Watch: Three songs to bring you solace
Efforts to produce online worship resources have resulted in three new videos featuring music written and performed by musicians from Mennonite Church Canada. “PSALM 46” by JESSICA & MOSES FALCO Jessica and Moses Falco from Sterling Mennonite Fellowship (Winnipeg) filmed their original song, “Psalm 46,” on March 19 when they were at Douglas Mennonite Church, recording…
Worship apprentices provide a resource for the church
Every Tuesday, a diverse team of University of Waterloo students gathers for prayer, small group discussion, song teaching and worship-service planning. These students are part of the Worship Apprentice Program offered by Conrad Grebel University College’s Music Department as a skill-building opportunity within the Church Music and Worship Program. This program includes a practical course,…
Watch: ‘You need to try out,’ coaches sing
“You Need to Calm Down” may be a song in which pop superstar Taylor Swift addresses her detractors, but in the hands of the coaching staff at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate, it’s a song about trying out for athletics. Coaches at the Kitchener school showed their parody of Swift’s Grammy-nominated hit, titled “You Need to Try…
The purpose and joy of congregational singing
“I turned the key and the stillness of the morning was shattered by the uneven rumbling of the engine. Everything was ready for the day’s work. In a few minutes, the pickup would drive onto the farmyard and empty its load of Mexican labourers. But for now I was alone. I eased the clutch out…
Watch: MC USA leader sings Nirvana
Imagine Doug Klassen, executive minister of Mennonite Church Canada, singing a song by an acclaimed ‘90s grunge band at MC Canada’s next nationwide gathering. It may sound far-fetched, but our counterparts in the United States have a sense of what that would be like. At the beginning of his address during the final worship service…
Anna Wiebe challenges herself on sophomore album
Anna Wiebe is on the move again. The singer-songwriter from New Hamburg, Ont., released her second album, All I Do is Move, on July 12, bringing her listeners a more complex album complete with a band backing her strong vocals. Anna Wiebe describes “All I Do Is Move” as “a step up from my last…
Watch: Conrad Grebel’s viral video
Over the last two years, Conrad Grebel University College’s YouTube channel has become a go-to source for quality gamelan videos. This moderate internet fame is spurred on by one performance in particular—a piece called “Hujan Mas” performed by the University of Waterloo Balinese Gamelan at their end-of-term concert in March 2017. Watch it now: This…
Kuri talks ‘No Village’
Almost two years after he started recording it, Kuri has released his new album. Titled No Village, the 10-song collection came out today via Nevado Records. No Village is the follow-up to Human Nature, an EP the Abbotsford, B.C. musician—born Scott Currie—released at the end of 2016. (Nevado Records reissued the EP last October.) It’s…
Watch: Spotlight on Cris Derksen
The bio on Cris Derksen’s website says it well: The “Juno-nominated and classically trained cellist and composer braids the traditional and contemporary, weaving her classical background and her Indigenous ancestry together with new school electronics to create genre-defying music.” In 2018, the half-Cree, half-Mennonite musician from northern Alberta wrote a piece for the Eybler Quartet.…
Watch: “77-76” by Royal Canoe
Winnipeg’s Royal Canoe have released a politically-charged music video for a song off its latest album, Waver. “The new video for ‘77-76’ is about history repeating itself,” the band states on its Facebook page. “We felt compelled to make a video that matched what this song is about—the alarming political shift in the past few…
