the livestream recording. We were down to four altos, thanks in part to this alto being in back running screens, and each person can make a difference. The rest came through well in spite of the inbalance.
There is a repeating sequence near the end (“We lift up our eyes” 8x) that bothered me a little when we first rehearsed it. We hadn’t quite worked out the harmony yet and it sounded, well, repetitious. Once we did, it became much clearer what was going on. The phrase repeats in four pairs, each pair building in some way. The musical message is more in the build than the words. I soon went from “bothered” to “enjoying”.
I notice both worship leaders were involved, one singing with the sopranos and the other directing, and a member of the instrumental ensemble was singing with us as well. The more the better!
When I will be running screens I rehearse with my section up until the final rehearsal, where I switch to running screens for that portion, for practice and to make slide corrections. We use “anthem timing” for anthem slides, where each slide is shown just slightly ahead of the first word on the slide, as opposed to congregational hymn timing where the next slide is generally shown a full word ahead, as the previous word is sung. There is a 0.2 second dissolve (slide transition) delay, which makes things a little more interesting.
Hymns tend to have very regular timing, if sometimes ideosyncratic, while anthems often feature great variety. That variety means remembering quite a few timing details spread across several minutes. The job is never boring.
From the musical I Will Rise.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, January 21, 2024
Excerpted from this livestream.