An Explanation of the Violin and Piano Hymn Arrangements

I was going to try and tell the story of how I decided to write my own hymn arrangements for violin and piano--but there really isn't one. When I was in college, I wrote my first, because I loved the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light." And someone asked me for a duet of "God, Be With You," for a family reunion, so I wrote a short, simple arrangement of that. I submitted the two to the Church Music competition, and received a nicely written rejection for each entry. Maybe that's the reason I decided to write some more--there's nothing like losing a competition to inspire me!

Now having written a few more in the last year, I am thinking about what I should do with them. The primary goal is to put them into the hands of violinists who are looking for something new to play in church--to make them pretty, but not so difficult as to be called "showy."

The plan is to submit the music to an LDS music publisher, and hope they love them and want to print them. It seems to me the best way to get them out there. (I've considered the annual Church competition again, but so far, I have not been able to find the music of many past winners, which indicates to me that this isn't the route to go if I want to make the arrangements readily available to more musicians. Assuming I ever won.)

In the event that the music isn't accepted by a publisher, I will make the music available on this website, so long as I don't infringe upon any copyright laws in doing so.

As part of this project, I recorded myself playing these hymns with the help of my sister, Julianna, and my mom, Judy Call, on the piano; using the facilities at the community college, and my portable digital recorder. Given the short time we had, the recordings aren't perfect, but they're not bad, if I do say so myself.