Highlights of 2017

Brothers and Sisters,

Clearly one of the highlights of World House Music in 2017 was the delivery in February of the Hailun concert grand piano to Tumaini University Makumira in Tanzania. It is the first concert grand piano ever to be at a university ANYWHERE in East Africa! Tanzania alone is twice the size of California. Can you imagine the entire west coast of the USA without a concert grand piano at any university? That was the situation in Tanzania until February, 2017. Thank you to the hundreds of people, churches and other institutions that contributed to making the delivery of the piano a reality. It will create many cultural and economic opportunities. Attached again are pictures of the piano, and of students and professors enjoying the new instrument. Additional pics and videos are available at http://www.cac.ac.tz/

WHM is also grateful to the ELCA Tri-Synodical conference which commissioned Dr. Abe to compose a new setting of Psalm 99 to celebrate the 500th year of the Reformation. Since one of Luther’s arguments for reformation was the need to move away from Latin to the use of the vernacular, he set this text to the musical vernacular of the area: a Tex Mex mariachi style. Kristina Díaz also assisted in the paraphrase of the text, and in the bi-lingual translation of the refrain.  “Psalm 99 Tex Mex” was enthusiastically received, and is available for download for a free will donation in the “sheet music” tab of this website.  Here is the link to the live video recording of Psalm 99 Tex Mex premiered at the Tri-Synodical Theological conference which took place in Austin, TX, January, 23-25, 2017. It begins at the 15:13 point  https://www.facebook.com/swtsynod/videos/10154312244509786/