Music Notes 2-2-25
This week we welcome back our wonderful band, with a special guest, alto sax player Mark
Markus. Our anthem required an alto sax, and I felt that, since we’ll have an alto laying around,
we might as well indulge ourselves and do Dave Brubeck’s famous alto sax tune, Take Five.
Take Five was written by Dave Brubeck’s sax player, Paul Desmond, and was recorded on their
1959 album Time Out. For several years in the early 60’s it was the theme song for the NBC TV
show Today, and by 1961 it was the highest selling jazz single ever. Paul Desmond assigned the
royalties after his death to the American Red Cross, which gets about $100,000 a year from it.
The gang will play it for the postlude.
This week’s anthem, God Is One, was written by a dear friend of mine, film composer Sharon
Farber. Sharon has won a Grammy, has been nominated for an Emmy 4 times and was the first
woman composer to be featured on the cover of Film Composer Magazine. Her mentor was the
late, great Shirley Walker, who wrote the music for the Batman animated series and established
the sound of the DC universe. Sharon is also the music director at the temple I sing at, The
Temple of the Arts on Wilshire Blvd. God Is One is one of many wonderful anthems she’s
written for worship, and my intention is to feature her music at one of our services and invite her
to join us for the event.
Show Me The Way is a song written by Dennis DeYoung, lead singer and keyboardist for the
band Styx. A devout Catholic, DeYoung wrote the song for his son Matthew as a pseudo-hymn
about keeping the faith “in a world so filled with hatred”. It was released on the album Edge of
the Century as the 2 nd single in December of 1990 and slowly climbed the charts until it reached
#3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it remained in the top 40 for 23 weeks, and #3 on the
Adult Contemporary chart, where it remained in the top 40 for 31 weeks. It was the band’s 4 th
and final top 5 single, and made Styx one of a handful of artists to have top 10 singles in 3
different decades (1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s).
Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart was written by Henry Smith in 1978. Following the
introduction of the song during a worship service at the Williamsburg New Testament Church in
Virginia, a military couple reintroduced it to a congregation in Germany. The song eventually
caught the attention of executives at Integrity Music. When Integrity's Hosanna! Music
copyrighted the song in 1986, the author was unknown. After Don Moen’s Give Thanks album
was released in 1986, the song was brought to the attention of Smith, who contacted Integrity
with authorship information. Integrity later included songwriting credits on all subsequent
releases, along with a writer-publisher agreement. As of 2010, the song has been recorded by
over 50 companies and published in songbooks around the world. It’s usually sung as a slow
ballad, but I thought it needed some hot sauce.
Matt Redman is an English Christian worship leader currently based in Brighton. He has won 10
Dove Awards for everything from Worship Song of the Year 2005 (for Blessed Be Your Name) to
Songwriter of the Year 2013. His album 10,000 Reasons was released in 2012 and the title track
went on to be #1 on the Billboard Christian Songs chart, where it remained for 13 weeks. 10,000
Reasons also won Grammy Awards in 2013 for Best Contemporary Christian Music Song and
Best Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music Performance.
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.