(no subject)
I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but somehow I never got around to it. There has been a definite lack of tuits lately.
Anyway, last month I went with a bunch of friends to a Graham Kendrick concert. If the name means nothing to you, you probably haven't been to church in the last few decades. He's probably one of the best contemporary worship song writers in the country, and several of his songs regularly place highly in Songs of Praise polls of church hymnody. Some people still dismiss him as the epitome of happy-clappy worship, but I think that's a bit harsh; some of his music is lightweight, but a great deal of it is well thought out theologically and works musically. You can't ask much more of a hymn.
Anyway, back to the concert. We missed the first half of it due to a traffic accident (we weren't in it, don't worry, but it stopped the A14 dead for an hour), but the second half was a revelation. (Without the capital R. Stop snickering at the back.) Far from the light rock/pop feel I was expecting, we got Kendrick in folk style, and he's very good at it. Apparently this is what he always wanted to do, the hymn-writing just happened instead. I borrowed a copy of his "Acoustic Gospels" from a friend afterwards, and I had to keep checking I hadn't put Show of Hands on by mistake, it's that good.
Anyway, last month I went with a bunch of friends to a Graham Kendrick concert. If the name means nothing to you, you probably haven't been to church in the last few decades. He's probably one of the best contemporary worship song writers in the country, and several of his songs regularly place highly in Songs of Praise polls of church hymnody. Some people still dismiss him as the epitome of happy-clappy worship, but I think that's a bit harsh; some of his music is lightweight, but a great deal of it is well thought out theologically and works musically. You can't ask much more of a hymn.
Anyway, back to the concert. We missed the first half of it due to a traffic accident (we weren't in it, don't worry, but it stopped the A14 dead for an hour), but the second half was a revelation. (Without the capital R. Stop snickering at the back.) Far from the light rock/pop feel I was expecting, we got Kendrick in folk style, and he's very good at it. Apparently this is what he always wanted to do, the hymn-writing just happened instead. I borrowed a copy of his "Acoustic Gospels" from a friend afterwards, and I had to keep checking I hadn't put Show of Hands on by mistake, it's that good.