Notes

Following an extensive search for highly qualified candidates, Church of the Holy Communion is pleased to announce that two well-respected Memphis musicians have joined our staff. I have known both of these excellent musicians as friends and colleagues for 14 years, and I am supremely fortunate to now be able to work with them as colleagues at Holy Communion. I first met Ellen Koziel at the Royal School of Church Music course in St. Louis in 1999 when she was assistant choirmaster of St. Mary... Read More

This Sunday (Aug. 23) is “that great Episcopal feast day” in our parish known as Rally Day. Indeed, Rally Day is an old term that has probably past its prime; however, we all love Rally Day and its significance to the start-up of our program year. In Episcopal decades of yore, Rally Day was often the first Sunday after Labor Day, when all Episcopalians closed up their beach houses, mountain houses or lake houses and returned home to school and work and church. In this day of school terms begi... Read More

After the story in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, which we read on the last Sunday in July, the Gospel lessons continue a discourse for some five Sundays in which Jesus calls himself “the Bread of life” in various connotations. As we are presently in the middle of Lectionary Year B of the three-year ABC cycle, this is how liturgists and musicians have coined the phrase “B is for Bread.” Bread and water (or wine) are significant, life-giving symbols from the Old Testament, only to be pic... Read More

In addition to spending some time doing the things that fall by the wayside during the regular choir season, the summer months also afford church musicians time to attend continuing education conferences and workshops, opportunities to explore new music literature, gather new ideas, and greet friends old and new from whom we also glean new ideas. Last week I returned from my second continuing education opportunity this summer, the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) Course in St. Louis, Mis... Read More