Music Notes 1-21-24

This Sunday we feature our marvelous tenor section leader, Jose.  Jose Meza holds a Bachelor of Music Degree in Vocal Performance and a Masters in Music Industry Administration from California State University, Northridge. Some of his performed soloist concert repertoire include: Haydn’s Harmoniemesse, Handel’s Messiah & Dettingen te Deum, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Magnificat & Wachet auf, Schubert's Mass in G, and Mozart’s Requiem.  José has received the Desert Opera Theater Scholarship and the David & Judith Scott Voice Scholarship. He has also been a winner in the Pasadena Schubertiade Lieder Competition and in the Center Stage Opera Vocal Competition. José has participated in summer programs with Opera San José, Angels Vocal Art, and CSU Summer Arts.  Currently, Jose is the Education Programs Manager at Los Angeles Master Chorale and leads The Sunday Night Singers, a non-profit community choir in Palmdale, CA. He has been the tenor section leader at First Presbyterian Church, Encino since January 2018. 

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.  Jesus Will Make A Way was written and arranged by Carol Cymbala and was released in 1992 on the album Only To Him.

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 Your Grace Is Enough was released on his independent album Welcome To Life on January 1, 2003, and then re-released on his first major studio album Empty & Beautiful, where it peaked at #4 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart.  

Come Thou, Almighty King is a classic hymn with a murky authorship.  The earliest known publication of this hymn is a leaflet that was bound into the 6th edition of George Whitefield's Collection of Hymns for Social Worship, 1757.  In this leaflet, the hymn had five verses of seven lines each, and was titled An Hymn to the Trinity.  The leaflet also contained the hymn Jesus, Let Thy Pitying Eye by Charles Wesley, and because of this hymnologist Daniel Sedgwick attributed Come Thou Almighty King to Wesley as well.  However, there is no record of this hymn in any of Wesley's collections of hymns, nor is there any hymn known to be Wesley's that uses the same meter as this hymn does.  These days, Come Thou Almighty King is usually sung, as it is in our hymnbook, to the tune Italian Hymn (also called Moscow or Trinity), which was written as a musical setting for this hymn by Felice Giardini at the request of Countess Selina Shirley. This hymn tune along with three others of Giardini's were first published in Martin Madan's Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, 1769