Summertime… Fewer rehearsals, more unscheduled time, holidays, time for creativity. Summer is always a great time to do some planning for the next year for your choir, instrumental ensembles, or handbell choir. So how do you pick music? How do you plan with your ministry team? How much do you...
World Refugee Day, June 20, is an international observance dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world. To learn more about the plight of millions of refugees and the extent of the crisis affecting them, visit the United Nations Refugee Agency . Many communities may wish to include one or...
Psalms are an important component of reading scripture in worship. There are many ways to use the psalms set to music. In Christine Gladu’s article “The Psalms: Jesus’ Prayer Book” (Gathering Lent/Easter 2020), she summarized much of the history of psalms, so please refer to that article for background. Here...
Do you use music to facilitate confession throughout the year? Or do you only use congregational music for confession during Lent? Is confession an opportunity to incorporate new music into your context? It seems to me that there are several ways to include music in this portion of the liturgy...
Have you ever needed a piece of music or needed to arrange or edit a piece but were not able to write it all out because of time constraints or the complexity of the music? ScanScore might be a useful tool. You can scan, play, and edit your sheet music...
I love hearing people’s stories—listening to a United Church Women (UCW) elder tell me about growing up, hearing from a chorister who has come to recognize the power of song in their lives, being entranced by a child telling me about events of their day, absorbing biblical stories over and...
Have you noticed that it is more difficult to find choir anthems for some dates on the liturgical calendar? Personally, I find Transfiguration Sunday problematic for finding a good anthem. I have a couple of pieces that I tend to use year after year, so this year, I did some...
Among the many hymns and songs we have in More Voices and Voices United from various cultural contexts, Donald Patriquin has written a whole Caribbean mass. The Sanctus and Benedictus, Memorial Acclamation, and Great Amen are printed in More Voices (206, 207, and 208). But there is more! If a...
When our son was young, we attended two musical programs with him. The first was a toddler program called Music Together, and then he attended violin lessons taught in the Suzuki method before he was four. Aside from the common topic—music—I noticed many other similarities between these two programs, but...
Okay, admit it…as musicians, we’re not all good at the same things. In your leadership position, do you dread being asked to play something for an upcoming event that you can’t find printed music for and you don’t play by ear very well? Here’s a solution: Tunescribers ! You can...
