Come and sing with hymn lovers at the third annual “Hymn Sing by the Sea” to be held at 2 PM on Saturday, July 30, 2016 on the front lawn of George Washington Inn! This year Jim Giger (click on link for his bio.) will lead the song service with accompanists Marlys Prociw (piano) and Janet Abbott (organ). Here’s the songbook that you can print out and bring along: 2016 Hymn Sing By The Sea. Don’t forget your lawn chair, unless you just want to bring a blanket to spread out on the inn’s front lawn. Remember it will happen rain or shine. The inn’s oceanfront piazza makes a great alternative space if the weather doesn’t cooperate, but this year the weather’s looking perfect. Don’t miss out and there’s no admission fee!
Join others who love to sing the old hymns for an unforgettable experience! The annual “Hymn Sing by the Sea” at George Washington Inn and Estate will take place on July 30, 2016 at 2 PM. Further details to be announced.
For the second year in a row, Dr. Frank Garlock and his wife, Flora Jean, are coming to the Pacific Northwest. Internationally-known as an accomplished musician, composer, and conductor, Dr. Garlock is recognized in both the sacred and secular fields for music which is of the highest quality. His compositions have been performed around the world by professional choirs and instrumental groups. In 1997, Dr. Garlock produced Majesty Hymns, an inspiring hymnal with over 600 hymns.
As owners of the George Washington Inn, an oceanfront B&B inn and lavender farm on the Olympic Peninsula, we have sought to find ways to promote good, wholesome music. We invite you to join us on Saturday afternoon, July 25, 2015 for the second annual Hymn Sing. The event begins at 2:00 pm and will end by around 4:00. You are welcome to arrive early or stay late to enjoy the farm and lavender gift shop. Dr. Garlock will also have a supply of his CDs and books available for purchase.
Dr. Garlock will share hymn histories and other encouraging thoughts as he leads this “Hymn Sing By The Sea,” and Flora Jean will accompany on the piano. Please join us as we raise our voices in praise to our Savior.
Please share this event with your church members, friends and colleagues. We hope you will bring them along with you to enjoy the day with us as we celebrate the majesty of God’s creation here along the Strait of Juan de Fuca and in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains.
There is no admission charge or required registration for this event; however, it would be helpful to get an idea of how many will be coming. If you could send us an e-mail (info@georgewashingtoninn.com) with an approximate number of people who are coming from your church or ministry, it will help us to prepare for this exciting summer event. Please join us at 2:00 pm on Saturday, July 25, 2015, at George Washington Inn in Port Angeles, WA. If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at 360-452-5207.
“O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.” Psalm 95:1
“…in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:19
Enjoy America’s rich hymn heritage in an inaugural Hymn Sing, directed by internationally know hymn writer and musician, Dr. Frank Garlock. Bring along your lawn chairs, sit back on the oceanfront inn’s front lawn at the peak of the lavender season and enjoy some beautiful music from George Washington’s day to the present.
Location: George Washington Inn and Washington Lavender Farm, 939 Finn Hall Rd., Port Angeles, WA 98362
Dr. Frank Garlock is an internationally-known musician, composer, and conductor.
He is recognized in both the sacred and secular fields for music which is of the highest quality. His compositions have been performed around the world by professional choirs and instrumental groups, and his performing ensembles have received recognition from such groups as the Music Educators National Convention and the International Trombone Workshop.
He received his undergraduate training at Bob Jones University and completed his graduate degree at the Eastman School of Music. He has taught at several colleges including Bob Jones University where he founded and directed the thirty-member Trombone Choir, the Faculty Brass Quintet, and the Vesper Choir. He also was the chairman of the Music Theory Department at Bob Jones University, and composed film music in addition to conducting several opera performances.
He founded the sacred music master’s degree program at Pensacola Christian College which trains musicians from all over the world, thereby helping mature musicians to use their talents more effectively wherever they serve.
Dr. Garlock has been a board member of The Wilds Christian Camp and Conference Center since 1971. He served as the music director in the early years of the camp.
As the founder and president of Majesty Music, Inc., he has developed and directed one of the largest independent publishing companies for church music in the country. Under his leadership, Majesty Music has produced well over 100 recordings and publications for every aspect of church music. Missionaries have translated much of the vocal music into multiple languages, and it ministers to people in every part of the globe. Dr. and Mrs. Garlock have written many songs together, as well as cantatas for Easter, Christmas, and other special holidays.
Dr. Garlock established the Majesty MusiCollege, a seminar program for church musicians that provides musical training in every facet of church music ministries. This seminar reaches over 500 musicians each year.
In 1997, Dr. Garlock produced Majesty Hymns, a hymnal with over 600 hymns, gospel songs, and choruses, with additional medleys, choral descants, and extensive indexes.
He has produced several DVD/video series including The Language of Music, Pop Goes the Music, and The Nature of Music. These series have instructed and ministered to churches, Christian schools, and families around the world.
In 1992, Dr. Garlock co-authored a book with Kurt Woetzel, entitled Music in the Balance. This book has proved to be an important resource that examines what Scripture says about how we are to fulfill the Lord’s admonition to sing a new song to Him.
Dr. Garlock was in Jacmel, Haiti during the devastating earthquake of 2010. He has since written a book entitled Haiti: A Time for Miracles that recounts the many miraculous events that God orchestrated to protect and provide for him and others in the days following the earthquake.
In 2012, he wrote his autobiography, I Being in the Way, the Lord Led Me. As Dr. Garlock meditated on the idea, he realized that the events of his life were not really about him, but about his Savior. From childhood until now, he has joyfully proclaimed Jesus Christ through music and preaching. His prayer is that the book will inspire and encourage readers to use their God-given talents for the Lord.
The Garlocks continue to serve the Lord, traveling to conferences and presenting music seminars in churches and schools. At 83 years of age, Dr. Frank Garlock remains full of energy and enthusiasm. We look forward to his valuable role in the inaugural international hymn sing at the Washington Music Festival on July 26, 2014.
America’s first hymnal (known as a psalter), the “Whole Booke of Psalmes”, was taken to the North American continent with Protestant exiles, who sought their religious freedom in the New Land, during the reign of Mary Tudor who was infamously known as Bloody Mary. Click on this page sample to view a copy of this psalter:
Recently a subsequent edition of this book of psalms, the “Bay Psalm Book” –regarded as the oldest printed book in America, was auctioned off and sold to David Rubenstein, a businessman and philanthropist, for the sum of $14,165,000. He promised to loan it to libraries across the country. It was printed on “the Puritan minister Joseph Glover’s press, the first such device to make the journey across the Atlantic. Although Glover died during the 1638 crossing, his widow, Elizabeth, inherited the press and saw to its installation. She established America’s first print shop in a little house on what is now Holyoke Street in Cambridge.
While Stephen Day is generally credited with printing America’s first book, he was only the operator and overseer of Elizabeth Glover’s press. The press was nothing remarkable, and the crude materials and nascent talents of its operators are reflected in the blurred type and typographical inconsistencies in its surviving books, of which the Bay Psalm Book is no exception. Take, for instance, that most essential of words: ‘PSALM,’ which appears that way on the left-hand pages but is spelled ‘PSALME’ on the right-hand pages.
The colonists brought many Psalters with them to the New World, but they quickly found those printings lacking. The hundred and fifty Psalms were divided among ‘thirty pious and learned Ministers’ who labored to produce a verse translation that would be more faithful to the original Hebrew. Their efforts yielded the 1640 version that would become the Bay Psalm Book, which was then revised and reprinted nine times in the seventeenth century alone. The preface to the first edition, the one to be auctioned, states apologetically,
If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them consider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected rather a plaine translation, then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre.
There already one sees the peculiar poetry of erratic spellings and capitalizations that makes the Bay Psalm Book so charming, so authentically early Americana.
Not surprisingly, as it prepared for today’s auction, Sotheby’s has displayed the book with its pages opened to the Twenty-third Psalm. Look to those familiar verses and you can see just how strange the translation is, even relative to the King James Version, which had been completed just thirty years earlier, in 1611:
The Lord to mee a shepheard is,
want therefore shall not I,
Hee in the folds of tender-grasse,
doth cause mee downe to lie:
To waters calme me gently leads
To my ear, the shepherd is still caring and careful, but those ‘folds of tender-grasse’? Just down the street from where the Bay Psalm Book was printed is Harvard Yard, itself once a pasture for sheep and cattle. ‘Green pastures’ might well have been most familiar, but the Bay Psalm Book translator’s desire for accuracy is confirmed by the contemporary translation by Robert Alter, himself fiercely dedicated to rescuing the original Hebrew: he chose ‘grass meadows.’
One can scrutinize every verse of the Bay Psalm Book online. The text rewards such study, but it does not explain why the first book printed in America was a Psalter. Psalters are an unfamiliar genre for many, even those who worship regularly. Psalm-singing had for centuries been the demesne of a hand-picked choir, but the English Reformation invited the voices of the entire congregation. This printing of the Psalms in verse, set to meter, allowed them to be sung by all. Thus the Bay Psalm Book is a kind of hymnal.
Denominations still print original hymnals today, and every new printing marks time and documents tastes. Earlier this year, I interviewed a church organist who was retiring after more than sixty years of service. She did not measure those years in calendrical or liturgical terms, in Christmases, Easters, or even pastors, but hymnals. ‘I’ve played five different hymnals,’ she told me. After she said it, I calculated that my entire life was only three hymnals.
America’s history spans just a few centuries, but hundreds of hymnals. Colonists came seeking religious freedom, so the first book they printed was not a political tract or even a Bible, but a hymnal: a book to be used regularly in communal and even private worship. The intended use of the Bay Psalm Book tells us why it was America’s first book.” (America’s First Book – The New Yorker, Nov. 26, 2013)
On July 26, 2014, the Washington Music Festival will host its first Hymn Sing with organ prodigy, Gert van Hoef, and the editor of Majesty Hymns, Dr. Frank Garlock, leading the singing. Perhaps philanthropist, David Rubenstein, would be willing to lend the Bay Psalm Book for display at the event as well!
Washington Music Festival 