Archive for the ‘My Songs’ Category
Worship Song Book Concert
Recently we played all 12 songs from my Worship Song Book and CD. I don’t know why I had so much trouble playing my trumpet. Perhaps I was nervous because I never perform. I always accompany congregational singing.
My son, Mark sang with us. Brian Reynolds played bass, Randy Mayer and Mark Krey played guitars, George Fosselius, who last minute stepped in for my son Joshua, played drums, I played the trumpet, and we all sang. Brian insisted we be called the Peter Krey Band and I thank him for putting this 50 minute video on Youtube. Randy plays a song of his own composing at the end.
Worship Song Book and CD’s are available. Should you like one just leave a comment.
All Sixteen of my songs on Myspace:
United Lutheran Church, First Advent, November 27th 2011
Isaiah 64:1-9 Psalm 80: 1-7, 17-19 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 Mark 13:24-37
An Apocalyptic Catastrophic Catalogue
Today we have the first Sunday of Advent, which we Christians commemorate as our New Year or our New Church Year. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin and means “coming” and on these four Advent Sundays we get ready for the coming of Christ – that means the first coming of Christ in Bethlehem, but also the second coming of Christ in an end-of-the-world apocalyptic time, when Christ comes again.
Our Gospel reading this morning comes from the 13th chapter of Mark, which is known as the little Apocalypse. The word “apocalypse” means “uncovering what is hidden” or in other words, “revelation.” But there is an end-of-the-world kind of feeling in the word. Thus signs and portents experienced in nature are felt to be God’s wrath, like the sun being darkened, the stars falling from the sky, the moon not shining any light, and finding that the foundations of the heavens start shaking.
So Christ will be returning and we are the servants, whom he has left here to take care of the household of faith and we do not know if Christ will return in the evening, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at dawn – these are the old ways of telling time. You don’t need an alarm clock when the roosters start crowing in the morning just before daylight.
Here we are in a little local congregation and Christ has bid us watch and to be alert. Christ has shaken us soundly to awaken us from sleep and wants our everyday world to drop down from around us, so that our earthly existence becomes transparent and the reign of Christ is revealed to us, and we are to be living our everyday lives in obedient service to God.
The signs of our times seem to be more apocalyptic, not only because today is the first Advent, but also the incidents and events we are experiencing seem apocalyptic, that is, they make us think of the end of the world as we pray in Advent:
“O Lord, stir up your power and come! Tear open the sky and come down.” The Psalm for today keeps repeating the verse:
“Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!” (Psalm 80: 3, 7, and 19.)
Isaiah cries, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” so that our faith might become sight and you, O Lord, took the affairs of this world into your divine hand, your Right Hand, Jesus Christ, and championed the cause of the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, the oppressed, the victims of racism, the war-torn, and brought peace to the world and brought those conditions into the world the way you intended for it to be in your creation!
We have fallen so very low. In a conference this week, the torn open sky was called the “wounded sky” and these words imply that we are living lives that are so violent and disruptive here on earth that we have wounded the heavens and caused them to rip open and our once friendly earth is beginning to turn against us.
It is easy to make a list of the many dreadful things that have been happening. We always fear that we will have the Big One here, where we are right over the Hayward Fault and many others. Such a mighty earthquake will surely make our human foundations start shaking. But an earthquake hit the East Coast and now the Washington Monument has cracks and needs repair along with broken gargoyles of the cathedral in Washington, D.C. Then they had a Halloween snow storm! Even with a cold, my sister in Massachusetts had to sit in a cold house for three days, because all the electricity was out. We need to think about the tender leaves of that fig tree and figure that we are in the end-of-the-world kind of time.
Who could list all the earthquakes that have shaken the earth? There was one in Haiti, in Chile, in Turkey, in New Zealand, and in China. We have to consider the one in Japan, which also produced a Tsunami almost as deadly as the Christmas Tsunami of 2004. Japan was hit by a triple catastrophe. The off-shore earthquake launched the Tsunami and it made the Fukushima Daiishi Nuclear Power plants melt down. There is a radius of 20 miles around the plants, where no one will be able to live anytime in the foreseeable future. Only the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 was worse. The reactor there is still spewing some radiation and the wild animals have become deformed and people will not be able to live there again for centuries.
Wow! Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
There have been floods that have inundated whole countries like Thailand and Pakistan and even cities. We can look at Katrina and the end of the city of New Orleans. It was making a come-back, when the BP Oil spill took place. Those kinds of events are apocalyptic. Will the Gulf of Mexico ever recover from all that oil spilled into it and all the chemical oil dispersants dumped into its waters?
Let’s pray it together: Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Think of all the tornadoes and the way they are wreaking havoc. They have been tearing up our cities. I heard that after one tornado, a whole section of the city of Chattanooga lay destroyed and people were hanging in the trees. Earthquakes, floods, Tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and oil spills. All these apocalyptic events mean that we have to pray that God come down and help us, that God might come and save us from our sins.
Say it with me: Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
The natural disasters are not as bad as our economic ones and they are not as bad as our military ones. Just think of 9/11. Do you see what I mean? That day was apocalyptic. Look at our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Look at the wars in the Congo that have taken more than a million lives. Then there is the starvation in Somalia, where the fighting prevents the food from getting to the dying children.
Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
Economically we have also had this catastrophic recession, where millions have become unemployed with little prospects of being reemployed. Millions of middle-class folk are losing their homes to foreclosures and now many have to join the food lines, because they cannot put bread and butter on their tables. We had the Tea Party movement and now the Occupy Wall Street movement, which seems to be like the Arab Spring. When I visited the Oakland Occupy Wall Street campsite, heard the speeches, and watched thousands march off to occupy and shut down the port, the lines from “Hotel California,” came to mind: “We have not had that spirit here since 1969.”
Together: Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
We have to repent. We have to be shaken awake from our sleep. We have to stand watch at the post Christ has charged us with, because God wants us to care for this world, care for our environment, care for our neighbors, and hunger and thirst for righteousness. To put it into today’s language, Christ wants us to hunger and thirst for justice, to be peace makers, mourn the unfair and unjust conditions so visible around us today. We should not tear each other down, but build each other up and find new ways of being human to one another.
I’m passing out a song that is all about the verse we have been repeating. I call it the “Phoebe Bird Song,” because I got the notes from that bird, when I was in Massachusetts. You know the Aaron’s Blessing: “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.” God’s shining face restores us, just like we said, “Let your face shine, that we may be saved!”
“I am calling – Jesus Savior. Won’t you hear me, O Savior and send your favor, today!”
When the sun comes out then the plants and blossoms grow and unfold in the energy of its light. So when God’s face shines over us we flourish, but when God’s face turns away, we perish:
“We languish – without you – and flourish – about you, please be gracious, O Jesus, we pray!”
“What you’ve done – amazes, – your love – just dazes, O my soul, – sing praises, all day!”
If we wake up, if get shaken awake from our sleep, if we repent and start living the lives Christ has called us to live – lives of faith service, lives of witness, lives filled with compassion, lives that are mindful and filled with forgiveness, then Christ’s return will be a wonderful sunrise! That means that the face of God will shine upon us. And in the sunshine of God’s grace, the apocalypse will be God’s new creation, making everything new. But if we live against God’s will, then Christ’s return will be a day of darkness, where our teeth will shatter because of those catastrophic, apocalyptic disasters. The sun will refuse to shine, the stars will fall, the moon will lose its light, and the foundations of the heavens and the earth will be shaken. So let’s be shaken awake.
Together: Restore us, O God of Hosts. Let your face shine, that we may be saved!
But don’t you know, if you repent, if you stand watch and witness to Christ with his forgiveness, love, and compassion, keep the faith, spread God’s hope, keep on keeping on with obedient loving service: then God’s friends become, just like the sun, rising in all God’s splendor! Amen.
Pastor Peter Krey
Our First Concert Hopefully we will have another and another, because we have a long way to go. But the goodly crowd out there was singing along heftily and had a really good time. Some real magic did happen at the end in the Compline Song! I can play things right a hundred times and when I perform them I can’t do it! I have to learn to relax and get inside the music! As I usually say about my trumpet playing, I get every other note right!
This song intends to be explicitly theological, even using as many 25 cent words as possible.
Christ is our Righteousness
1) Christ is our Righteousness
Our radiant reconciler -
Who put heaven and earth together
Frightened death into a dither
The first born of the new creation
with stars singing in their elation
2) The Lord is our righteousness
Reigning in righteous splendor -
The branch, the cross’ communion
All our hearts in loving union
Christ opened the gentle Kingdom
Earth and heaven embrace within him
3)Christ is our righteousness
Our shining life within us -
Who died in condemnation
And was raised up in vindication
To live for our justification
The free gift of God’s salvation
4) Jesus, your precious name
Healing our broken spirit -
Christ holds this world together
Like wind, storm, clouds, and weather
In him we move and have our being
In, with, and under nature we see him
5) Grace comes down from above
Refreshing the love between us -
In the kingdom the Son’s victorious
With love he labors over us
From the cross flows our forgiveness
The precious blood that’s shed by Jesus
6) Christ, your great gift of love
Opens the gates of heaven -
Open the heart of this congregation
In our prayer and meditation
Deliver us from all temptation
Lift our hearts in adulation
For the start of the new creation
Angels singing in exultation
7) Christ, the Son of Righteousness
Rising in holy splendor.
November 26, 1995 “Christ is our Righteousness” For First Lutheran Church in Oakland, California
I just booked up with soundcloud in order to activate my music once more here in wordpress. I’m planning to put in a trumpet concert that I usually play all alone in my living room. – Here is a sample, I hope it will be one of many songs.
Note that you might have to click on several before you get into my stash of songs lately. Then all the songs will be there.
“Die Gedanken Sind Frei”: “We Have freedom of Thought,” i.e., where there is no freedom of speech, a German folk song.
+ Die Gedanken sind Frei
My father loved to sing this medley. The word “Zug” in German means a train and it means a military deployment. So this military deployment is no express train. My father fought fought in World War I.
+ Tirol, Tirol and Dieser Feldzug
A song about feeling homesick for the land where the North Sea waves wash ashore. My father would sing this one in Plattdeutsch.
+ Friesen Lied
I love songs with a driving beat.
+ Topsy Part 2
+ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer
Some Dixieland:
+ When You’re Smiling
A real romantic song from the musical, Oklahoma. I wish I could make my trumpet sound like a celo.
+ Out of my Dreams
A mellow song I remember from old New York from the fifties. Can you name it?
+ NY Song Can you name it?
I used this song to polish up my playing and to develop new techniques for the rest of my songs:
+ Somewhere over the Rainbow
An old Vaughn Munroe Song: country and Western
+ Ghost Riders in the Sky
This lovely song comes from a play “Peg O’ My Heart” by J. Hartley Manners. Written and performed in 1912, it was so popular that at one time eight theater companies toured America at the same time performing it. By 1918 it was performed 10,233 times around the world.
+ Peg O’ My Heart
Spanish music
+ Cielito Lindo
Here’s the song that Edith Paiv and Satchmo Louey Armstrong made famous.
+ La Vie en Rose
Light classical melodies:
+ Humoresque (my version)
+ Habanera from Carmen
+ Waltz of the Danube Waves or Anniversary Song
+ Coppelia’s Waltz
Some Opera: Puccini
+ Quando me’n vo
A wonderful Spanish Hymn by Cesareo Gabarain
+ You’ve Come Down to the Lakeshore
A happy German hymn by Paul Gerhard for Spring time
+ Geh aus, mein Herz und Suche Freud
we would sing this around our table before my father would say grace.
+ Speise, Vater, Deine Kinder
Another morning song sung before saying grace. I play it in my own style, however.
+ Heartily, dear Lord, We Thank Thee
+ I’ll Be Seeing You
Paradise, Paradise
1) Let me go, let me go
To see Jesus, for I know
That my soul is filled with yearning
Forever for him my heart is burning
just to stand before his throne.
2) Gentle rays, gentle rays
Sunlight breaks through cloudy days.
When will the time come, oh how long
When within Thy righteous throng
I shall see your holy face?
3) Heavenly tones, a heavenly tone
Angel choirs around your throne.
With wings to fly, with wings to fly
Over valleys and hills so high
To Zion’s heights, still today alone.
4) How will it be, how will it be
When in Jerusalem we make our entry?
Through the city with streets gold,
Oh Lord, my God, how to behold?
How great the rapture I will feel.
5) Paradise, Paradise
Your dear fruit, sweetness supplies.
Under your trees of life streaming,
It will seem as if we’re dreaming
Bring us, Lord, to Paradise.
Translated by peter krey (5/21/2010)
from the song by Gustav Knak 1806-1878 in German:
Laßt mich gehn, laßt mich gehn,
daß ich Jesum möge sehn!
Meine Seel ist voll Verlangen,
Ihn auf ewig zu umfangen
und vor seinem Thron zu stehn.
Süßes Licht, süßes Licht,
Sonne, die durch Wolken bricht:
o wann werd ich dahin kommen,
daß ich dort mit allen Frommen
schau dein holdes Angesicht?
Ach wie schön, ach wie schön
ist der Engel Lobgetön!
Hätt ich Flügel, hätt ich Flügel,
flög ich über Tal und Hügel
heute noch nach Zions Höhn!
Wie wird’s sein, wie wird’s sein,
wenn ich zieh in Salem ein,
in die Stadt der goldnen Gassen!
Herr, mein Gott, ich kann’s nicht fassen,
was wird das für Wonne sein!
Paradies, Paradies,
wie ist deine Frucht so süß!
Unter deinen Lebensbäumen
wird’s uns sein, als ob wir träumen.
Bring uns, Herr, ins Paradies
(Gustav Knak 1806-1878)
Trust Patiently, My Soul
1. Trust patiently, my soul, trust in the Lord.
Let God your burdens hold and loving help afford.
Don’t give up hope; the trumpet sounds the note.
Morning breaks and springtime follows the winter clime.
In all life’s trials and every need,
Faithfully God protects you, God’s true, indeed!
2. Trust patiently, my soul, trust in the Lord.
Let God your burdens hold and loving help afford.
When all things fail; God will still avail.
Greater than the Helper, there can be, no emergency.
Eternal, faithful, Helper in need,
Rescue us and save us, dear God, we plead!
Translation of Harre, meine Seele by Peter Krey
(Dec. 16th 2009)
Harre, meine Seele, harre des Herrn;
Alles ihm befehle, hilft er doch so gern.
Sei unversagt, bald der Morgen tagt,
und ein neuer Frühling folgt den Winter nach.
In allen Stürmen, in aller Not
Wird er dich beschirmen, der treue Gott.
Harre, meine Seele, harre des Herrn;
Alles ihm befehle, hilft er doch so gern.
Wenn alles bricht, Gott verlässt uns nicht;
Grösser als der Helfer ist die Not ja nicht.
Ewige Treue, Retter in Not, rett auch unsere Seele, du treuer Gott.
(Friedrich Räder 1848)
This translation is a work in progress. I’m still unhappy with some of the lines and suggestions would be appreciated. It is a powerful song of assurance and confidence. I wonder if the German word “Harre” comes from the Hindu word, “Hare” as in “Hare Krishna“?
ET, Batman, Spiderman, Fool
ET, Batman, Spiderman, Fool,
They all go to Sunday School.
Up is down and first is last,
My heart’s beating awfully fast.
Deep into your heart I go,
Jesus loves me this I know.
Gentle, kind or fighting mad,
My teacher makes me feel so glad.
If you want to be real cool,
We’ve got to start a Sunday School.[1]
Firestar, Wonderwoman, Thelma Thumb,
It’s all right if they all come.
Daffy, Donald, and Daisy, too,
Bugs and, of course, Mr. Magoo.
Here come Yako, Waco, and Dot
Pinky and the Brain with another plot;
Huey, Riley, and Fat Albert,
The Jackson Five, then Ernie and Bert!
and Big Bird, too?
If we want too be real cool,
We’ve got to start a Sunday School.
[1] (Or sing, “You’ve got to go to Sunday School,” if you already have one.)
A Sesame Street Melody; pkrey, revised August 1st 2009
Children’s Sermon: Taking a plumb line out of a cloth bag filled with tools: “What do you see?”
Children: “A plumb line.” Taking a board and slanting it: “See how the plumb line is straight and the board is not? If a wall or a house is not upright, it will fall down. And if we are not upright, if we cheat or lie, we will also fall down. Herod’s Kingdom was not right and it had to come to an end. But the House of God will stand forever.”
Taking a level out of the bag: “What do you see?”
Children or adult from the congregation: “A level.”
“It’s a lot like the plumb line. But you have to hold it to the board and see if it is straight or slanted, if it is completely horizontal or not.” Hold the board horizontally and slowly let the children see it become level. “You have to watch the bubble go right between the lines. The level reminds us that we have to be fair and that all people are equal. We should play no favorites when it comes to what’s right.”
Pulling a ruler out of the bag: “What do you see?”
They answered: “A straight edge. A yardstick. A ruler.”
“Now this helps us measure things and Amos would ask, ‘Do we measure up? We want to honest and good.”
The chalk line:[1] Putting chalk on some string, we did it on the string of the plumb line: “This is a chalk line. Some one can make lines across a whole floor with it. even longer lines, too.” (We let the children snap the chalk line and it printed a straight line on the board. We used purple chalk to make the line stand out.)
Marshall, who helped with the children sermon, said, “Now we use lasers to make lines like that. But chalk lines were used back in the time of the ancient Egyptians when they measured out and built the pyramids!”
Let me sing you a song about Amos’ tools:
Amos’ Tools
A plumb line,
God’s plumb line
makes us upright, sound, and fine.
A level,
God’s level,
to be equal and fair,
We work for justice everywhere.
A ruler,
God’s ruler,
Measure for measure,
We share the Gospel treasure.
A chalk line,
God’s chalk line,
Jesus is going to make us shine.
We’re workers,
God’s workers,
our mission true,
with love and forgiveness for me and you.
Pkrey 07/12/2009
[1] The English text in Amos says that the Hebrew word translated as “plumb line” is uncertain, because this is the only time the word comes up in scripture. (The technical term for such a word is
hapax legomena for those of you who study exegesis.) So I turned to the text in German, to see how Luther translated it and he has “chalk line.” Marshall’s comment makes that choice of tools plausible. How far back does a plumb line go? Has anyone ever written a history of tools?
We Three Kings Rap1:01 | 176 plays
