As the church continues in this fifty-day season of Eastertide to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, here are some songs I’ve come across for the occasion and really enjoyed. A few are brand-new, while others are new performances.
Good Shepherd New York, a church in Manhattan, has a phenomenal team of in-house musicians and collaborators from coast to coast. They provide music for weekly digital worship services as well as release recordings under the name Good Shepherd Collective. Check out their Easter service from April 4! The songs are listed below.
- MEDLEY: “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” by Charles Wesley / “Celebrate Jesus” by Gary Oliver (1:35)
- “Here Comes the Sun” by the Beatles (3:50)
- “Morning Has Broken” by Eleanor Farjeon (6:59)
- “Easter Dawn” by David Gungor (11:31)
- “Because He Lives” by Bill Gaither (15:27)
- “Waymaker” by Donald Vails (20:45)
The GSC has posted “Here Comes the Sun” as a standalone video on Instagram. It features Brennan Smiley on lead vocals and acoustic guitar; Liz Vice on harmonizing vocals; Charles Jones on Hammond organ; John Arndt on piano; Jesse Chandler on flute, clarinet, and saxophone; Joseph M on electric guitar; Tyler Chester on bass guitar; and McKenzie Smith on drums. The art and stop-motion animation are by Boston-based artist Soyoung L Kim.
+++
“Hallelujah” (Chorus) from the Messiah by George Frideric Handel, 1742 | Performed by the Orquesta Barroca Catalana (Catalan Baroque Orchestra), the Barcelona Ars Nova choir, and 352 other singers, 2020 [HT: Global Christian Worship]
Last year the Fundación la Caixa in Barcelona launched project #YoCanto Aleluya, soliciting professional and amateur singers alike throughout Spain and Portugal to be part of a “virtual choir,” a phenomenon that has exploded since the pandemic has made live musical concerts a health risk. Participants were asked to submit a video of themselves singing Handel’s famous “Hallelujah” chorus. Igor Cortadellas of Igor Studio then developed a concept for digitally merging all 352 submissions by projecting them on the interior architecture of Barcelona’s Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar (or overlaying them in postproduction?), and he directed a small team to execute this vision. What a feat! The final video was released a few months ago at Christmastime.
“Hallelujah” concludes part 2 of 3 of the oratorio, which covers Christ’s passion and death, resurrection, ascension, and the first spreading of the gospel. The words of the chorus are taken from Revelation 19:6, 11:15, and 19:16. For another blog post featuring an excerpt from Handel’s Messiah, see the Artful Devotion “Worthy Is the Lamb.”
+++
“Easter Dawn” | Words by Malcolm Guite, 2012 | Music by Zebulon M. Highben, 2021: A conductor, composer, and scholar of sacred music, Dr. Zebulon M. Highben serves as director of chapel music at Duke University. This year he wrote a choral setting of Malcolm Guite’s sonnet “Easter Dawn,” about Mary Magdalene’s encountering the risen Christ on Easter morning. Sung by the Duke Chapel Choir, it premiered last Sunday as part of the chapel’s Easter service and will be part of the online spring concert “Faith & Hope & Love Abide: Meditations on Resurrection,” which goes live tomorrow (April 11) at 4 p.m. EDT (view the program).
+++
“Keep the Feast (Pascha Nostrum)” by Ryan Flanigan: For this new song, Ryan Flanigan of Liturgical Folk adapted the words of the Pascha Nostrum (“Our Passover”), a traditional Christian hymn for Eastertide that, after the Reformation, was preserved in English in the Book of Common Prayer. It is based on 1 Corinthians 5:7–8, Romans 6:9–11, and 1 Corinthians 15:20–22. Flanigan wrote a fun new melody for it, which he demos here.
+++
“Zinda Yeshua (Jesus Is Alive)” by Blesson Varghese and James Bovas: This Hindi-language Easter song is from Grace Ahmedabad, an Assemblies of God church in the Indian state of Gujarat. James Bovas sings lead, with Priscilla Mozhumannil on supporting vocals. See the YouTube description for a full list of credits. [HT: Global Christian Worship]
+++
“Judah’s Lion” | Words by Fulbert of Chartres, ca. 975–1028, and Rick Barnes, 2016 | Music by Rick Barnes, 2016 | Performed by Covenant Presbyterian Virtual Choir and Orchestra, Birmingham, Alabama, 2021
Art & Theology 
So many beautiful people singing beautiful music — thank you
LikeLike
[…] Read the story about it here. […]
LikeLike
[…] poem “Prayer”: “God’s breath in man returning to his birth.” And his “Easter Dawn” [previously] is based in part on a sermon by the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop Lancelot Andrewes. […]
LikeLike