The second piece from Suite for Christmas No. 2, based on the hymn tune "Christmas."

Introit (While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night)

Born and raised in  Woodstock, Ontario, Canada, I started organ lessons at around age 10 (who can remember that far back) with a spinet organ (I can't remember the brand). After a few years, my family bought a new Johannus Opus organ and I began taking private lessons with an organist in my neighbourhood. 

I was organist at Long's Run Presbyterian Church in  Calcutta, Ohio and have played in services in various churches through the years in both the United States and Canada, on pipe organs, electronic and digital organs. I now reside in  Port Orange, Florida. 

Over the years I dabbled in composing my own works with varying success. I also developed a love of the traditional Dutch hymn improvisation from the likes of Feike Asma, Jan Zwart, and Teke Bijlsma, to name a few. My hymn arrangements are very much in the style of these organists, though I have kept the difficulty down to a level that I, myself can manage. As I go forward, I have plans for two more Christmas Suites and am contemplating a similar Easter Suite and various standalone arrangments of some of my favourite hymns. 

I am currently using MusicTime Deluxe version 4.0.4 to write and publish the sheet music to PDF with the help of  CutePDF. The MP3s are created by exporting a midi file of the music from MusicTime and having Hauptwerk (free version) play the midi file and record it to a WAV file. I then use MAGIX Audio Cleaning Lab 16 to add reverb and master the track for export to MP3. The YouTube videos are made using Microsoft Expression Encoder (for screen capture and encoding to a video file) and Windows Movie Maker to add titles and transistions.

Introit (While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night)

Gary Vander Ploeg