Music Notes – Sunday, April 17th:
This Sunday’s musicians are The Chancel Choir, Lucy Carney, and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney.
Opening Hymn: #1000 Morning Has Come – Shelton
Jason Shelton is an award-winning composer, arranger, conductor, song and worship leader, workshop presenter, and coach. He served as the Associate Minister for Music at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashville, Tennessee from 1998-2017, and is now engaged in a music ministry at-large, focused on serving the musical resource needs of UU (and other liberal) congregations around the country (from jasonsheltonmusic.com). Morning Has Come (#1000) is one of many contributions Rev. Shelton made to our Singing the Journey hymnbook. In the words of the composer, “This song was composed for and debuted at a morning worship service during a 2001 UU musicians’ conference at the Mountain in Highlands, NC. As the story goes, it had been rainy and gray all week long, but when the time came to debut this song, the sun came out and shone gloriously through the chapel windows. Ah, the power of music!”
Centering Music: New World A-Coming – Ellington
One of the true legends of American music, jazz composer and bandleader Duke Ellington (1899-1974) was best known for composing dozens of jazz standards, including “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”, “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good”, “Mood Indigo”, and “Come Sunday”. “New World a-Coming” was Ellington’s theme song for the radio program of the same name that was broadcast on New York’s WMCA from 1944-1957. New World a-Coming was an important showcase for African Americans and helped to sow the seeds of the Civil Rights Movement. Ellington later included this music as part of his larger 1965 work titled A Concert of Sacred Music.
Meditation Response: Wake Now, My Senses – Irish folk tune/Mikelson
#298 in Singing the Living Tradition, “Wake Now, My Senses” is a setting of “Slane”, an Irish folk song that is most commonly associated with “Be Thou My Vision” (which is also in our hymnal as #20). “Slane” is named for a hill in County Meath, Ireland, where St. Patrick’s lighting of an Easter fire – an act of defiance against the 5th Century pagan king Loegaire – led to his unlimited freedom to preach the gospel in Ireland. Musicologists believe the tune was first associated with the Irish ballad “With My Love on the Road”. The words you’ll be hearing – and singing along with – this Sunday were written by the Rev. Thomas Mikelson (1936-2020), a UU Minister and native of Iowa who was also an educator and activist for racial justice and LGBTQ rights.
Offertory Music: Blessed – Collins
Folk singer/songwriter Lui Collins (b. 1950) has been performing, writing, and recording for over 40 years, earning international acclaim for her music. She’s recorded 16 CDs, performed on others’ projects, and shared the stage with such notables as Tom Rush, Bonnie Raitt, and Stan Rogers. Lui is still active as a composer and performer, recently joining forces with Donna Hébert and Max Cohen to form the band 3 Ravens. Collins also founded Upside-Up Music and began teaching Music Together classes in 2003, which led to her development of a primarily Kodály-based music curriculum for 5-7-year-olds called Kids’ Jam. The curriculum includes 8 seasonal collections of traditional and original songs (each with CD and Songbook), which she uses in her local classes and has also adapted for homeschool use as Upside-Up’s Music at Home (from luicollins.com). “Blessed” was featured on Lui’s 1993 album Moondancer.
Closing Hymn: #108 My Life Flows on in Endless Song – Lowry
“How Can I Keep from Singing?” is a southern American hymn tune that was once thought to be of Quaker origin but is now believed to have been written by Baptist minister and hymn writer Robert Lowry (1826-1899). The hymn was first published in 1858 and has since become one of the most familiar and best-loved hymn melodies within dozens of different denominations, including Unitarian Universalism (#108 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnbook).
Postlude: Morning Has Broken – Farjeon/Scottish, arr. Simeone
“Morning Has Broken” is a setting of the traditional Scottish Gaelic tune “Bunessan”, with lyrics by English author Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965). The song appears in many hymnals (including as #38 in our own Singing the Living Tradition) and reached a larger audience in 1972 when a recording by Cat Stevens became a top ten hit on the U.S. Billboard charts.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director