Music – Page 4 – Lakewood United Church of Christ

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, Emmanuel	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
What Child Is This	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
Wexford Carol	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
O Little Town of Bethlehem	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
Good Christians, All Rejoice!	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
The Babe of Bethlehem	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
Lo, How a Rose	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (or, as I prefer to call it, “God Rest Ye Merry, Y’all!“)	Sheet Music Direct	Sheet Music Plus

Some pipe organ pieces

I’ve only ever had one church job where they complained that I never played long enough postludes! (It was a congregation with a number of professors.) Usually, people are out the back door before the organist gets to the first cadence…all too often in Catholic parishes some folks go straight from receiving communion right out the back door and on to the golf course..no waiting for that “Ite missa est!” This is a bunch of my short pieces that I’ve thought of releasing as a collection titled “Short, fast, not-too-difficult, organ postludes!” Not the snappiest title, but better than the one collection (that someone actually released) titled “Graveyard Favorites.” (“Graveyard” being a slang publishing term, more properly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgue_file.) Organists have a somewhat October-ish sense of humor.

You can listen to the whole bunch at this free streaming link: https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/sets/single-organ-pieces. They follow one another automatically…you just click play and off it goes.

Sheet music for the individual movements are available under my name on sheetmusicplus.com and sheetmusicdirect.com.

The trumpet on the last piece can be played by the organ. Organists are familiar with what to do in those situations from many different Baroque trumpet & organ pieces. Of course, it can be played with organ too. I’ve been scrounging my files trying to get together all my trumpet hymn tune descants. They’re penciled into various hymns scattered hither and yon, so that may never be entirely complete.

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.

The Babe of Bethlehem

The Babe of Bethlehem (cello & piano)

Trying something a little different: reblogging (it’s a way to re-post material from a diferent site which may or may not be the way I want to do it in the future…previously, I actually entered everything on the church website by hand…but it’s worth an experiment to see what happens)

O Little Town of Bethlehem (piano solo)

Same guy, same baggy yellow shirt, same fuzzy hair, same morning, same piano, recorded with same iPhone with no external microphone…different piece in my recent group of piano arrangements: “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Sheet music available at SheetMusicDirect and SheetMusicPlus sometime after September 5th…check here back for links after that date. Yes…the familiar tune you know is in there, it’s just hidden in an inner voice all the time. This was my dad’s favorite Christmas song.