Category: Hymns

The Staff of Faith

The Staff of Faith, has turned into one of my very, very favorite hymns. There’s just something about it that makes me happy, regardless what misery might be happening in real life.

I’ve written DOZENS of descants over the years…and improvised hundreds more during church services. I’m trying to collect all my descants into a publishable package. The task is tracking down the descants I bothered to write down. LOL

This one, and All Beautiful the March of Days that I posted recently are two I’ve found so far. If you go to my YouTube page, I’ll be posting all the descants there as I find them under my Trumpet Descants playlist.

EVENTUALLY, I’ll get the sheet music for them all available on the Hal Leonard sites: Sheet Music Plus, and Sheet Music Direct.

Descants for a hymn for the New Year

https://youtu.be/H6rPPj1n6NM

The new year approaches. This hymn with its English folk tune harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams is the perfect song for the season. This little arrangement of mine of two descants that work with the Vaughan Williams harmonization can be played on a trumpet with a congregation singing it or as an EZ 2-part mixed anthem (this recording is organ, trombone on the tune, and trumpet on the descants). #music #trumpet #descants #newyear #hymn

A Christmas Concert for solo piano

On Christmas Eve, at Lakewood United Church of Christ, I’ll be doing the above selections at 6:30pm as a musical prelude to the 7pm service of candlelight and communion. These selections are all arrangements of mine. The sheet music for them is available as a collections at Sheet Music Direct and Sheet Music Plus. The individual movements are also available. See the end of this post for their links.

You may stream the audio of this collection, for free, at https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/sets/a-christmas-concert-for-solo-piano. There’s nothing to download. Clicking on that link takes you to the webpage and you can play it from there. Each selection of the collection is playable from that link.

These are not highfalutin recordings, all slickly mastered and recorded with expensive microphones. They are just spur of the moment recordings on my cellphone! My emphasis these days, at may age, is solely upon writing the sheet music and rhw live performance of that music. Anything else–recordings, videos, internet posts–is just in support of that effort using whatever means I have at hand.

Hope to see you on Christmas Eve if you can make it.

Here’s the links for the sheet music individual pieces, but I highly recommend the collection. It is a considerable savings over the individual pieces.

Come, O Come, EmmanuelSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
What Child Is ThisSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
Wexford CarolSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
O Little Town of BethlehemSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
Good Christians, All Rejoice!Sheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
The Babe of BethlehemSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
Lo, How a RoseSheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
(or, as I prefer to call it, “God Rest Ye Merry, Y’all!“)		Sheet Music DirectSheet Music Plus

Holy Manna (solo piano)

I finally found my perfect piano microphone: my iPhone balanced on the edge of a music stand and propped up by a hymnal. Best sound is with the piano lid open to just the first level. I get to church early and practice my stuff for service but since I’m always worried about being late (back in my undergraduate college days I slept through a student recital I was supposed to have played on…talk about traumatic). Anyway, I always have time left over, so I’ve taken to improvising a iPhone setup so I can tape some things. I’m having fun doing it. I like that it’s not a big deal: just push record!

This is my arrangement of one of my favorite old timey hymn tunes, Holy Manna from Southern Harmony, and Musical Companion compiled by William Walker and published by him in 1835.