Category: Church music

Lakewood/Trinity Choir on Epiphany

Cate Colgan has been videoing Rev. Kim’s sermons and, recently, has started videoing the choir when they do a piece of mine, for which I’m am very grateful. I’m so lucky to get to work with these folks. They deserve to be heard and acknowledged. They’re always game to tackle anything, including my stuff.

Below is the text of the anthem they’re singing in this video.

Brightest and Best of the Stars of the Morning
Text: Bishop Reginald Heber, 1783-1826; modified: HKJ
Music: Hilton Kean Jones

1. Hail, the blest morn when the great Mediator
Down from the mansions of glory descends;
Shepherds, go worship the babe in the manger,
Lo! for his guard the bright angels attend.

CHORUS: Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness and lend us your aid;
Star of the East, the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.

2. Cold on the cradle the dewdrops are shining;
Low lies Christ’s head with the beasts of the stall.
Angels adore Christ in slumber reclining,
Lover and Teacher and Savior of all.

CHORUS

3. Shall we not give Christ, in costly devotion
Odors of Edom and off’rings divine,
Gems of the mountain and pearls of the ocean,
Myrrh from the forest and gold from the mine?

CHORUS

4. Vainly we offer each ample oblation,
Vainly with gifts would we favor secure.
Richer by far is the heart’s adoration;
Dearer to God are the prayers of the poor.

CHORUS

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.

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

The Babe of Bethlehem (solo piano)

A parallel piece of completely original music begins the setting as the musical foreground and later in the arrangement the traditional public domain melody becomes the focus, then both interplay in continuously changing counterpoint.

SHEET MUSIC available at
https://www.sheetmusicdirect.com/en-US/se/ID_No/1424900/Product.aspx
and
https://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/the-babe-of-bethleham-digital-sheet-music/22623018
#music
#christmas
#piano

Jones & Jones

The lyrics to the above song were written by my sister, Lucy Lee JONES (one of the two Joneses in the blog post title) and I (the other Jones) wrote the music. Lucy has already written several other lyrics that I’m working on setting to music. This coming Sunday, my choir at Lakewood and Trinity UCC, will be doing it as a unison anthem. The choir at the church Lucy attends in Kona, Hawaii will hopefully also be doing it soon. Lucy is a retired UMC pastor and also a retired pyschology professor.

Your can hear a recording of the tune at https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/lift-your-hearts-new-mix. It’s sung by William Scull (scullsound@aol.com). Bill did a terrific job. This is the second tune of mine he’s recorded. I’m very appreciative of his work. I recommend him highly to anyone who needs demos of their music!

That’s me on the accompaniment. Yes, I do love country music. Where I was born (pronounced “barn”) and raised, the southern tip of Illinois where it meets Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, Johnny Cash was “pop” music.

Good Christians, All Rejoice!

Good Christians, All Rejoice! (solo piano) A familiar Christmas classic 14th Century German melody arranged in an extended form with sections of counter melodies and a center section influenced by jazz harmony. Fun to play and a good, uptempo piece with which to end a set.

Click https://soundcloud.com/hilton-kean-jones/good-christians-all-rejoice-solo-piano to listen (nothing to download, free streaming).

Sheet music available at the following sites:

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 (cello & piano)

Sunday morning, December 17th, 2023, my friend of many years, Scott Kluksdahl will play this with me at the church where I’m music director, Lakewood United Church of Christ. I’m looking forward to this tremendously.

The “cello” on this recording isn’t Scott, it’s just sampled sounds on a computer. The video and the sound track are just for demo purposes at the two websites where I self-publish my sheet music: sheetmusicdirect and sheetmusicplus. The score will be available there mid-September. Below is the miniature score version if you want to follow along with the video.

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.