Music Notes from Denise, January 25, 2025

Music Ministry 2024

St Martin’s Choir

Our church choir has provided awesome leadership in our music ministry throughout the year. We sing at the 10:30 am Eucharist each Sunday from September through May. This year we have grown to 20 members. This photo shows our fall retreat dinner. We continue to sing newly composed music such as I want to walk as a child of the light by Erik Dewar & Dan Forrest, as well as tried and true anthems such as a favorite Canticle of the Turning by Anne Krentz Organ.

Sopranos: Chelsea Brewer, Beckie Strobel, Candy Tierney, Beverly Kinkade (pt)

Altos: Kelly Barkey, Becky Brewer, Mary Drastal, Gail Schneider, Barbara Shearer, Chelsea Raiche (pt)

Tenors: Ginger Cornelius, Larry Cornelius, Ann Harbert, Ray Harbert, Mike Kelly

Basses: Doug Edmonson, John Lange, Drew Lawless, Chris Marsh, Scott Pattengill

St Martin’s Handbell Choir

Our handbell choir continues to accept the challenge of learning new music. Currently they are playing 3 octave music that requires several members to ring multiple bells. For Christmas, they played In Dulci Jubilo by Valerie Stephenson using both handbell ringing, malleting on bells, and handchime ringing. Earlier in 2024 they stood in a large circle around the nave and rang the progressive piece Joyful Processional by Margaret Tucker in which each ringer layered their own unique ringing pattern to make a joyful sound! Longtime member Larry Cornelius shares the following: The bell ringers at St. Martins are devoted and full of joy. We meet weekly to practice our songs of praise. Our music is made to uplift the congregation. We offer our simple melodies with pride. Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring out the grief that saps the mind Ring in the nobler modes of life, Ring out the want, the care, the sin, Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the common love of good.  Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Members have included: Kelly Barkey, Becky Brewer, Chelsea Brewer, Ginger Cornelius, Larry Cornelius, Mary Drastal, Mopsi Hanley, Ann Harbert, Ray Harbert, Chris Marsh, Candy Tierney

Children’s Chapel Choir

Each Sunday during choir season the children at Children’s Chapel have music time during which they learn to sing new songs and play melody bells and rhythm instruments. The Chapel Choir sings and plays their songs for the congregation about once a month. This year, we began to learn how to play the adult handbell choir’s hand chimes. For Christmas, we played Away in a manger with hand chimes for the 5:00 pm Christmas Eve family service. Florence Raiche and Marketa Raiche also played Christmas solos on the piano.

Guest Musicians    Throughout the year, St. Martin’s is fortunate to enjoy the talents of many musicians who enhance the music of our Eucharist. This year we have welcomed the following:

Boy Scout Troop 601 instrumental ensemble; Rambert Xu, piano; Cathy Smith, piano; Jackson Moeller, trumpet, Elle Wujcik, soprano; Parkway Central High Treble ensemble; Charlotte Elsensohn, flute; Nicolai McKinney, piano; Mars Kavadlo, mezzo; River Blenders Chorus; Olivia Limbaugh, mezzo; Nadia Maddex, soprano; Joy Floyd, oboe; Susan Hampton, cello; Ava O’Bryan, viola; Grace Li, violin; Julia Sakharova, violin; Clay McKinney, cello

St Martin’s Choir members comments:

Barbara Shearer, alto and Beckie Strobel, soprano are both relatively new members of our choir. Barbara writes: We were looking for a new church home, and then Covid happened.  We found St. Martin's online, and what a joy it was to experience music as an integral part of the worship service, even if there was no in-person service and no choir!  This truly spoke to our hearts.  More joy has followed as a choir member, making music and experiencing worshipful moments with a fun and dedicated choir and an extremely gifted Music Director. Beckie Strobel writes: Being a member of St. Martin’s choir has meant the world to me. It has allowed me to meet some wonderful people, get back in touch with the musical side of myself, and stay regularly connected with an amazing church body. I am incredibly grateful to be a part of it.

Please join us for Worship and the beginning of our Annual Meeting at 9:00 am Sunday, January 26th

We are members of the body of Christ and members of one another; each has different gifts to offer to God and each other. We rejoice together and mourn together, and we live to make God’s redemption visible in the world. -1 Corinthians 12:12-27

Live by faith, grow in grace, and walk in love with St. Martin's this coming Sunday as we come together, in person as well as online, for worship, thanksgiving, and praise. Wherever you are on your journey of faith, allow us to walk alongside you.

Please click here to download the service bulletin:

3E Epiphany 26 Jan 2025 LS - Annual Meeting.pdf

Download PDF • 3.08MB

Music Notes from Denise, January 18, 2025

This Sunday we will have a joy-filled celebration as if we were attending a family wedding! This photo is from the wedding of my nephew Anthony and Mariah’s last September. In Isaiah 62 we read: For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you. In Psalm 36 we read: How priceless is your love, O God! your people…feast upon the abundance of your house; you give them drink from the river of your delights. In 1 Corinthians 12 we read: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. In John 2 we read: the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” The wedding at Cana demonstrates how Jesus first revealed his glory by turning water into wine and his disciples first began to believe in him!

Our Processional hymn will be a joyful one that we sing often, Christ is the world’s true light. Our Sequence hymn is an ancient chant with contemporary text, O Holy Spirit, by whose breath, translated by John Webster Grant in 1968. It’s a translation of the Latin hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus. Although the ancient text acquires a modern face with the freshness of Grant’s translation, the ancient and Biblical images are still very much present: we sing of the Spirit as “breath” and “fire”, as “giver and Lord of life”; as “energy” and giver of gifts; as source of light and love; and as bringer of peace, fullness, and unity. (Psalter Hymnal Handbook, hymnary.org)

Our St. Martin’s Choir will sing Creating God, Your Fingers Trace, an arrangement by Ralph Johnson of Jeffery Rowthorn’s hymn, using the traditional English folk tune O Waly Waly. Johnson is a composer and church musician working in the Twin Cities, Minnesota area as Director of Music at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Minneapolis. (2012 Kjos Music Press)

       Creating God, your fingers trace the bold designs of farthest space;

       Let sun and moon and stars and light and what lies hidden praise your might.

       Sustaining God, your hands uphold earth’s mysteries known or yet untold;

       Let water’s fragile blend with air enabling life, proclaim your care.

       Redeeming God, your arms embrace all now despised for creed or race;

       Let peace, descending like a dove, make known on earth your healing love.

       Indwelling God, your gospel claims one family with a billion names;

       Let every life be touched by grace until we praise you face to face.   Jeffery Rowthorn

(1979 The Hymn Society, Hope Publishing Co.)

Our Communion hymn is a new one, Jesus, come, for we invite you, written by Christopher Idle in 1979. Idle was born in Bromley Kent in 1938 and served as a Church of England priest in Cumbria, London and Suffolk. He served on the editorial groups for several Anglican hymnals and has written hundreds of hymns. He often speaks on issues of peace, war and Christian mission. The hymn invites Jesus to celebrate the wedding feast with us and become a part of our lives. This text is set to the familiar Sicilian Mariners tune which suggests a party atmosphere. This tune is traditionally used for the Roman Catholic Marian hymn O Sanctissima, that you will hear as this Sunday’s prelude. According to tradition, Sicilian seamen ended each day on their ships by singing this hymn. It probably traveled from Italy to Germany to England. It also appears to have had an influence on the African American song We Shall Overcome. (Psalter Hymnal Handbook, 1988)

Our final hymn will be sung in honor of Martin Luther King Day: Lift every voice and sing. It is considered to be the black national anthem and calls for everyone, no matter who they are or where they come from, to lift their voice and sing for freedom. May we continue to enjoy this wedding celebratory sensation throughout the coming weeks!