I know this is probably too late for this season, but if you need a musical number for Christmas and would like to do something new that can be worked up fairly quickly (with a good pianist), there is a nice Christmas song in the December New Era this year: Little Baby by Traci Law. 

It is a lullaby that has a pretty melody and simple but poignant lyrics. The highest note is an E so it is in the range of a soprano or tenor. The piano part is nicely arranged, though it is somewhat difficult in that the second half is written in the key of E (4 sharps).

You can get an mp3 file of the piano and vocals: Little Baby (piano and vocals) or just the piano.

I’ve changed the banner image of my blog to better reflect its choral theme. So, I wonder, can you name the tune I used in the image?

I am a listener of Steven Kapp Perry’s excellent podcast The Cricket and Seagull Fireside Chat, and I was excited to hear his recent interview with Rob Gardner, someone who I hadn’t heard of before.  Gardner is performing his presentation of “Joseph Smith the Prophet” with a 300 voice choir, orchestra, and soloists on April 25 and 26th, 2008 (Friday and Saturday).  I was impressed with the clips included in the podcast, and wish I lived in Utah so I could attend the performance (which is free if you order tickets at lds.org/events).

I also noticed that you can purchase sheet music of Rob Gardner’s arrangements at his nonprofit organization’s website, Spire Music. I’m not currently a ward choir director anymore, but if I were and I had a budget, I would definitely be interested in looking into these arrangements more.

I just saw this announcement at NBC’s website. This is definitely a first — kind of American Idol meets Ward Choir.

CLASH OF THE CHOIRS

Two-Hour Premiere, Monday, December 17 ( 8/7c ) , then airing Tuesday, December 18 ( 8/7c ), Wednesday, December 19 ( Special Two-Hours, 8 /7c ) with the final competition on Thursday, December 20 (8 /7c )

‘CLASH OF THE CHOIRS’ JOINS THE NBC HOLIDAY LINEUP WITH A LIVE FOUR-NIGHT MUSICAL EVENT – In an exciting four-night event series, “Clash of the Choirs,” will follow five celebrity artists back to their hometowns to assemble an amateur choir and prepare them to compete live in studio for the title of America’s best choir. From December 17-20 the show will feature music genres ranging from current pop hits to holiday classics and the choir hopefuls will be judged each night by viewers watching at home.

UPDATE 12/8

The show now has a website: http://www.nbc.com/Clash_of_the_Choirs/

Hmmm – looks like it is going to be really pop-py.

http://www.irvnelsonmusic.com - More excellent free arrangements. You can hear a recording of Silent Night at his website of his arrangement. I wish I had discovered it a little earlier this year! The arrangement would be appropriate for sacrament meeting. Good stuff.

Last week we sang David Naylor’s arrangement of Abide with Me at our Ward Conference. The a’capella verse (second) has some nice harmonies that are a little adventurous without pushing the boundaries. We had a great turnout for the performance and I was quite pleased with how it sounded. If we could just get that many people coming every week to rehearsal! We rehearsed briefly before our 9:00 Sacrament Meeting at 8:30 AM, and the calls one of our choir stalwarts made the night before paid off; we had about 20 singers.

It does make me wonder though if it is frustrating to the choir members who attend rehearsals faithfully. I think in some ways they are glad to get the extra voices along side them, although even with the boost they do carry the weight with their familiarity with the music. Sometimes I wonder if instituting a “no performing unless you attend rehearsal at least one or two weeks ahead” might boost rehearsal attendance. However, I haven’t been willing to risk the other possibility: that our choir ends up being more like a quintet at the performance.

Does requiring a level of attendance at rehearsals help? For some people (the ringers) I know they can come in and perform last minute, but I wonder if this actually contributes to non-attendance at rehearsals.

Ronald Staheli's SATB arrangement of Awake Ye Saints of God Awake.

David R. Naylor's SATB arrangement of Abide with Me. (audio)

more to come…

A nice website at BYU about LDS composer Merrill Bradshaw. It features sections on His Life, His Music, and His Words. He wrote an a cappella piece set to the text of the Articles of Faith as well as many other excellent LDS religious works. Here is a picture of him at the piano with my grandfather, Ralph Laycock (who is standing at the left).

In 1975, Ralph Woodward, Professor of Music and Choral Director at BYU, wrote an essay titled Choral Music in the Church. Woodward gives guidelines and sets standards for selecting choral music for use in sacred services, such as sacrament meeting. The three page article is worth reading.

At the end of the essay I was excited to see his recommendation for an Easter Cantata, The Seven Last Words of Christ, by Heinrich Schutz. I have been thinking about what the choir could do for Easter. I found an SATB arrangement of Seven Last Words at SheetMusic Plus and ordered a couple of copies to look over.

Woodward’s essay was part of a unique 1975 issue of Dialogue that was all about music in the Church. There are some other interesting articles I plan on reading. One interesting bit of history I gleaned was that, during the passing of the sacrament, the organist used to play music. In “The Future of Music in the Church” Reid Nibley describes his memories of this in his childhood.

What is your ward choir planning to do for Easter Sunday?

As you can probably tell by the links I am compiling, I have been trying to identify sources for good ward choir music on the web, especially places where you can download and print music directly from the site. I will gradually be highlighting and reviewing these sites in future posts.

Today I added a new site to the list: Michelle Willis’ Teton Music. Sister Willis has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music Education from Boise State, and also graduated from Ricks College (BYU Idaho). The free items on her site include 9 excellent hymn/song arrangements, and a refreshing original composition inspired by David Bednar’s Conference Talk “The Tender Mercies of the Lord.” The song is available in SATB, SSA, and Solo arrangements.

There are MIDI files for each of her LDS religious works so you can hear them – just click on the checkmark in the MIDI file column, and open the file in whatever your computer offers to play them with. To download the printed music, you will need Adobe Acrobat (free) to view the PDF files. I know you are probably saying, “doesn’t everyone have this?” but through personal experience of helping others with computer questions I would bet that many still do not.

Willis also offers three free “LDS Hymn Bridges.” These are short interludes to play between two songs to make it easy to modulate from one to the other. There are also other religious, and even a few non-religious (e.g. Mixed-Up Mother Goose) compositions you can purchase.

Thanks to Spencer Willis for e-mailing me and making me aware of Teton Music. If you have a web site with free (or inexpensive) choir music, please send me a note. Or if I have identified your site already, let me know if you would like to be featured in a post on this blog.