Mens Katoomba Convention Rehearsal done

One of the highlights of each of the last 4 years for me has been the opportunity to lead the singing at Men’s Katoomba Convention over 3 weekends in February and March.

I have just finished rehearsing for 2 days in Sydney for this year’s event, which has been great as always.  It’s brilliant to be able to play with some really fantastic musicians, including Javed Sterritt (drummer for the band Holland), Trent Prees (bass player from the band Garage Hymnal) as well as old friend and keyboardist/backing vocalist Rob Brown, and great new electric guitarist Cedric Tang.

Can I recommend MKC to any men living anywhere remotely within reach of Katoomba?  Each year I am challenged about my life, especially about keeping Christ-focussed in work, church and family.  This year’s topic is “Men at Work”, and I expect it will contain plenty of useful stuff that this rather busy guy needs to hear.

We’ve rehearsed 20 songs for the weekend – including a few songs off my new album (whose release will coincide with the conference), plus a bunch of great new songs to take back to the musos at your church, and plenty of old favourites.

Hope you can make it!

Mixing “The name of love”

The new album “The name of love” is being mixed right now.  All the live songs are done, and 2 of the studio songs.  4 to go, then mastering and pressing.  Michael Sinclair my producer has got some awesome talent, and I can’t wait to get these songs out there for you all to hear!

New Album Release Date

The new album “The name of love” will be released on Feb 17th, coinciding with the beginning of mens katoomba convention 2012.  6 of the tracks were recorded live at the same event 12 months earlier.  The album will also contain 6 studio tracks.

Announcing Conference Dates for 2012

Plans are well under way for Revelation Music and Ministry Conference 2012, with a main speaker confirmed, some great options for guest artists, and a new, bigger and more sustainable venue.   All of these details will be announced shortly.

In the meantime, please put the dates for the conference in your diary, and let others know who might be interested.  We are aware that many people attended the conference in 2011 with a view to seeing if it would be the sort of thing they might invite others to in future, and I hope you found that it was!

So… the dates are: July 5th – 7th, 2012.

Stay tuned for more info.

M

Was it a Revelation?

It’s now a month since our inaugural Revelation Music and Ministry conference, and what a great time it was.  Almost 200 people, including around 40 volunteers and presenters, from around 35 churches gathered together on a cold, but sunny, weekend at Immanuel College.

I’m biased, but I think my father’s talks were fantastic.  At some point, we’ll develop the resources section of the Revelation website and upload them. He challenged us from Ephesians, Hebrews and Psalm 116 about making our gatherings places of praise, prayer, proclamation and edification.

We ran about 25 workshops on a range of topics, with much positive feedback… thank you so much to those presenters.  And not to mention the people who shared a song at the Open Mic sessions – wow… what talent.

And it was a wonderful privilege to share the platform with Nicky Chiswell and Geoff Bullock, both of whom had fantastic challenges about what’s important in our lives and ministries.

It was a conference with pastors, musicians and members of congregations present, and there was something for everyone.

So, was it a revelation?

What I discovered was how much the Christian community can encourage one another around a common ministry goal.  I was so buoyed by the vibe of the people.  Some come from smaller churches where they’re busting their guts week after week to do music; others came from larger churches with the pressures of lots of opinions to navigate.  But we all became increasingly aware that our gatherings together are places in which music plays a role in planting gospel seeds deeply into our lives.

I thank God for a great first conference!  Stay tuned for info about 2012.

Free Sheet Music

In anticipation of the new album (due out in next couple of months), I am making available the lead sheets of 9 out of the 11 songs that will appear on the album (and thereby hinting at almost the entire list of songs for the album).  What will the other 2 be?  One of them is an oldie I haven’t recorded myself since 1998.  The other is not that old, but one I’ve always wanted to record live.

Can’t wait to make the recordings available for you to hear… they’re sounding amazing.

Anyway, here are the songs: lead sheets from new album

I hope you like them.  A brand new song “Our Glorious King” is being debuted tomorrow night (Thu 14th July) at Revelation.  Or it could debut right now at your piano…

 

Workshop Program at Revelation

After months of planning, the Revelation Conference team has now released the list of workshops that we’ll be offering at the conference.  The workshops are a key way in which we plan to cater for the diverse group of attendees at the conference: e.g. pastors, musicians, members of the general congregation, people involved in associated ministries such as youth or kids ministry, etc…

There are about 25 workshops on offer this year, spread over 5 workshop slots in the program, so that at any point in the program there will be about 5 or 6 different choices.

Part of our planning process has involved carefully working through all the workshop topics to allocate them in such a way that in any of the workshop slots there is always something for everyone.  For example, there will always be something on offer for non-musicians, and none of the slots contain 4 or 5 specialist topics simultaneously.

We plan to update the program on the website to show this allocation of workshops.  Thank you for your patience as we plan this brand new event to make it as useful as possible for as many as possible.

Register online today to make sure there is still space for you.  Places are filling up quickly and the conference is less than 3 weeks away!

 

Philippians Album

This album was recorded a while back now: it’s essentially the letter to the Philippians expressed in music.  Some of the songs are virtually word for word, other’s are more responsive in nature.  Hope you find the songs uplifting!

 

Free downloads until May 23

Recently I made my 2 most recent albums available for free download on this site. See downloads.  Unfortunately, I am not able to keep doing this indefinitely.

This will not be the end of free music at this website!  I have a new album coming, and expect to make various tracks freely available at various times.

So get in today and download stuff if you don’t already have it!  Please forward this message on to anyone else you know who might be interested.

Some time on May 23rd, my website will automatically close down the free access…