Save the date: Linking Legacies concert on March 12th
Be sure to join us in the UUCC Sanctuary at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, March 12th for Linking Legacies, a free concert celebrating the music of Black composers and performers with a connection to Northeast Ohio. Click here for more information about this very special musical event!
Music Notes – Sunday, February 26th:
This week’s musician is UUCC Pianist Karin Tooley
Opening Hymn: When I Am Frightened – Denham
“When I Am Frightened” (#1012 in Singing the Journey), also titled “Then I May Learn”, was commissioned in 1999 by the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. Because of her lifelong commitment to working with and empowering youth, UU composer Shelley Jackson Denham (1950-2013) took the opportunity to write a piece based on children’s yearning for truth, respect, and engagement with adults. In keeping with a philosophy that “children are watching, what are they learning?”, the song is meant as a reminder that all children deserve and need compassion, acceptance, commitment…and that they often learn to both give and receive these essential elements of relationship through the simple act of observation. (includes material from uua.org)
Centering Music: The Water Is Wide – Scottish Folk Song
“The Water Is Wide” is an adaptation of the Scottish folk song “O Waly Waly”, which dates back at least 400 years. The flowing melody has inspired many hymn arrangements (“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “The Gift of Love” being the best-known) and hundreds of settings, both by traditional composers (Benjamin Britten and John Rutter) and folk musicians (Pete Seeger and Joan Baez among many others).
Sung Meditation: #391 Voice Still and Small
#391 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal,” Voice Still and Small” is a gentle, meditative piece by UU musician, composer and music educator John Corrado (b. 1940).
Offertory: You’ve Got a Friend – King
Carole King (b. 1942) is one of the most influential and celebrated songwriters in the history of American Popular Music. Since her career began in the 1950s, she has written or co-written no less than 118 songs that have charted in the Billboard Hot 100, has won eight Grammy Awards, been inducted into both the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and in 2013 became the first woman honored as a recipient of The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. King wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” for her signature 1971 album Tapestry. The song was also recorded by James Taylor (b. 1948), whose cover version became a #1 hit in the U.S. Interestingly, both artists recorded their versions of “You’ve Got a Friend” in the same studio session with the same backing musicians, and both earned a 1972 Grammy Award for their respective versions of the song: Taylor for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and King for Song of the Year.
Closing Hymn: # 1021 Lean on Me
First released in 1972, “Lean on Me” was the first and only number one hit for R&B legend Bill Withers (1938-2020). In 1987, a remake by the reggae band Club Nouveau won Withers a Grammy Award for Best Song and made “Lean on Me” one of only a handful of songs to have reached #1 both in its original form and then later as a cover version. The song was notably performed by Mary J. Blige at the concert celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009, and is included in our Singing the Journey hymnbook as #1021.
Postlude: We Are Family – Rodgers and Edwards
“We Are Family” was the biggest hit for the Philadelphia-based Soul/R&B group Sister Sledge, reaching #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1979. The song was written by two other east coast R&B musicians; Nile Rodgers (b. 1952) and Bernard Edwards (1952-1996), who were best known as the co-founders of the group Chic. Rodgers and Edwards wrote dozens of songs together, but “We Are Family” was the first song they wrote for any artist or group other than Chic, which they did at the urging of then-president of Atlantic Records Jerry Greenburg, who felt Rodgers and Edwards deserved more recognition as songwriters. In addition to its chart success, “We Are Family” became the unofficial theme song of the 1979 World Series Champion Pittsburgh Pirates. The song is also included on Billboard magazine’s 2016 list of “The 35 Best Disco Songs Ever” and ranked #20 in their 2017 list of “100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time” in 2017. Rolling Stone also ranked the song as number 34 in their 2022 list of “200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time”.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director
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