Music Notes – Sunday, July 6th:
This Sunday’s musician is UUCC Music Director Mike Carney
Song: Rising Green – McDade
Written in 1983, “Rising Green” is #1068 in our Singing the Journey hymnbook. The song was written by Carolyn McDade (b. 1935), a self-described songwriter, spiritual feminist, and social activist, who is also the composer of three other UU favorites: “Spirit of Life”, “Come, Sing a Song with Me”, and “We’ll Build a Land”. About “Rising Green”, the composer shares these words: “Earth shakes out a mantle of green—each blade of grass true to the integrity within, yet together with others is the rise of spring from winter’s urging. Our coming is with the grass—the common which persists, unexalted, but with the essence of life. Our humanness, our rhythms and dreams, the faith which nurtures our ardent love and hope for life—all this we share with earth community, of which we are natural and connected beings.” (from uua.org)
Special Music: Honesty (adapted) – Joel & Michaud
“Honesty” is a song by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and 6-time Grammy Award-winner Billy Joel (b. 1949). It was the third single released from Joel’s 1978 album 52nd Street, and peaked at #24 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. A heartfelt ballad, “Honesty” has been covered by numerous other artists, including a 2008 version by Beyoncé. This Sunday, you’ll hear a brand-new version of this classic tune with new (and improved?) lyrics by UUCC’s own Leon Michaud.
Postlude: We Sing of Golden Mornings – American tune/Emerson
#44 in Singing the Living Tradition, “We Sing of Golden Mornings” is built on a hymn tune called “Complainer”, which was first published in William Walker’s shape note hymnal Southern Harmony in 1835. The words are based on a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) called “The World Soul” (1847), which was adapted first by Walter Walsh, then by Vincent Silliman in 1955 for the UU hymnal We Sing of Life, and finally recast once again in 1990 into the words we’ll sing on Sunday.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director