Music Notes 7-7-24

This week we have our wonderful band with us, and our anthem is a tune I have had on the brain for literally decades.  Back in 1999, The New Covenant Singers, the contemporary choir from Bel Air Presbyterian Church, came to my wife’s church (St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Granada Hills) as guest artists and asked if our resident band could accompany them on their anthem piece.  I orchestrated it for them, and lost track of the choral score.  Finally, a couple of months ago, after a lot of detective work, I discovered the song had been written by Dan Adler.  Dan and his wife run a coffee house/performing space/ministry in Minneapolis.  The piece was out of print, but I contacted Dan, and he gave me a copy of the choral score and the brass parts that were on the recording (you can hear it on YouTube).  The piece, It Is Good, is a calypso tune that was released on the album What We Really Need by his band the Heart of the City Worship Band and is so infectious, it makes you want to dance in the aisles.

You Raise Me Up was originally composed by the Norwegian-Irish duo Secret Garden and was initially an instrumental titled Silent Story. Composer Rolf Løvland approached Irish novelist/songwriter Brendan Graham to write the lyrics (which probably appealed to Graham due to the similarity between the tune and the tune for the Irish folk song Danny Boy).  It was released in 2002 on Secret Garden’s album Once In A Red Moon, sung by Irish singer Brian Kennedy, and sold well in Ireland and Norway.  In 2003, David Foster decided to produce the song and chose young up-and-coming singer Josh Groban to sing it.  It was released on the album Closer in 2003 and rose to #1 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Chart in early 2004, where it remained for 6 weeks.

Hailing from Marietta, Georgia, Third Day is a Christian rock band formed at YMCA Camp High Harbour in 1991 by high-schoolers Mac Powell and Mark Lee.  The name Third Day is a reference to Jesus’ resurrection on the third day after crucifixion.  Over the years, like most bands, they had several different musicians playing with them and released their first independent album, Long Time Forgotten, in 1994.  In 1995, they signed a contract with Reunion Records and released their second album Third Day in 1996.  That year they were nominated for a Dove Award for New Artist of the Year and their video Consuming Fire won a Billboard Music Award for Best Christian Video.  In 2004, they released their seventh album Wire, toured the U.S. and Europe, collaborated on Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, played at the Republican National Convention and were featured on 60 Minutes.  Their hit single, Soul On Fire, is from their album Soul On Fire of 2014, and spent 19 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 2 on Hot Christian Songs and No. 3 on Christian Digital Songs.  

Hailing from the small coastal town of Bangor in Northern Ireland, the Rend Collective is a group of “twenty-somethings” that gathered at Rend, what the band describes as “a ministry for spiritually hungry young adults, desperately seeking an authentic, raw and real expression of church, which was informally pastored by bandleader, Gareth Gilkeson.”  Their first album – Homemade Worship by Handmade People – was released in 2012, and was followed by a string of hits in the contemporary Christian music world.  Their music is based around older instruments - their native Irish folk instruments, old rock and roll guitars and assorted other whimsical musical toys - and has a raw, uninhibited style that gets the toes tapping and the feet stomping.  They don’t call themselves a folk band, but insist rather “We are not actually an indie-folk band - despite all the beards and bow-ties and banjos. We are a celebration band. It’s just a coincidence that folk music and celebration make a great pairing!”  Their song My Lighthouse is a classic foot-stomper that never fails to engage the listener and was released in 2014 on the album The Art Of Celebration.

Dan Schutte is one of the most renowned of the contemporary composers in the Catholic world and is one of the founding members of the St. Louis Jesuits, who popularized a contemporary style of church music set to sacred texts sung in English.  This was a result of the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960’s (also known as Vatican II), which revamped and reformed the Catholic liturgy in an effort to bring it closer to the people (before that, the mass was sung in Latin and the priest kept his back to the congregation throughout).  He is based in San Francisco, has written over 120 popular hymns and mass settings, and continues to be one of the most influential figures in the world of contemporary Catholic liturgical music.  His most famous composition is Here I Am, Lord, based on texts from Isaiah and Samuel.  Despite its Catholic origins, it is found in most Protestant hymnals and has been translated into over 20 different languages.  In 2008, a survey conducted by the United Methodist Church found it to be 2nd favorite after Amazing Grace.

Bob Marley was a Jamaican composer/singer/recording artist who became a world-renowned cultural icon and synonymous with Jamaica and reggae music.  In fact, today Jamaica still uses his song One Love in their tourism ads.  He was born in 1945 and fused reggae, ska and rocksteady styles of music into his compositions.  He started his career with his band The Wailers in 1963, which released some of the earliest reggae recordings.  When the band disbanded in 1974, he moved to England and embarked on a solo career with the 1977 release of his mega-hit album Exodus.  It had 4 hit singles – Exodus, Jamming, Waiting In Vain and One Love.  It went stayed on the British album charts for 56 consecutive weeks, sold 75 million records and established him as one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.  He tragically died young, at the age of 36, of melanoma in Miami in 1981.