Advent IV

We had guest musician, a son of the congregation, Clifford Leaman of the University of South Carolina, and his daughters Biranna (oboe) and Aubrey (piano). They presented exquisite carol arrangements for prelude and offertory. Clifford is professor of saxophone. He played a B-flat soprano sax. The saxophone journal saluted him as "an artist of the first order…intuitive, exciting, and enthralling." I wrote an arrangement of our last hymn, Angels We Have Heard on High, for him and he told me he liked the arrangement. I thought it went pretty well, myself.

For the first hymn, O Come, All Ye Faithful, I used the well-known arrangement by David Willcox. The middle hymn, Lo How a Rose, was sung very sensitively by the 400 in the congregation, with just 8 and 4 foot principals and flute on the organ, which is soft.