Music Notes – Sunday, March 10th:
This Sunday’s musicians are The Chancel Choir, Aaron Burkle, and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney
Opening Hymn: #131 Love Will Guide Us – Rogers
Sally Rogers is an award-winning folk musician, songwriter, and children’s arts educator. 2019 marked Sally’s 40th year as a songwriter, performer, and educator, and she is still steaming ahead, warming hearts and minds wherever she goes. Her songs “Lovely Agnes” and “Touch of the Master’s Hand” have frequently been mistaken for traditional, while “Love Will Guide Us” and “Circle of the Sun” are now anthems for rituals of passage and protest (from sallyrogers.com). Rogers’ gospel-inspired “Love Will Guide Us” is #131 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal and is a favorite of many UUs.
Centering Music: Return Again – Carlebach
Written by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925-1994, also known as Reb Shlomo), “Return Again” (#1011 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook) comes from a musical village that Carlebach founded in Israel. The Hebrew word “tshuva,” often translated as “repentance” during Yom Kippur, literally means “return.” This has a deeply spiritual sense of coming back to the source of our being to re-establish right relationship with yourself.
Offertory Music: Guide My Wayfaring Feet – African American Spirituals, arr. Schram
“Guide My Wayfaring Feet” is a partner song arrangement of two songs: “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” (an American folk/gospel song whose roots may go back to central Europe) and “Guide My Feet” (a Spiritual from the African American tradition). Both songs express a mixture of doubt and hope at the prospect of finding one’s way through a difficult journey. The arrangement you’ll hear on Sunday is by choral composer Ruth Elaine Schram (b. 1956), who has over 2,000 published works to date.
Closing Hymn: Just as Long as I Have Breath – Ebeling/Carpenter
#6 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, “Just as Long as I Have Breath” is a song based on Johann Ebeling’s (1637-1676) traditional hymn tune “Nicht So Traurig” (“Not So Sad”), with words by UU songwriter and activist Alicia S. Carpenter (1930-2021). Carpenter authored no fewer than 10 of the songs in our ‘big’ hymnal, including “Here We Have Gathered” (#360), We Celebrate the Web of Life” (#175), and “With Heart and Mind” (#300).
Postlude: Love Is Little – Shaker tune, arr. Siegfried
“Love Is Little” is a traditional Shaker melody arranged by American composer/educator Kevin Siegfried (b. 1969), who is currently serving as composer-in-residence with the Capitol Hill Chorale in Washington, DC, and also teaches songwriting, piano, and music theory at The Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Siegfried is deeply involved in the research and performance of early American music, and his arrangements of Shaker music have been performed and recorded by choirs across the globe.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director