Music at Sausalito Pres
is a Ministry
by Ralph Hooper, Music Director
The great cellist and composer Pablo Casals said that performing music “fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.” Throughout human history music has been a wellspring of magic, inspiration, insight and delightful entertainment. Music is surely a critical tool in our worship experience, from rich congregational singing to our in-house and guest instrumental, vocal and ensemble musicians.
We embrace all forms and genres of music from traditional and contemporary sacred music forms through popular, folk, gospel, theatrical, film and even newer forms of musical expression. We take pride in incorporating music of today’s leading composers, especially including local, bay area masters.
As we move forward with an innovative hybrid service, on earth and in the cloud, we embrace the many challenges of faithfully transmitting a vibrant, in-sanctuary musical experience to our remote congregation, from both listening and fully participatory perspectives.
Congregational Singing
The center of our musical universe is the robust singing of our local and online congregants. Our song repertoire includes beloved traditional hymns as well as a rich, ever growing selection of modern worship songs as well as contemporary songs from other traditions and repertoires. We sing in many languages as we embrace the cultural expression of a diverse world.
SPC Choir
Of all musical forms and genres, choral music has a special place in human experience. The great conductor Robert Shaw passionately believed that “of all the arts music is the most linked with community of expression. This meaning of music is somehow most open to the amateur musician, and nowhere does it find its expression so fully as among people who sing together.”
At SPC membership in the choir is open to everyone who wants to celebrate the wonder of life and the spirit by joining with others to create a beautiful ensemble and recreate exquisite choral music. Our choristers come from a wide background, from little or no musical training to various degrees of training and experience.
Today we are blessed as the early 21st century is seeing a continuing renaissance of outstanding choral composition. All over the world superb composers are setting classic and extraordinary modern poetry to perceptive, inspiring, deeply moving music of all styles and genres. Our choir sings the gamut: medieval chant, Renaissance and Baroque polyphony, romantic symphonic choruses, modern anthems and spirituals, folk songs and carols, theater pieces and newly evolving modern forms.
The choir rehearses on most Thursday evenings and performs for most Sunday services in the fall, winter and spring.
Each early December, the choir presents our annual Christmas Vespers, a celebration of the very best seasonal choral music and poetry. Now in its 15th year the Vespers has become a bay area tradition, drawing a large, enthusiastic audience.
Other Vocal and Instrumental Performers
SPC is blessed with talented vocal soloists and instrumental performers from the congregation who also enhance our Sunday services. Our long-time sound engineer and guitarist extraordinaire, Don Koc, provides perceptive recorded selections and often organizes one or more soloists to present alternative vocal and instrumental styles.
SPC also welcomes talented guest musicians, including vocal and instrumental soloists and ensembles. Special services or other events will often feature a guest trumpeter, harpist, cellist or a gospel choir, brass group, string quartet or guitar ensemble.
Ralph Hooper is a graduate of Georgetown University and holds a Master’s Degree in Music from The Catholic University of American in Washington, D.C. He served for ten years as Music Director/Organist of San Francisco’s St. Mary’s Cathedral, then eleven years as Music Director of the Presidio of San Francisco (until the US Army withdrawal in September 1995), and, since May 1996, Music Director of Sausalito Presbyterian Church. He is an accomplished pianist, organist, synthesist, choral director and composer and makes full use of leading-edge music/audio hardware and software. Making music at SPC is to him a great joy, whether training and conducting our wonderful choir, providing sensitive piano accompaniments for our talented vocal soloists or providing rich organ solos and accompaniments.