Six or nine months ago, I finally bought a classical mouthpiece for my soprano sax. And in December, I played a special musical number in Sacrament meeting. (Funny story: I was originally going to play a duet with one of the missionaries. But the week before, he injured a couple of his fingers working on his bike—they got better, but not in time to play his oboe with me. Then I was going to do a piece accompanied by a ward member on piano, only he got really sick the day before. So it was just me.)
It’s easy enough to find arrangements of Christmas hymns for solo instruments and piano, or for duets, or for other instrumental arrangements. But other instrumental churchy music?
It’s hard to find arrangements that I find interesting to play. What I have found seems largely to be a simple melody with an interesting accompaniment, which then modulates in key and repeats. Which, fine, but it’s not really what I like.
So I’m going to refer back to an aughts standby: the bleg. Does anybody have a favorite resource for interesting arrangements of religious music for single-line instruments with accompaniment or small ensembles of single-line instruments? Because it would be awesome to crowdsource a list.
And note that it doesn’t have to be saxophone-specific. I have MuseScore. I can transpose.
And I’m fine with free. I’m fine with paid. I’m fine with online. I’m fine with physical books. I’d just love to know where you turn when you want an arrangement that is interesting, fun to play, and uplifting to listen to.
Photo by Lorenzo Spoleti on Unsplash