The songs in this collection represent some of the best-loved hymns and spirituals in America.  Their durability is intriguing.  Generations of handing down new renditions have reduced them to their essential qualities.  This ‘essence’ offers a composer and musician plenty of room for interpretation and improvisation.  Memorable melodies such as these make great material for variations since the listener, knowing the tune so well, can appreciate its changing directions.  I also find new vitality by underpinning old songs with modern rhythmic textures: what jazz musicians call the groove.  Shorter songs call for original but stylistically similar additional sections.  The addition of blue notes, favorite licks, alternative harmonies and improvisations helps me reinterpret this familiar music into nearly original compositions.  Having sought to make them my own, I now invite you to do the same.

10 The River Is Wide

9 Deep River

8 Poor Wayfaring Stranger

7 Jerusalem, My Happy Home

6 Jesus Loves Me

5 Bringing In The Sheaves

4 Wade In The Water

We Gather Together

3 We Gather Together

2 Let Us Break Bread Together

1 Amazing Grace

Burying Home

“I have always known I would be a musician. As a child, I could not distinguish between the terms ‘musician’ and ‘magician.’ Not only did they sound alike, but seemed to me to function the same way by bringing people to their sense of awe. Music, for me, is a language that addresses the emotional places we have in common but seldom discuss.”

Bradley Sowash

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