Love Music? You’ll Love Emanuel!
Emanuel is blessed with many talented musicians, both professionals and talented amateurs, and we are always looking for more — come share your talent!
The Basics
It’s easy to join the music ministries at Emanuel, and the commitment is on a week-to-week basis. We have musicians who participate year-round and others who join us for one Sunday every other month. Rehearsals are Sunday morning at 9am, our service is at 10am, and we’re finished shortly after 11am. Our worship music is about half ‘traditional’ led by organ, and about half ‘contemporary’ led by an ever-changing group of instrumentalists and singers. While we have the occasional mid-week rehearsal, almost all music is put together on Sunday morning before church.
You can get a sense of the music life at Emanuel at our YouTube page.
Emanuel Choir
For choir lovers, we provide rehearsal files each week for the anthem with each part sung separately. This lets Sunday morning focus on creating music rather than learning notes! Our choir sings music of many styles from the past 400 years and we sing almost every Sunday year-round.
Emanuel Bell Choir
The Bell Choir plays about once per month and we rehearse once before our Sunday morning rehearsal (usually a Thursday evening at 6pm). Music is pre-marked and rehearsal files are provided. We have 5 octaves of Schulmerich bells and 3 octaves of Malmark tone-chimes and usually have a full complement of ringers to play the entire set. We have very experienced ringers who join new recruits and we’re always happy to have new participants.
Instruments in Worship
Emanuel is blessed with the talents of many exceptional musicians. We usually have 3-4 graduate students from the Hartt School of Music, as well as other area professionals and talented amateurs. We have a 3-manual 34 rank Austion Pipe organ, a Ritmueller concert grand piano, timpani, percussion, guitars and bass, and a 5-octave Yamaha concert marimba.
St. Lucia Festival
For more than 100 years, the youth of Emanuel have presented a traditional St. Lucia Festival, a Swedish celebration of Christmas in song. This occurs on a Friday evening during the first few weeks of December.
Join Us
We are ALWAYS looking for people who would like to join us. If you sing, ring, or play an instrument and would like to participate, let us know! If you love our music but are not musical yourself or do not have time to participate, consider a gift to the Music Program at Emanuel. These gifts will enable us to hire professional musicians for festival services, maintain and enhance our instruments, and so much more.
Contact Director of Music – Jonathan Reuning-Scherer (860-906-8197)