The TRUE Tall Tale of the Coming of Christ.
"This Christmas will be the fifth consecutive year that Ive
performed what I hesitantly call a musical about the birth of Christ. The
reason musical doesn't really work is that when we think of a
musical we usually think of people dressed like donkeys and evenings full of
badly delivered speaking parts.
What I wrote is a concert that tells a story. There's no
speaking--only songs, some of which are intimate, some epic, some humorous, all
with a purpose, which is to convey the true tall tale of the coming of God into
the world.
What makes this bunch of songs unique is that I wanted to remind (or
teach) the audience that the story of Christmas doesn't begin with the
birth of Jesus. Many people tend to forget or have never even learned that the
entire Bible is about Jesus, not just the New Testament. So the musical begins
with Moses and the symbolic story of the Passover (Passover Us) and works its
way through the kings and the prophets with their many prophecies about the
coming Messiah (So Long, Moses) to the awful four hundred years of silence
before God told Mary she'd be having a baby (Deliver Us). After the song
called Matthew's Begats, which lists the genealogy of Jesus, the story
picks up in more familiar territory with Mary and Joseph and the actual birth
(It Came To Pass, Labor of Love). The final song is called Behold, the Lamb of
God, which ties together the Passover and the beauty and scope of the story.
For the past three years the concert has been overwhelming from a
spiritual standpoint. I can honestly say that I haven't made it through
one performance of the show without crying, which isn't a testimony to the
concert as much as it is to the power of the story of Jesus. And it really is
that story that's being told, in a new way. The audiences have expressed
to me what I most want to hear, which is that they were blown away, that they
got goose bumps, that they felt truly prepared to celebrate the Christmas
season for what it's really worth. I also heard over and over again that
they wanted to take the record home.
Over the past few years, along with the string quartet Ive had
numerous guests appear in the concert: Phil Keaggy, Alison Krauss, Phil
Madeira, Fernando Ortega, Ron Block (Union Station), Sean and Sara Watkins
(Nickel Creek), Jill Phillips, Randall Goodgame, Jonathan and Amanda Noel, Todd
Bragg, Silers Bald, Laura Story, Andrew Osenga, Steve Hindalong and others.
This year the concert is being held at the Ryman Auditorium." Andrew
Peterson
| Song List |
| 1.
Gather Round, Ye Children, Come |
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| 2. Passover Us |
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| 3. So
Long, Moses |
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| 4. Deliver Us
(featuring Derek Webb) |
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| 5. O
Come, O Come Emmanuel |
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| 6. Matthew's
Begats |
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| 7. It
Came to Pass |
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| 8. Labor of Love
(featuring Jill Phillips) |
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| 9. The
Holly and the Ivy |
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| 10. While Shepherds
Watched Their Flocks |
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| 11.
Behold the Lamb of God |
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| 12. The Theme of my Song/
Reprise |
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To listen to an audio clip, click on the Windows Media or RealPlayer
symbol next to the song.