 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Barbara Hamm is in her eighth year of music ministry at Community Congregational Church, UCC, in Benicia, California, where she plays the organ and piano and directs the sanctuary, youth and children's choirs and directs an instrumental program composed of children, youth and adults. She previously served the Disciples of Christ Church in Antioch, California, for seventeen years. Barbara begin playing the piano for the Sunday evening service as a sixth grader and learned to play gospel piano at a small Baptist church in Colorado. In her teens she attended and often played piano/organ duets with the organist at the Christian Church in Wilsey, Kansas, and partly credits the example of long-time organist Elva Hanna for influencing Barbara's subsequent music ministry. Barbara has done many workshops on the music of Taizé for both UCC and DOC Annual Meetings in Northern California, the UCC Musicians' Network Conference, and for workshops and retreats. In recent year,s she has also begun doing workshops on New Music for Congregational Singing. She has participated in and led the music for workshops and retreats and served as an accompanist at Annual Meeting numerous times for both the UCC and DOC Annual Meetings in Northern California. She served as the accompanist opening night for the UCC/DOC national Synod/General Assembly at Kansas City in 2001, an experience which she regards as a high point in her life as a church musician. In 1999 Barbara began taking jazz piano lessons from Methodist pastor/hymnwriter/jazz pianist Dan Damon and has begun writing hymns, publishing her own collection of ten hymns, Seasons of Grace, in 2003. As a charter member of the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter of Choristers Guild, she is thrilled to have her first text published with Choristers Guild. Barbara has become increasingly concerned about the shortage of organists across the country in general and in small churches in particular. The small church also stands to be impacted severely by the decisions of school boards that increasingly target music/arts programs in an effort to address financial crises. Small churches, that have long relied upon local school music programs for the musicians who play for their services and lead their choir programs, are finding it increasingly difficult to staff their music positions. Barbara has recently begun doing workshops regarding the need for churches to address this issue of intentional planning for music ministry in the same way that they plan for pastoral ministry, hoping thereby to help make provision for the music ministry of the small church in the future. On week days Barbara teaches English at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. She also reads essays online and works as a scoring leader for Educational Testing Service. Barbara says these jobs finance her dreams in church music ministry! A new venture for Barbara is playing piano bar occasionally at Max's Opera Café in Opera Plaza in San Francisco, allowing her to utilize the jazz chords and idioms she is learning in her lessons with Dan Damon. |
|
Home | About Us | Contact Us | Join Today | Our Catalog | News and Events ©Choristers
Guild 2000-2004 |
