IN LOVING MEMORY of
Amy Cheston McMonigle
I was deeply saddened to hear of the untimely passing this week of my friend Amy McMonigle and found myself reminiscing about not only singing with her in the “Instruments of Peace” but also the frequent times we called upon her instrumental talents of playing Cello for various recordings.
This edition of “FOUND SOUND” takes us to the Summer of 1978.
In my youth, I am grateful to have been a part of the Severn Baptist Church Youth Choir, “Phileos,” under the direction of Al Hunter and accompanied by his wife, Margaret. Each summer the Youth Choir would look forward to going ‘On Tour’ to present Christian music concerts at a number of churches in areas as close as the Eastern Shore of Maryland to as far away as South Carolina. We would often prepare a program that would include classical Hymns and contemporary Anthems and then often a Musical with orchestrated accompaniment background ‘tracks’. In 1978, the “Musical” was a collection of ‘Six Contemporary Psalm Settings” by Charles Buffham. But this collection had no accompaniment tracks available. My friend Richard Strickland had invested in a TEAC 4-Channel Reel-to-Reel the previous summer and I had the pleasure of engineering many hours of recordings for our musical creative efforts. This machine had the capabilities of doing overdubs and we had already become proficient in layering instruments, often playing multiple ones ourselves. I had also been dabbling with some instrumental arranging. So when Mr. Hunter said we should take a crack at creating our own tracks, we were all in!
One of the Psalm settings was a minor keyed setting of Psalm 13 called “Oh, Why?” and as we were discussing arrangements somebody commented on how good a Cello would sound with it. Rich and I looked at one another and said “We know somebody that can do that — Amy!” We knew Amy Cheston through the Baptist Student Union (BSU) and Heritage Baptist Church in Annapolis and had already tapped her Cello playing talents for another recording we had done with my Bro-in-Law, Garry O’Dell, for his song ‘The Legend of the Sanddollar.”
So I scratched out a Cello part and soon after the basic rhythm tracks were done, we had Amy record it.
All in all, I think our little accompaniment track project turned out pretty well back in ’78. I can only find recordings of four of the six Psalm settings and I cannot find our ‘Master’ tape of our instrumental tracks. Oh well.
And so, here is “Oh, Why?”