Music Notes 6-2-24
This week we welcome back our marvelous band, and we’ll be traveling around the world musically. We hope you’ll join us for the adventure.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle is a non-denominational, multi-cultural church in the heart of downtown Brooklyn that began as a small congregation worshiping in a rundown building, and has grown into a congregation of over 16,000. The husband and wife team of Pastor Jim Cymbala and music director Carol Cymbala took over leadership of the 30 member congregation in 1971. By the 1980’s, the church had grown enough to purchase the 1383-seat Carlton Theatre and convert it into their sanctuary. By 2002, they had outgrown that facility and purchased Loew’s Metropolitan Theatre, a former vaudeville theatre, and renovated it into a state-of-the-art, 3,200-seat worship facility. The choir began with just 9 members in 1971 and grew with the church. Carol Cymbala began writing music for the choir, and they recorded their first album in the 1980’s. Now numbering over 280 members, their music is sung all over the world, and they sang at the 2013 inauguration of President Obama. The song Revival In The Land was written in 1983 by Renee Morris and was recorded for the 1989 album Live…Again.
I Look To You was the title of the hit single from the album of the same name by Whitney Houston. It was written by R. Kelly (Robert Kelly), was her seventh album and was released to very favorable reviews in 2009. The single was her highest charting single in seven years and reached #19 within 3 days of its release. It was later recorded as a duet with R. Kelly, and the duet version was released seven months after her death. R. Kelly sang it at her funeral service on February 18, 2012, which was broadcast and streamed live to a worldwide audience. Houston said that the powerful piano ballad “sums up the album” and was all she wanted to say at that stage of her life.
Awesome God is a song written and recorded by Rich Mullins and first recorded in 1988 on his album Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth. It was the first single released from the album and rose quickly to #1 on all the charts, spending several months on Christian radio. It was so popular that it became his signature song and became a popular congregational song. Since his passing in 1997, it has been covered by numerous artists, including Michael W. Smith and the heavy metal band Unashamed.
Chris Tomlin was born in Texas in 1972 and learned to play guitar by playing along with Willy Nelson recordings. He has become one of the dominant forces in contemporary Christian music, and in 2012 CCLI announced that his songs were played 3 million times in churches that year. His 2013 album Burning Lights debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, only the fourth Christian album ever to open at No. 1, and he was pronounced the most sung songwriter in the world that year. In 2018, he was the 1st Christian artist to receive the “Billionaire” award from Pandora for reaching one billion Pandora streams. The song Indescribable was written by songwriters Jesse Reeves and Laura Story, and debuted on the album Arriving in 2004. Indescribable is listed in Christian Copyright Licensing International’s (CCLI) list of Top 25 Worship Songs of 2007 as #22. In 2008, it was listed in The Countdown Magazine’s list of Top 20 Praise and Worship songs as #6.
Matt Maher is a Canadian Christian artist who was born in Newfoundland, studied jazz on a scholarship from Arizona State University in Tempe and now lives in Nashville. He’s written and released 7 studio albums to date, 3 of which have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Album chart, and 4 of his singles have reached the top 25 of Billboard’s Christian Songs chart. A practicing Catholic, he was asked to lead worship for crowds of thousands at the Rally for Youth and Seminarians in Yonkers, New York during the visit by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, and in 2013 he sang Lord, I Need You for an audience of about 4 million, including Pope Francis, for World Youth Day in Rio de Janerio. His song And All The People Said Amen was the title track for his first compilation album, released in 2013. The album charted at #5 on Billboard’s Christian Albums.