Come to church this week and enjoy our new Sound and Camera System!
Be sure to come to church (in person or online) this Sunday, April 10th to experience our new and improved sound and camera system for the UUCC Sanctuary! Many thanks to everyone who attended our training session on Wednesday evening – if you couldn’t be there Wednesday but are still interested in being part of the A/V team, just contact Mike Carney or Sharon Edmond and we’ll get you on board.
Good Company concert – this Sunday at 4 p.m.
This Sunday afternoon, please join Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble for The Promise of Living, that group’s return to live performance after two (although it seems more like ten or twenty) years of virtual events. The concert will be Sunday, April 10th at 4 p.m. at Lakewood Presbyterian Church (14502 Detroit Ave. in Lakewood) Freewill donation; masks are encouraged for the audience; singers will be masked. This concert will feature music of Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim, Sarah Quartel, Morten Lauridsen and many more. Good Company: A Vocal Ensemble is directed by UUCC Music Director Mike Carney and many UUCC members and friends sing in the ensemble, including Barbara Bradley, Amy Collins, Leon Michaud, Anne and Steve Sanford, Pam Schenk, and Holly Walker. You can also listen to Mike’s interview on WCLV ideastream about the event. We hope to see you there!
Come to church early on Sunday for pre-service music from our guest musicians!
We are very happy to have The Erie Waters Flute Ensemble with us as special guest musicians this Sunday, April 10th. They will be playing a number of selections during the service, but they will also perform a flute ensemble arrangement of Delibes’ beautiful Flower Duet from Lakmé as pre-service music, beginning at approximately 10:50 a.m. Don’t miss this special musical treat before the service on Sunday!
Music Notes – Sunday, April 10th:
This Sunday’s musicians are The Erie Waters Flute Ensemble and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney.
The Greater Cleveland Flute Society’s Erie Waters Flute Ensemble is:
Rebecca Chen
Bryan Kennard
Sara Lambert
Martha Somach
Bonnie Svetlik
Rae Yeager
The Greater Cleveland Flute Society (GCFS) sponsors recitals, masterclasses, student festivals, and lectures throughout the year to promote flute education and instruction in the community at all levels. GCFS provides outreach activities to enhance awareness of music and the flute through performance and is actively involved in regional and national organizations. Its members include students, adults, teachers, amateur and professional flutists and corporate sponsors. GCFS’s annual Cleveland Composers’ Connection Concert will be here at UUCC at 7 p.m. on Sunday, April 24th, and the event is free and open to the public.
When a group of area flutists performed new flute music on a water theme by Cleveland composers at the Chicago Flute Festival in 2009, The Erie Waters Flute Ensemble was born! Comprised of members from the Greater Cleveland Flute Society, the unique sound of Erie Waters comes from bringing together the entire flute family from bass flute up through alto, C flutes, piccolo, and Native American flutes.
Pre-Service Music: “Sous le dôme épais” from Lakmé – Delibes
“Sous le dôme épais”, more commonly known as “The Flower Duet”, is one of the most recognizable works in operatic history. The lilting duet, originally written for soprano and mezzo-soprano, is from the 1883 opera Lakmé, the best-known work of Romantic-Era French composer Léo Delibes (1836-1891).
Opening Hymn: #1024 When the Spirit Says Do – African American Spiritual
“I’m Gonna Sing (When the Spirit Says Sing)” is among the best-known of traditional African American Spirituals. Its origins are unknown, but it first began appearing in hymnals during the 1950s and became one of the rallying anthems of The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. It is included in our Singing the Journey hymnbook as #1024 under the title “When the Spirit Says Do”.
Centering Music: Native American Flute Meditation on Carlos Nakai/Echoes of the Ancients – Bassingthwaite
Sarah Bassingthwaite is an award-winning flutist, composer, and educator currently living in Seattle. In addition to performing as a soloist, she teaches flute and composition at Seattle Pacific University, and performs regularly as a member of The Ecco Chamber Ensemble, The Sound Ensemble, and Windsong Classical Trio, among other groups. (from sarahbassingthwaighte.org ) Commissioned in 2006, “Echoes of the Ancients” is based on Native American themes, and Dr. Bassingthwaite’s piece is combined here with a flute meditation inspired by R. Carlos Nakai, who is of Navajo-Ute heritage and a widely respected composer and performer of Native American flute music.
Meditation Response: #44 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.
Offertory Music: Salvation is Created – Tchesnokov
“Salvation is Created” is the best-known composition by Russian composer, conductor, and educator Pavel Tchesnokov (1877-1944). Written in 1912, “Salvation is Created” was originally conceived as a choral work, and would prove to be among the last sacred works Tchesnokov composed, as the Soviet government which came to power soon thereafter suppressed religious music. The work is a communion hymn based on a chant melody believed to have originated in Kiev, and the text translates to: “Salvation is made in the midst of the earth, O God. Alleluia.”
Closing Hymn: #151 I Wish I Knew How – Taylor/Dallas
#151 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnbook, “I Wish I Knew How” is a jazz-gospel song written in 1963 by jazz composer/pianist Billy Taylor and lyricist Dick Dallas. The song would become one of the anthems of the American Civil Rights Movement and has since been recorded by dozens of artists, most famously by Nina Simone in 1967.
Postlude: Allegro from Flute Concerto No. 4 – Boismortier
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755) was a French composer of the Baroque period, who was among the first composers to be able to support himself independently without patronage from wealthy aristocrats. Boismortier was able to obtain a royal license for engraving music, and his popularity in Paris at the time allowed him to earn a comfortable living by selling his sheet music directly to the public, a practice that would not become commonplace among European composers for another hundred years. Boismortier wrote a variety of instrumental music, sacred cantatas, opéra-ballets, and vocal music, but was especially prolific in composing for the flute. His six Concerti for Five Flutes are his most widely performed works today, and Sunday’s postlude will be the opening movement of Boismortier’s Concerto à 5 in B minor.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director