Musician wants to bring back hymns

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 22/09/2018 (2930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Whether performing at the Sistine Chapel or making music videos for her YouTube channel, violinist and singer Rosemary Siemens returns to a recurring melody of her childhood.

The Manitoba-born musician, who grew up singing hymns and gospel songs both in her Plum Coulee church and with her large extended family, is leading a one-woman band to bring back those familiar tunes.

Siemens, who performs on a three-century-old violin named Sparkle, recently recorded a four-minute video of Amazing Grace accompanying herself on violin, piano and organ.

“It’s so different. From one of the oldest chapels to one of the most cutting-edge things you can do on YouTube,” Siemens says in a telephone interview from her Vancouver home.

“It’s all about worshiping God with these beautiful, timeless songs.”

Wearing a yellow off-shoulder dress and silver cowboy boots, Siemens sings three verses of the frequently recorded Christian hymn penned by English clergyman John Newton in 1779 and later set to the folk tune New Britain. She performed that same hymn during her 2014 appearance at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, becoming the first instrumentalist to perform in the historic sacred space with its famous barrel-vaulted ceiling painted by Michelangelo.

“I want to pump out a lot (of videos) and to bring a band in every four to six weeks is hard,” Siemens says of the reason she chose to perform all the parts on the video, including backup vocals.

The improv violinist and singer is about to release two more gospel videos, directed by Evan Friesen, recorded in the same Vancouver chapel that hosted her marathon 20-hour recording session this summer. 

The song was produced by her husband, Eli Bennett, a jazz saxophonist and composer whose marriage proposal to Siemens at a concert in Gretna went viral.

The pair married last summer in an outdoor public ceremony in Plum Coulee, located about 90 minutes southwest of Winnipeg.

Her choice of music is hardly accidental. The award-winning and eclectic musician, who has six albums to her credit, also knows a huge number of hymns, bolstered by a childhood of four-part singing in a Mennonite church and weekly family singalongs with her mother’s extended family.

“That’s what made me improvise, because I wanted to make (the hymns) more interesting,” says Siemens, who started playing piano and violin at age three.

“I owe those songs a lot.”

And those songs give back to her. Siemens misses singing four-part hymns and knows others feel the same. The evangelical Christian church in Vancouver that she attends rarely sings hymns, relying mostly on contemporary songs for their worship.

“It’s all (worship) band, no hymns, no sharing the hymnal with your neighbour,” she says of her recent experiences of Christian worship.

“You’re losing the harmony, the sense of community.”

So she and her manager, Dale Penner, also a Plum Coulee native, have sussed out the top-requested hymns and gospel songs on Google and plan to record them over the next months, pushing people to Siemens’ website and music-streaming services to buy her music.

All of the songs they have chosen are now in the public domain.

“We thought it would be nice to show her off as an artist who is the real deal who plays these instruments and sings these songs,” says Penner, owner of Paradise Alley Productions.

The move away from hymns and toward contemporary music and bands comes after decades of “worship wars” in evangelical Christian circles, says a music and worship professor at Canadian Mennonite University.

Congregations now face the challenge of finding music that resonates with everyone, while ministering to those in an older demographic who miss singing familiar hymns, Christine Longhurst says.

“For some people, there’s a huge sense of loss that the music they loved is not there in the same way,” says Longhurst, who is teaching a course in hymnology this semester and is the wife of Faith page writer John Longhurst.

“The question is, how do you choose congregational repertoire?”

Siemens says she returns to the hymns of her childhood for comfort when going through hard times, and finds playing them is a musical prayer of sorts.

“It’s faith, its memory, it’s nostalgia,” says Siemens, whose recent gigs included the National Prayer Breakfast in Ottawa and last month’s Harvest for Kids event in Winkler.

“I have such a love for that music and I know so many hymns that I want to do my part to bring them back.”

brenda@suderman.com

The Free Press is committed to covering faith in Manitoba through our Religion in the News project. This reporting continues because readers like you step forward to fund it.

Donate now to support our reporting on religion.
Your donation is eligible for a charitable tax receipt. BECOME A FAITH JOURNALISM SUPPORTER