Patterns

Patterns

“Time keeps on slipping . . . into the future” (“Fly Like an Eagle,” Steve Miller Band, 1976). Have we lost a year? The pandemic has disturbed our patterns and sense of time. Immanuel Kant argued that the human mind imposes structures of time and space. The Biblical creation account depicts time and space as…

Review of ‘Harmonize the Moon’ by Michael Feuerstack

Review of ‘Harmonize the Moon’ by Michael Feuerstack

What’s getting me through is Harmonize the Moon, a new album from Montreal songwriter Michael Feuerstack. Feuerstack has refined his trade through a catalogue of excellent albums with an expanding set of musical tools (even two records’ worth of other people singing his songs), but the pandemic has reduced his sonic palette to the essentials:…

Hope born of grief

Hope born of grief

All of my dead came flooding back to me. The friends, the suicides, the murders, the babies, family members, the old and the much too young. They all came flooding back as I listened to Carolyn Arends singing “To Cry for You.” Blessed are the ones who weep / ‘Cause every tear is proof /…

Songs to savour
|

Songs to savour

In my recent essay, here in Christian Courier, I reflected on the strengths and weaknesses of some of the music – particularly Christian music – I have been collecting across the years. If I could bypass these pandemic days and invite you to our house, you could see amid the hundreds of records and hundreds…

On stage in a dangerous time

On stage in a dangerous time

In Christmases past, our December calendars were decorated with the dates of school Christmas concerts and community choir cantatas. This year, there will be considerably less live music heralding the good news. But many of us felt this void long before Advent. In a normal year, according to Stats Canada, 81 percent of Canadians would…

Not Allowed to Sing in Church? Maybe That’s a Good Thing
| |

Not Allowed to Sing in Church? Maybe That’s a Good Thing

There are no rollicking versions of “Way Maker” or thoughtful renditions of “O Come to the Altar” blasting over the sound systems of most churches these days. Health officials have banned corporate singing in many areas for how it can spread COVID-19, as it did at a single choir practice of 61 people in Washington, which resulted…