Description

For our fall 2016 stake conference, the request was made to have a primary children’s choir. Being a professed “organ snob” and knowing there are not many arrangements for children’s choir with an organ accompaniment, I requested the honor of composing the arrangements we would use for the stake conference.

After learning the theme of the meetings would be temple work, an obvious choice was Families Can Be Together Forever. I had to work very quickly because there was not much time to get the arrangements done before it was time to begin working with the primaries from the various wards. I made series of recordings in case the primary music director in a given ward wished to do some rehearsal during primary. These recordings ranged from “obvious melody” to “no melody” (accompaniment only). I have included the “subtle melody” recording here.

Tabernacle Organist emeritus John Longhurst assisted with the editing. Though it was written for children’s choir, there is absolutely no reason you couldn’t use it with an adult or mixed choir. If you don’t have a good instrumental soloist, you’ll need two people at the organ. We were blessed to have the daugter of one of the stake presidency home with us during stake conference. She is studying violin at the New England Conservatory of Music. On this piece, she played the melody to support the primary children who were a little shaky for some reason. My son sat with me on the organ bench and played the solo part. The result was beautiful. I included some extra notes for violin at the end (not heard in this organ-only recording, but included in the score — I’d probably leave them off if all you have is organ, but you can choose).

If you are called upon to choose music for a regional conference in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City: this accompaniment has been tested on the CC organ, and it sounds great! If you use one of my pieces, I’d love to hear what the occasion was, and how it went!