Pictures

I am tired and grateful on my way back home. If you follow this link you can see a few pictures from this trip:

St Petersburg February 2015

St Petersburg Gospel Choir

After almost two weeks in St Petersburg I still don’t speak russian. And I have to say that this language will take a looooong time to master. But I hope to come bmany times to speak it. 

Tomorrow I go back to Sweden. It will be great to see my wife and daughters again! But I am also a little sad to leave my friends here. We have worked hard together, not only rehearsing new and old songs, but also travelled a lot across this huge city to perform. We have also had many talks about gospel music in Russia -what it stands for, what it means to people and how it can be used to spread good news to more listeners. I sometimes think that this is what it was like when Joybells started singing gospel in the 60’s. There are many questions, but not so many answers, and you need to know where your heart is and why you do what you do. Because if you don’t know, you start focusing on the wrong things and in one way or another you run into trouble. 

Total Praise is a great gospel group and they have a great leader in Nina! I believe that not only Russia, but many parts of the world need singers like this right now. 

This week Nina will also start St Petersburg Gospel Choir -an opportunity for people of all kinds to sing gospel here. I am pretty sure that they will have a lot of fun, because I have met some of the people that will join. But I am also pretty sure that there will be problems in the beginning. So those of you who pray -pray for Nina, Total Praise and St Petersburg Gospel Choir!

Sunday meetings

Two services today. One was where I first came to meet Russian gospel singers -Logos church, and the other was the church of our bass player (maybe the name was "Spets", I am still not fluent in russian). In Logos I heard a choir doing traditional hymns in russian, and it sounded so beautiful. That is something we never hear in our part of Europe unfortunately.

In the afternoon we heard a great worship band, with a small teenage choir. Then we got a sermon from Valerij, who speaks a little swedish. He works at the university where they have started a new program for worship leaders, and I will visit them on Tuesday to make plans for the future.

St Petersburg concert

We have done seven performances in one week, plus practice everyday. My hands are red and almost swollen from the piano playing. But it’s worth everything!

The concert last night was in a church that has a lot of dance groups -everything from hip hop to jazz. It was a perfect auditorium for us and we felt that everybody in the room was there to celebrate from the first song. Total Praise sang seven songs and the mass choir four songs, and then we did some encores.

Nina announced the start of St Petersburg gospel choir, something very exciting that I hope to write a about a lot! It is open for anybody and many people have already shown interest.

I wish to quote the earlier bible verse -God is about to do something new!

New russian gospel

Yesterday we had composition masterclass in the university which is located close the church where ”Total Praise” started as a choir. 

There are so many russian singers and musicians who are both talented and extremely well trained in the classical music trade. In my composition class we looked at what defines gospel music. My goal is not to trade classical for gospel. That would be a bad thing. But if you know both you can create a lot of exciting new music. The song ”Total Praise” by Richard Smallwood is a good example of music that is close to both gospel and classical. 

When the students have such high skills in the classical trade it often produces laughter when we try to arrange traditional gospel and they can’t help but squeeze in some influence from Mozart and the other old masters. Of course it’s cool to do that every now and then, but it’s also cool to laugh when it comes out by accident. 

At the end of the day we worked on three different new compsitions based on Isaiah 43:19 ”Look, I am about to do something new...” I would say that all three songs had great qualities and I hope you will hear them when they are finished.

Tonight is the second of the mass choir practices and saturday is the concert. 

It's a good life

Dennis and Evelina had me over for lunch today in their apartment in the northern part of St Petersburg. Great food and some relaxed time to learn more about this city and my friends here. They had also invited Max, who is the organizer of many christian music festivals, which of course was very interesting. I learned a lot about how the economy in Russia affects the churches and musicians. Sometimes it is easy to get depressed when you talk about the things like economy and other things that media report about Russia right now. But when you look back at how God has always made a way out of no way you can not be depressed. Then you look at the future and realize that God will keep making a way. You realize the truth of the song that we were singing at the gospel workshop tonight "it's a good life, living with Jesus in my life!" 

Crime and punishment

Today I had the opportunity to do some tourism before the evening rehearsal. It’s a bit colder than Örebro, so I didn’t want to spend much time walking outside. But I did see the museum inside St Isaacs cathedral. It’s a beautiful building that you have to visit when you come to St Petersburg!

As I learn more about the Russian-Orthodox church I realize I know so little about how complex religion and faith is. Christians, atheists, moslems and others have a need to define the truth and then tell everybody else what the truth looks like. When I learned about the history of some of the paintings in St Isaacs cathedral it was impossible to imagine that the people who used to have services in that place were praying to the God that is described in the bible, and whom I pray to as well. Is their truth the same as mine? Our traditions and cultural inheritance define us more than we want to admit.

Just a ten minute walk from the cathedral is the the place where Total Praise rehearse. I went from the gold and marble covered orthodox dome to a little studio on one of the back streets. But in that studio we were making music that was so shining it would make gold and marble look like dirt! 

We were all a little tired since yesterday, but this is such a good group of singers. They know when to rest their voices and when to give 100%. Less than one hundred meters from where Total Praise have their rehearsals is the apartment where the old woman in ”Crime and punishment” by Fjodor Dostojevskij was murdered. You get to know a looooot of things you didn’t expect when you go to Russia to praise the Lord!

Gospel Journey

I have just started a new choir project in Sweden called Gospel Journey. In 2015 we intend to go to New York, but my vision is that our journey does not stop there. I hope that many people get the chance to experience the kind of gospel journey I did today.

Our journey today was back and forth across the very large city of St Petersburg to visit three church services. For a swedish person I guess you can compare to doing one service in Stockholm, one in Västerås and one in Örebro, all in one Sunday. I have said it before, but I need to say it again -the most amazing thing is when you feel in your heart that God is the same wherever you go!

The evangelical churches here don't have the traditional church buildings that are common in Europe. Those beautiful old buildings are exclusively for the russian-orthodox church (except one that was taken over by baptists a long time ago). This means that the outside of an evangelical church (which could be a hotel, a movie theatre or other hall) is usually not very inspiring, but the inside is what matters. The sound is usually good for gospel, such as Total Praise, and the not-so-churchy kind of room seems a little friendlier for those who are not used to going to church. Most important are the people, as always, and we met a lot of great people today.

Four sisters from one of the churches joined us to sing two gospel songs in the morning. After the service they spoke with us and it sounded like everybody was mad at everybody. They were yelling all kinds of russian insults at each other. I thought. But I am slowly learning that the russian language has a different melody than the languages I already know. The truth was that they were super excited about what had happened and shared different ways the Lord had been blessing them during the music. So it was actually awesome! :)

Day 2

Day 1 was only arrival day, so I start at day 2. 

Today we sang six songs at United church. They do their weekly service on saturdays in the swedish Lutheran church, next door to the swedish embassy. Their swedish pastor, Andreas, could not be there today, but still I am grateful for how he has helped myself and Total Praise in preparing these two weeks. 

I have visited this church before and they always have a very relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Zjenia, who was leading the service, said that every time Total Praise come to visit United they leave everybody with a feeling of wanting more. I agree, and to be honest that is why I am here. When more people want more there will be more! Could that be a new slogan maybe? It looks cool so I will keep it in the blog: 

When more people want more there will be more!

Thanks United church for great fellowship and a great service! 

Tomorrow we will do church-hopping, three services in one day.

2015 blogging

Again I re-open this little diary that we started when we went to Spain as a family in 2012. Last year I used this forum when I was teaching at the college in Pennsylvania, USA. Now I wish to share my thoughts and experiences from two weeks in St Petersburg, Russia. 

My church in Sweden (www.immanuelskyrkan.net) has a sister church in Viborg, Russia (the church on the rock), where Nina Elisheva used to be the music minister. She now leads the gospel choir Total Praise in St Petersburg. My swedish church sent me here to be part of their music mission for a couple of weeks. We will do concerts and services. I will also do workshops for the public, where I teach gospel singing and playing. 

As usual I will share my thoughts on this blog in english so that russians, swedes and others can understand. 

Thank you for keeping me and my Russian friends in your prayers!