Hello UUCS and Choir! I am enjoying my vacation in Boston, and it’s already August. Choir will start rehearsals on Thursday, August 29, 2024 from 6:30–8:00 p.m. I am changing the rehearsal schedule to start half an hour earlier this year, which I think will work better for the winter months. The choir rehearses every Thursday ...

Greetings and Happy Summer! I am heading out on vacation this week for the rest of July and most of August. We have some lovely song leaders and guest musicians lined up for services. Rachae Thomas will be with us for two dates, and she will be singing songs from her repertoire that she will also ...

Hello UUCS, The wonderful Paul Grove will be performing for us this week on guitar. Come listen to his beautiful classical playing. I first met Paul years back, and we even played a jazz gig together. This week he will be gracing us with the pieces Avalokiteshuara by Lou Harrison and The Enchanted Sapphire by Joe ...

Hello UUCS congregation and friends, Here’s what you can look forward to musically in February. Todd Milne will be playing guitar and bamboo flute as a soloist and with some duet collaboration with Madeline McNeill. The UUCS Choir will perform during the second service. Gordon Diddens will be giving the sermon and singing in the choir. Thanks Gordon! Pam ...

Following the second service on February 4, 2024, you can join our Music Director Madeline McNeill in an Embodied Cognition and Breath Mapping workshop in the Chapel from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. Suggested donation is $20. This workshop will integrate breath and voice practices to investigate emotions and cognition in a way that includes the body. ...

Hello UUCS congregation and friends, Happy New Year! Thank you all who attended and participated in the Cosmic Advent Service. It was a beautiful evening. The choir will be performing for the second service at 11:00 a.m. Come and support the lovely choir! We have some beautiful music and harmonies to share with you. Our guest musician will ...

Verne Windham, a musician I admire, was known at KPBX as a “creative messy.” I understand that his desk was almost always piled high with papers and he was the only one who could find anything on it! I, too, have those questionable habits and recently had to “clean up my act” because of a ...

This coming month I will be looking for congregational members to help out with the summer music program. So I would be glad to talk to any of you with musical skills that may want to “get out there” to share your talents during June, July and August. You could either be a soloist — ...

Our Pianist, Maura Kegley, actually accompanies for two choirs in Spokane — our Mixed Choir here at church and the Spectrum Singers, an LGBTQ choir that is also getting back on its feet after COVID-19. Spectrum is having their big spring concert on Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. in the Shadle Park High School ...

The Mixed Choir is winding down and summer music is on the horizon. Since many of you love the Choir and watch to see which Sundays they are singing, I thought I’d let you know what their schedule is through the rest of this spring. The Choir sings on April 16, April 30 and May 21. The ...

This coming Sunday, April 9, is Easter and our music for the day will be split between the holiday and the sermon topic. Music through the Offertory will celebrate the day with spring and Easter songs, including one that some of you might remember. Chickery Chick was made popular by Sammy Kaye and his orchestra ...

Don’t miss our next guest speaker, Jermaine Williams, this coming Sunday, March 26! This will be a chance for all of us to see and hear a man who transformed himself in prison and came out to help other former inmates find their best selves—a profound achievement. Member Pam Larratt will sing a Billy Taylor song ...

Our Mixed Choir could use some singing company up in the choir loft these days! Are you a singer that could join them? We have openings for all sections: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. You do not need to be able to read music! In fact, most of the choir does not read music. If ...

First of all, I want to thank all those involved in our online Solstice service, which many of you accessed on Wednesday December 21. UUCS member Ann Wenger was our excellent narrator. And I thank members Lynn Jinishian and Shane Gronholz for their reading prowess. Our able “behind the scene” techies were Shelly McLallen and Michelle ...

Our Winter Solstice Ritual is nearly upon us! On December 21, I do hope all of you will choose either to go to our Zoom online service at 4:00 p.m. or to our live service in the Sanctuary at 7:00 p.m. If you choose the Zoom service, please be sure to get a votive candle to ...

Well, everybody is hopping around the church office. We’re all very busy! And I have so much to do that music is running out my ears! In our regular December services you will hear the Mixed Choir singing some fun holiday music on December 4 and 18. On December 11 we are being serenaded by a ...

Deadline to join the UUCS Mixed Choir: Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at noon. Our Mixed Choir is gearing up for singing in December with music you just might want to sing! We’re starting out with Christmas Time Is Here from the TV production A Charlie Brown Christmas and a medley of Happy Holiday, The Holiday Season ...

This Sunday the Mixed Choir and I plan to celebrate the changing of our street name to Whistalks Way. Although this is a small victory in view of the atrocities that George Wright wrought on the native Spokane population, it does recognize the Native American woman who stood against his brutalities in defense of her ...

This coming Sunday, October 9, the Mixed Choir will be singing the poetry of two great internationally known poets, Rabindranath Tagore and Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi. Tagore (1861 – 1941) was a polymath who worked as a poet, novelist, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. The Choir will be singing his music and his poem, ...

October has five Sundays and I have the music line-up ready to share with you. Guest Stanton Cobbs will play his guitar and sing for us. Stan will be sharing a couple of newer songs by Tina Malia and leading us in Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” at the end of the service. Our Mixed Choir returns for ...

This coming Sunday, September 25, we will have a real musical treat! Member Dan Gore, who plays the mandolin, is bringing a guitarist friend, Rod Anderson, and together they will play for us a wonderful array of music—everything from a Bill Monroe waltz to the Beatles! They will do three pieces of instrumental music—something we ...

Here’s our Sunday service music line up for September: UUCS Member Pam Larratt sings and plays piano for us. The Weddle Twins grace our services with two songs. The Men’s Ensemble sings Heart of Gold and Wild Mountain Thyme, a Scottish ballad. UUCS Member Dan Gore plays his mandolin. So enjoy our Sunday music, whether streaming or here in person! And ...

Here’s our Sunday service music line up for the month of August: Church member Lyle Morse, who is a wonderful blues performer (with quite a few recordings to his name), will play Daughters, an original guitar piece of his, and Ready for the Times to Get Better We will showcase our new pianist, Maura Kegley, who has ...

Well, it’s that time of year…Vacation Time! I need to take a bit of time over the next three weeks or so to regenerate and catch up with family—and, get some personal work done. My plan is to be gone for the last week of June through July 24. Many fine people are helping me to ...

Well, we have quite a musical line up for June! Our Mixed Choir will give their last performance of the spring, so enjoy them while you can! COVID willing, we will hear them again in September after their summer break. Kevan Gardner, an LGBTQ rights advocate AND an old friend of the congregation, will sing two songs ...

Musically, two things have my attention this week: First, a big “THANK YOU” to Darl Vander Linden, who has been coordinating volunteers who run the laptop for our screen at first service! Darl has done a beautiful job of this, but needs to be doing other things at this point, so we need a new person to ...

The choir and I will be having a lot of fun for our Easter services this week! We’ll start with a prelude in place of our usual starting song, as we have been working on a beautiful version of Morning Has Broken that seemed like the perfect opener for the day. We’ll be doing a ...

Please do join us for this week’s services with Rev. Dr. Finley C. Campbell, a black Baptist minister and longtime UU, on the best tactics to use to reduce racism! Personally, I’m very excited to learn from him about this important subject. In the last several years I have felt discouraged about our progress in ...

Well, finally we can move in a positive direction regarding our beloved Mixed Choir! This coming Sunday you will get to hear most of our former choir singing some familiar Transylvanian hymns for our Partner Church services. And we do have three new people! Julia Singer is a soprano, Kate Stigdon is an alto and ...

This week I want to speak about the Music Team, which serves the congregation by helping me with music ideas and feedback on services, plus acts as a conduit for our members to ask questions, give feedback on the Sunday music program and give suggestions on musical guests from the larger community. We currently have ...

This coming Sunday, February 13, is full of musical Valentine’s treats for all of you! We are having the Weddle Twins as guests and you all know that means GOOD MUSIC! Their main piece will be Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, which all of us will reprise after the sermon for our last congregational ...

Don’t miss the poetry service this coming Sunday! I’ve seen the outline for Paul Lindholdt’s sermon, What Is Poetry Good For?, and I anticipate learning a bit and having some fun! Our pianist, Maura Kegley, will be playing a beautiful piece entitled Poem by Fibich and I have chosen hymns by poets that you will ...

It was so much fun to have singing groups in December!!! I was hopeful we could keep it going in January and into the spring. But, of course, omicron was on us even before all our group rehearsals were over in December. So we are still in the doldrums as far as our Mixed Choir ...

Well, do we have some December musical treats for YOU!!! Last Sunday  you got to hear our new permanent pianist, Maura Kegley, play her beautiful arrangement of God Bless the Outcasts from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. She found she had lent her copy out, so she just created her own gorgeous version for us! Check ...

Finally, we have some good news about our search for a pianist! Maura Kegley, who has been our interim pianist since October 31, is coming on permanently with us! I am very happy about this. Maura has plenty of experience as not only a church pianist, but also as a player for places like Patsy ...

I wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving in advance, as I will be visiting family over the holiday weekend. I leave the music for Sunday, November 28 in the capable hands and voices of Kelly LaGrutta and Peggy Eklof, who have planned a service full of beautiful, meaningful pieces! I am so lucky to ...

Come to church and hear our new Interim Pianist, Maura Kegley! I am so grateful to Nancy Avery for making the initial contact for us. Nancy knows Maura through the Spectrum Singers, as she was their accompanist until COVID got in the way. Maura has many fine skill sets as a soloist and an accompanist. ...

First of all I want to respond to Dorothy Mehl and others who wanted the lyrics from Path of Peace, which I sang on Sunday, October 3: Let us see the holy presence in those we call our enemies.Let us see divine and perfect love shining in their hearts.If we see this vision clearly, then the ...

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane is looking for a good pianist for Sunday mornings between 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. This time includes possible brief rehearsals before services, coordination time with the Music Director and two Sunday services. The weekly base pay is $130 per Sunday. Additional 1½ hour Choir rehearsals (when Choir is ...

I have a mishap to report this week—our Interim Pianist, Dixie Marshall, had a nasty fall which broke the elbow of her left arm. She has had surgery, but will need to wait to see if it can heal properly. If not, she will need an elbow replacement—something I didn’t even know existed! Please join ...

Progress in the Music Department… I have been working on a few “long term” things for music during September. The first one is to carefully put together a couple of small groups that feel safe singing together. I’d like a women’s trio and a mixed group working up some pieces to perform for you this fall ...

I want to give all of you an update on our transition to a new pianist. You will have noticed at this point that Dixie Marshall is here with us in an Interim capacity. I feel grateful to her for stepping in, when I asked, after Michelina Tyrie resigned. (Many of you may remember that ...

In the last three weeks or so, your church music program has been dealing with COVID issues. Several Mixed Choir members had asked me if we couldn’t do something in the singing line—even if we could not perform on Sundays. So, I wrote the Choir in late July about the possibility of having a choir ...

Several of you have asked me when the Choir might be able to perform once again. Of course, many of you probably know that choirs and COVID are a particularly dicey situation. Distancing and the forceful expelling of breath as people sing are both big challenges in a choir loft. Even so, I sent an ...

August 1 MaryAnne Winniford, UUCS Member She will sing Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot and teach you a new song called We Rise, as well as lead you in song. It should be fun! August 8 Planted by Hands, the band formed by Kelly LaGrutta, Peggy Eklof and Dan Gore, UUCS Members Enjoy their voices, along with the sound ...

This coming Sunday, July 18, you’ll all be treated to the luscious voices of the Weddle Twins, Marissa (Weddle) McNeilly and Kelsey Weddle! They’ll be doing their version of Paul McCartney’s Blackbird and either I Have a Dream from ABBA or Michael Jackson’s Heal the World. It is always exciting to have the gals sing ...

I write this a day after the privilege of doing some of the music in Majil Fausel’s memorial service. For quite a few years now, I have marveled at how much we really don’t know about the people around us in church—and, indeed, in our lives as a whole. I am always dumbfounded by learning of ...

Well, people … it is that time of year for me once again—VACATION TIME! Somehow I always seem to neglect going on vacation until I have to! As an employee, my church year ends on June 30, so I need to get in my vacation time before then or I lose it. I will be ...

About this upcoming Sunday … all I can say is, “Y’ALL COME!!!!” Member, environmental activist and Native American Jacob Johns has his fingers in lots of pies during this service: He’s the main speaker (Environmental Activism as a Spiritual Practice) and he, along with his daughter, will sing us a story about the Milky Way. ...

It was exciting to have people in the seats this last Sunday! I can’t tell you how good it is to actually “songlead” hymns instead of soloing them to a mostly empty room! What a difference! And, I hope to be making some careful music changes to our service as we ease out of COVID ...

A week or so ago I received a phone message from Paul Grove, who has played guitar for us several times over the last few years. He had just finished a new CD and wanted to give me a copy. I was delighted, of course, because Paul is one of the best guitarists in town ...

As your Music Director I have always felt that a big part of my job here is to foster musicians in the congregation—not necessarily to use my job as a platform for my own performances. And yet, with COVID-19, I have been “breaking my own rule” so to speak by doing just that! Many of ...

With our Partner Church service coming up on March 7, I am finding myself, once again, in a sad place because of the loss of our Mixed Choir during COVID-19. The Choir has always been a part of our celebration of the partnership with our brother and sisters in Felsőrákos, Romania. Like most European churches, ...

I, for one, am really looking forward to Rev. Todd’s sermon this coming Sunday, Feb. 21. I could use some help in rewiring my brain toward the positive pole! With that as my “guiding star,” I have chosen three songs for Sunday that I believe fill the bill. You’ll hear Irving Berlin’s Count Your Blessings ...

Well, Rev. Todd has done it again! Last week he spoke on prayer—and would you believe that in over 30 years as your Music Director, no settled minister in our church had given a sermon on that topic before??? I was searching for music about prayer for the first time in my career! An interesting ...

Prayer—not something I am usually thinking about in a UU church like ours! I applaud Rev. Todd for bringing it up and can’t wait to hear what he says about it! My first thought was that we do NOT have much musically which references that word. But then I decided to take another look at ...

This week, at long last, we will hear music from our in-house duo, Peggy Eklof & Kelly LaGrutta! I say at long last because the service for this week was first postponed from mid-December to the end of December, when tech difficulties made it impossible to stream it to all of you. So, third time’s ...

Our Zoom Winter Solstice service was a success!!!  Many thanks to our Narrator, Ann Wenger, who did such a great job of telling the story so clearly and communicating its intent. Our readers were also wonderfully clear—and I especially liked the variety in their voices. Bravo to Gordon Diddens, Shane Gronholz, Nancy Cook and her daughter ...

The Longest Night is right around the corner and so is our Winter Solstice Singing Ritual!!  The official date is Monday, December 21st and we are having the ritual that evening at 7pm.  You will get a special email from the church with the link to this “Zoom” service, so be sure to watch for ...