Music Notes 1-5-25

2025 is here, and the New Year brings to us a new soprano section leader, Lauren Doyel. Lauren

Michelle Doyel (Soprano), is a genre-bending, classically-trained singer/songwriter, soloist, and

chorister based in LA and Ventura County. She graduated with a B.M. in Vocal Performance

from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in 2008, then landed in Los Angeles in 2010, where she

sang jazz at the House of Blues, Indie rock at the Viper room, and plenty of classical/choral

music sprinkled in between. She regularly performs with the LA Master Chorale, the LA

Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Arete Vocal Ensemble, she is a wife and mother of two children,

and is a champion for the expressive liberation of other professional vocalists through her

business, Singing and Soul Work.  We’re very fortunate to have Lauren joining us. Watch for a

solo from her next week.

In This Very Room is considered to be one of the all-time “Top 10” modern Christian songs. It

was written by Los Angeles-based composer Ron Harris, who, at the time, was music director for

Carol Lawrence. Over coffee at Starbucks one day, he told me the story of how he was on the

road with Carol and had been away from home for over a month. He was in New Orleans and

had just gotten off a one hour phone call to his wife. He was sitting on the bed of his hotel room,

feeling lonely and miserable, and, looking around at the walls of the room, suddenly came to the

realization that there was more to the room than just the 4 walls. Pulling out his electronic

keyboard, he began writing a melody to the words that had popped into his head - “In this very

room there’s quite enough love for one like me….” It’s been performed as a solo, as a choral

work, with piano, with orchestra, a cappella, and to date, is known to have been sung in the

Upper Room – the room generally accepted to be the room where the Last Supper took place – at

least twice.

Sir John Stainer was an English composer (1840-1901) who was very influential in the musical

world of the Anglican Church, especially as a choir trainer and organist. A parallel can be drawn

between him and Antonio Salieri of the movie Amadeus fame in that his music was very popular

during his lifetime, but very little of it has survived and is performed today. He ultimately ended

up as the organist at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and upon retiring there due to bad eyesight, he became

a professor of music at Oxford University. One of his biggest contributions to modern musical

literature was in the publishing of Christmas Carols New And Old (1871), which he followed

with a second volume the next year due to its success. In these volumes, he capitalized on a

renewed interest in Christmas carols, and filled the books with arrangements of tunes that have

become classic and are still in use today, such as his arrangements of Greensleeves (What Child

Is This), In Dulci Jubilo (Good Christian Men, Rejoice), Good King Wenceslas and God Rest You

Merry, Gentlemen. The one original piece of his that is still performed, especially this time of

year, is his cantata The Crucifixion, which he published in 1887. It was scored for SATB choir

and organ, and Stainer insisted that “it would be within the scope of most church choirs”. By

today’s standards, the music is very dated, and ironically, Stainer himself described the piece as

“rubbish”, but in the middle of the work (#9 out of 20 pieces) is a gem of an anthem titled God

So Loved The World, using the classic text from John 3:16. It’s written to be sung a cappella, and

has become a standard in the world of church choir music.

I Love You Lord was written in 1974 by Laurie Klein. She was a young mother and homemaker

in Oregon and was “feeling the poverty of my life keenly at that point, both emotionally and

physically.” She sang the first part of the song spontaneously, and felt so intrigued and moved

by the words that she thought “maybe I should write this down.” She stopped long enough to get

a pen and then the rest of the song came just as easily. Her husband Bill recognized the simple

beauty of the song and encouraged her to play it for a local pastor and some visiting musicians.

Eventually the song surfaced at Jack Hayford's Church on the Way in Van Nuys. There Buck and

Annie Herring learned the song and included it on Annie's Kids of the Kingdom. But its greatest

exposure was on Maranatha! Music's Praise 4 in 1980. Since then, it has been estimated to have

been recorded over 75 times. A notable, rather earthy cover of the song was released by the rock

band Petra in 1997 on their album Petra Praise 2: We Need Jesus.