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| Thursday, March 29, 2012 |
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What’s For Worship Palm Sunday, April 1
By webmaster @ 1:45 PM :: 880 Views ::
1 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Palm Sunday / Passion Sunday
Palm Sunday is full of liturgical contradictions. It’s festive, triumphant, and regal. Yet it’s also foreboding – a shadowy reminder of how quickly the mob turns from hailing Jesus to deriding him and calling for his death. We witness Jesus’ supreme courage as he “set His face toward Jerusalem,” fully aware of all the terror that lay ahead in His final days on earth.
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| Thursday, March 22, 2012 |
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What’s for Worship Sunday March 25th
By webmaster @ 3:08 PM :: 869 Views ::
1 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
What do you hold sacred?
Last week the Sanctuary Choir was busy recording our new CD that will be released in the fall. If you were at our recent concert you heard a preview of much of the music, centered on the theme of LOVE, sacrificially given and unconditionally shared. The record will hold a wide variety of exquisite choral music rendered with amazing skill and passion. I pray it will be a powerful vehicle for ministry in countless lives for many years to come, and something of which Marble can truly be proud.
We were extremely fortunate to have our recording sessions in a splendid Catholic church, St. Joseph’s Yorkville, on 87th Street east of First Avenue. The church was quiet and had phenomenal, cathedral-like acoustics (important criteria for a recording venue). After spending many hours there I came to be impressed with St. Joseph’s on several levels. Number one was the extraordinary, genuine welcome we were given. From the first step we took inside the church we were made to feel like honored guests, and they seemed genuinely enthusiastic about our project. As our producer pointed out, the church and its community are as much a crucial part of the recording process as the musicians, and St. Joseph’s proved to be a wonderful collaborator.
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| Wednesday, December 28, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship New Year’s Day, 2012
By webmaster @ 2:17 PM :: 1063 Views ::
2 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Endings and Beginnings
Hymn: This Is a Day of New Beginnings; Text – Brian Wren (b. 1936), Music – Kenneth Dake Wren's original text began as a question, “Is this a day of new beginnings?” He explains: “In itself, the new year is an arbitrary convention... The recurrent awakening of life in nature is not a strong enough foundation for hope of real change. Yet by faith in the really new events of the Christian story, a day, or a month, or an hour can become charged with promise, and be a springboard to a changed life.” Wren’s inspired words, which were written for a New Year’s Day service at Holy Family church in Blackbird Leys, Oxford, England, challenge us to seize and act upon the real hope found in Christ.
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| Monday, December 19, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship Christmas Eve & Day, 2011
By webmaster @ 12:04 AM :: 1424 Views ::
0 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of the services’ music are included for you to enjoy as you read. (Program notes for Christmas Eve will also appear in the printed service bulletin.)
Christmas Eve (Prelude for Choir and Brass begins at 6:10 and 8:10pm)
On Saturday evening and Sunday morning the choral music will feature Christmastide texts that have been sung across many centuries and continents. The fact that generations of composers continually turn to these ancient words for inspiration attests to their enduring truth and timeless beauty. Amidst the secularization of the season they remind us of the holy. Their theology and poetry form an intersection of religion and art, inspiring a wealth of transcendent music that never becomes obsolete. As music and words commingle to reveal new layers of truth, may we hear afresh the song of angels on that holiest night.
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| Thursday, December 15, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship December 18th
By webmaster @ 10:14 AM :: 1979 Views ::
3 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
A Cavalcade of Carols
Even though it’s still only the fourth Sunday of Advent, musically we will already be in full Christmas dress this week. Be sure to arrive in the sanctuary by 10:45 for a special Prelude by a terrific string quartet featuring Mina Smith, cellist, and her friends Pamela Frank and Andy Simionescu on violin, and Danielle Farina on viola. Their dazzling array of carols, played with customary verve in the extreme, is always a highlight of our season! They will also provide instrumental accompaniment to the Festival of Voices choir throughout what promises to be a poignant worship experience.
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| Thursday, December 08, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship December 11th
By webmaster @ 2:43 PM :: 954 Views ::
0 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Sacred Traditions
As we travel further down the Advent road, this week’s music will focus on the themes of Preparation and Peace. Be sure to arrive in the sanctuary by 10:45 for a special Prelude of Arias from Handel’s Messiah sung by Sanctuary Choir soloists: tenor Isai Jess Muñoz will embrace us with Comfort Ye and Every Valley, alto Emily Eyre will proclaim the coming King with O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion, and soprano Justine Aronson will sparkle joyfully with Rejoice Greatly O Daughter of Zion. Handel’s Messiah is as much a part of the world’s preparation for Christmas as any other holiday tradition. When I hear that opening simple three-note descending motive on the text, “Comfort ye”, which constitute the first words sung in the entire Messiah, for me it means Advent has arrived, and that Hope is on His way.
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| Thursday, December 01, 2011 |
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What's in the Advent Concert December 4th
By webmaster @ 8:00 AM :: 1198 Views ::
5 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Occupy Christmas
A protest song masquerading as a Christmas Carol? That seems to be exactly what he intended when Edmund Sears (1810-1876) penned his famous hymn, It Came upon the Midnight Clear. Sears grew up on a farm in Massachusetts, and following graduation from Harvard Divinity School he became a Unitarian minister and an influential voice in liberal theology. The second phrase of his poem, That Glorious Song of Old, provides us with the title of this year’s Advent Concert at Marble Collegiate Church on Sunday, December 4th at 2pm. This has alternately been called a concert, or a service, but a more accurate description would be an experience. Celebrated actor Simon Jones will be our narrator and spiritual guide, the Festival of Voices and Sanctuary Choir with orchestra will supply heavenly music, and the sanctuary itself will play a significant role, glowing with candles and exquisite lighting. I hope you will join us for an extraordinary afternoon that might just shape your whole experience of Christmas this year.
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| Thursday, November 17, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship November 20th
By webmaster @ 10:23 AM :: 920 Views ::
0 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week’s music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Christ the King Sunday
This will be the final Sunday of the Liturgical Year which began on Advent Sunday, 2010. In the past twelve months we have retraced the life of Jesus from His divine conception to His birth, baptism, wilderness experience, ministry, miracles, arrest, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. Then we celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday and, with it, the birth of the Church. Finally, we wrap it all up this week by celebrating the Feast of Christ the King. With dictatorships and secularism on the rise in Europe and respect for the authority of Christ and the Church declining, Pope Pius XI formally instituted the liturgical commemoration of Christ the King in 1925. Since then it has spread well beyond its Catholic roots and is now celebrated by many Protestant and liturgical churches. To some, celebrating Jesus’ kingship may form an uncomfortable association with the world’s ruling monarchies and too-often oppressive regimes. Consider Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus at His mock trial: “Are you the King of the Jews?” and Jesus’ reply, “My kingdom is not of this world.” In fact, Jesus redefined kingship entirely. His kingdom is governed with humility, providing justice, equality, unconditional love, forgiveness and peace.
On Sunday we honor our King, the Servant Christ, inviting Him anew to occupy the throne of our hearts. There’s a rousing old Sunday school song which says, “Love is the flag flown high in the castle of my heart when the King is in residence there. So let it fly in the sky, let the whole world know that the King is in residence there.” May Christ’s royal banner of love wave prominently above our church and above our lives.
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| Thursday, November 10, 2011 |
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What’s for Worship November 13th
By webmaster @ 11:24 AM :: 749 Views ::
0 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Homage to Bach
Prelude: Fugue in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) This week’s service is bookended by works Mendelssohn, whom I might call “my soul brother by another mother,” to borrow a line from a recent Herman Cain speech. I resonate to Mendelssohn’s total craftsmanship and reverence for Bach, as well as his romantic passion and dramatic intensity. For me he’s just the right combination of head and heart, convention and intuition.
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| Thursday, November 03, 2011 |
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What's for Worship November 6th
By webmaster @ 2:40 PM :: 861 Views ::
0 Comments :: Kenneth Dake
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Several audio samples of this week's music are included for you to enjoy as you read.
Music Transcends Time
I believe the most beautiful choral music is inspired by the theme of eternal life. Why? For one thing, the universal hope that this life is not all there is – that there exists a world to come – cannot adequately be expressed through language alone. Music takes over where language fails. The bible refers to music as one of the only human experiences that is transferable to heaven. Or could it be the other way around? Perhaps music awakens in us a hidden memory of our previous existence in the spiritual realm, with harmony serving as a remembrance of the unity we once knew. Certainly we often experience music as a "thin place," one where the dividing line between the temporal and the divine – between our earthly and eternal life – becomes narrow or indistinguishable.
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Publishing Schedule:
Senior Minister,
Dr. Michael Brown,
blogs every Sunday.
Sr. Carol Perry’s
blog posts appear
every Monday.
Reading Our Blog:
New articles will go up regularly. The seven most recent posts are displayed on this main page. If you'd like to go back and read previous entries you missed, click on the "Categories" link at the top of the page and then select the author you're interested in. We don't delete old articles, so you'll be able to come back anytime and re-read the ones that speak to you in significant ways.
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