Choir

 

The St. Matthew’s Church Choir was very busy this year. We were blessed to have a brass quartet to accompany our choir for Easter. Many people shared their musical gifts during the spring and summer months. We also had a wonderful Pageant/Lessons and Carols during advent. Special services included Heritage Sunday and St. Francis, Blessing of the animals. We have enjoyed our new choir robes and hosted coffee hour for Advent lessons and Carols.

Some of our dreams for music at St. Matthew’s are as follows: We would like to have improvements made to the choir room heating and air. Last year we had a flood from broken pipes in the ceiling between the Sacristy and the Choir room. Elizabeth and Angela work in this room as well and would enjoy improved climate control. We are in need of some additional choir robes due to the changing size of the choir and the fact that not all new choir members are the same size as those who came before them. The choir is making more time for fellowship by planning a trip to OKC to hear the St. Olaf’s choir. Hopefully this is the first of more social functions. St. Matthew’s is glad to be hosting an organ concert by Adrianno Falconi from Italy the first week of April.
We would like to include more musical offerings from the children in the church.

We have dreams of having the choir and the Organ closer together and having microphones and lighting to enhance our musical offerings. The microphones would be useful when using guitars and other softer instruments as well as for vocal solos. We would like to be able to have more lighting by the organ for instrumentalists and vocalists to be able to see their music better. Additional amplification for the chancel would also be nice. There is a need to improve organ tuning.

I think our largest obstacle is always drawing people into music ministry as well as maintaining our current participants. This is especially true of our children’s music program. Music is provided during Children’s Chapel as part of their worship experience. However, at this time, we have not had a significant interest in starting up children’s choir. We also have talked about having a handbell choir but this is a large investment and would require 6 or 7 faithful participants.

Currently the music ministry at our church consists of an Adult Choir that meets from September through May and prepares an offertory for most Sundays during this time period as well as special music during Advent and Holy Week. We also provide musical experiences during Children’s Chapel and the children have presented musical offerings for our Christmas pageant and several times through out the year. We have an organist that not only provides preludes and postludes and accompaniment for Sunday services year round, but also keeps the 3 pianos in tune year round. He has also entertained us at the Christmas Eve reception for the past several years. We have cantors for the psalms and other parts of the liturgy and our musicians have participated in Even Song during Pentecost. Elizabeth, Angela and Chuck also provide solos for Sunday Services when the Choir does not sing. Our congregation also has many musicians that share their gifts when needed.

The choir director is Elizabeth Allen, assistant director is Angela Pennello and Chuck Belknap is our organist. Choir members include Leslie Terrell, Libby Fosmire, Marilyn Kincannon, Joanna Samples, Angela Pennello, Michael Hunter, Eric Pennello and Andy Fosmire. In the past year we have also had David Hume, Margaret Moss, Milo Allen, Charles Scholfield, Paula Nightengale and Pam Henry sing with the choir.

Contact Elizabeth Allen if you would like to be in choir. We meet on Wednesday nights from 5:30 till 6:30. We are always looking for volunteers to help with the Christmas Pageant and other kids activities. If you would like to sing a solo for offertory or be involved in other music activities in the Liturgy, contact Elizabeth.

Respectfully submitted,
Elizabeth Allen
Director of Music