Music Notes – Sunday, August 29th:
This Sunday’s musicians are Eldreth, Amy Collins, and UUCC Music Director Mike Carney
Centering Music: Sitting by the Fire – Eldreth
Today’s centering music is a piece called, “Sitting by the Fire”, an original composition for voice and guitar by Eldreth, which he wrote during the 1983 Rainbow Gathering at the Ottawa National Forest in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
A familiar face (and voice) at UUCC, singer/songwriter and guitarist Eldreth (aka Robert McDonald) has been singing since preschool, playing guitar since junior high, and writing his own songs since high school. He sang in the Columbus Boys’ Choir while in elementary school and later with The Singing Angels. He sang in school and church choirs from an early age and played with several bands before he began to perform as a solo singer-songwriter. Eldreth has played in many venues, including the New Orleans Jazz Fest, the Summer Solstice Festival in Stonehenge, England, and in numerous social justice events and demonstrations across the U.S. He has opened for many other musicians, including Richard Thompson, Bunny and the Wailers, and Jimmy Cliff.
Opening Hymn: #347 Gather the Spirit – Scott
#347 in our Singing the Living Tradition hymnal, “Gather the Spirit” is one of the most familiar and well-loved hymns of our UU faith. The song was written by UU composer, performer, activist, and friend of UUCC Jim Scott (b. 1946), who also wrote and arranged several other songs found in our hymnbooks, including “May Your Life Be as a Song” and “Nothing but Peace Is Enough”.
Offertory music: Louisiana, A Paradise – Eldreth
In the words of the composer himself: “This song was written in 1988 during and after the Great Louisiana Toxics March of which I was one of the three main organizers. We marched many miles along Cancer Corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. We stopped at all the major sources of toxics being dumped into the Mississippi and several of the towns being affected by those toxics. As we marched, Greenpeace shadowed the march on the river with their boat the Beluga, hanging banners on all the bridges. Reveilletown was a small town founded by freed slaves in the 1870s that was bought out by Georgia Pacific as a result of a lawsuit brought against them by the 106 residents, who were relocated – the historic community disappeared. St. Gabriel was a town that had highly elevated levels of child cancer. The title of the song comes from the Louisiana license plates of the time which said ‘Sportsmen’s Paradise’.”
Special Music: A Simple Song – Bernstein/Schwartz
“A Simple Song” was written by American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) with lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (b. 1948). It is the first aria from Bernstein’s Mass, a large-scale work that was commissioned for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in 1971. Mass is an ambitious and fascinating piece of music but is rarely performed today as a complete work, most likely because of the wide-ranging and eclectic performing forces required: Bernstein’s score calls for the work to be staged dramatically and feature a Celebrant (vocal soloist), two adult choirs and a children’s choir, a full classical orchestra (including celesta, piano, and two organs) a rock band, and a marching band. Liturgically, Mass is loosely based upon the Tridentine Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, but it also includes influences from secular sources and from Bernstein’s own Jewish faith. Performed as a solo by the Celebrant in the staged production, “Simple Song” is a non-denominational salutation to God, sprinkling excerpts of traditional Latin Mass text in among the English lyrics celebrating the joy and, well…simplicity of singing praise to the Divine.
Closing Hymn: #131 Love Will Guide Us
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 ourSinging the Living Tradition hymnal and is a favorite of many UUs.
Postlude: Something Spanish – Eldreth
“Something Spanish” is a piece for solo guitar. Eldreth wrote it in response to people constantly asking if he knew something Spanish when he would play at gatherings or gigs.
-Mike Carney, UUCC Music Director