Cherish the traditional and rock the contemporary

BY KEITH TAN

One of the many joys I have serving at Christ Church is the opportunity to build bridges. From the very beginning of my ministry at Christ Church, during the height of the “worship wars” of High-Church versus Low-Church, of traditional versus contemporary, God has equipped me as a classically-trained pianist who also loves pop music, to bridge the divide between classical and pop music, blending their styles together, and to bring that into the church.

If God is worshiped by all the saints (who stretch across time and space), wouldn’t the sound of heaven be a glorious fusion of musical styles? I long to join in that heavenly praise and music!

Through fresh rhythmic arrangements of classic hymns and ancient chants, through classical orchestrations of contemporary praise music, and everything in between, Christ Church’s music ministry passionately and resolutely focuses on helping people connect with God, despite stylistic preferences.

I’d like to update you on some exciting news in our ministry. It starts with the state of our old digital organ-keyboard on stage. It is faulty and old (non-sensitive touch screen, blown speakers, and a very outdated and limited sound selection), and like all digital computers, not really worth repairing after 20 years of technological advancement. It just needs to be replaced.

The Music Team (supported by our rector and our vestry), along with our church’s Keyboardists (including myself) have been looking into this project, wondering what instrument to replace it with (a digital organ? We wondered). Now, we are committed to continuing our ministry’s artistic legacy of embracing and blending traditional and contemporary styles. We discovered that there does not exist one instrument that adequately performs well in both traditional and contemporary styles. Hence, our very exciting news…

We are purchasing two keyboards – a Roland C200 Portable Organ (Yeah, right? I didn’t know these existed!) and a Yamaha Montage 8 (their flagship synthesizer), which I will connect together. (Turns out that this solution, that we will purchase using funds from our music restricted funds, only cost a fraction of a digital organ!)

Together, these two keyboards represent our commitment to cherish the traditional and rock the contemporary. Through them, we can create a new voice that draws upon the depth and resilience of timeless classics and the modern expressions of today. Together, we can create a new kind of ancient future music, perhaps momentarily joining in the timeless worship of heaven!

I look forward to showing them to you in this Advent!