It’s the most wonderful time of the year! The children have been busy at FPC this holiday season. They enjoyed decorating gingerbread houses, creating snow and cinnamon ornaments at Drop and Shop, and making a joyful noise at the Christmas play! A huge thank you to all the volunteers, parents, and children for making this a festive and joyous time! /Lilly Osborne

If you are planning to make a year-end gift to First Presbyterian Church and are required take a Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from a taxable retirement plan, please consider talking to your financial advisor about a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD).

A QCD is a direct transfer of funds from your IRA, payable directly to a qualified charity as defined in the QCD provision in the Internal Revenue Code. Amounts distributed as a QCD can be counted toward satisfying your RMD for the year, up to $100,000. In addition, the QCD is excluded from your taxable income and lowers your adjusted gross income and income tax!

Gifts may be designated to church general operations to help fulfill our annual operating budget or to one of our current mission partnerships. A new option is to designate gifts to one of the recently established Legacy Funds: the General Legacy Fund (which provides the broadest impact for years to come) or one of several Designated Legacy Funds specific to various program areas in the church, such as Worship/Music, Christian Education, Missions, or Facilities. For more information, please call Betsy Galliher in the church office or email her at [email protected].

Sunday, December 26: Craig Phillips (b. 1961) is Director of Music at All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills. Dr. Phillips holds the degrees Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music, as well as the Performers Certificate, from the Eastman School of Music. His Bachelor of Music degree is from Oklahoma Baptist University, and his early musical studies were at the Blair School of Music in Nashville. He resides in West Hollywood.

Phillips’s quiet meditation on CAROL (“It Came upon the Midnight Clear”) fits well with the First Sunday of Christmas. The familiar melody is played by the feet, while the hands supply gentle rocking figures. The peaceful musical setting belies the surprisingly harsh images touched upon in the hymn’s text (which we will sing). How badly our fallen world needs to listen to “that glorious song of old!”

H. Alexander Matthews’s (1879–1973) setting of “Angels, from the Realms of Glory” is suitably grand for a piece with such a title. Born in England, Matthews immigrated to the United States as a young man, married, and settled in the Philadelphia area, where he established himself as a teacher of organ, harmony, counterpoint, and composition.

Sunday, January 2: Ashley Grote’s (b. 1982) setting of THE FIRST NOWELL is succinct and impactful. Grote is Master of Music at Norwich Cathedral and a fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Grote grew up in Colchester and attended Eld Lane Baptist Church with his family, where he sang in the choir and first played the organ. He joined the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, at the age of eight in response to a newspaper advertisement for voice trials. He then attended Uppingham School and returned to King’s in October 2001 as an organ scholar. He won first prize in the 1999 Royal College of Organists’ Young Performers’ Festival. In 2000 he was the first organist ever to win a place in the keyboard final of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition.

Since his daughter’s diagnosis with a brain tumor in 2014, he has regularly competed in the London marathon to raise funds for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

M. Searle Wright’s (1918–2004) playful setting of GREENSLEEVES seems perfectly suited for the first communion service of the new year. Wright was born in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Binghamton, New York. As a teenager, he earned money playing the Wurlitzer at the Capitol Theater in Binghamton on weekends. He studied classical organ in New York City, with T. Tertius Noble, and composition at Columbia University. He taught at the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, where he had earlier studied improvisation. He was the director of chapel music at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University; served a term as president of the American Guild of Organists; and later became Link Professor of Music at the State University of New York in Binghamton. Wright was a deeply religious man who created many choral works, writing in a style that was quite tonal and conservative.

Sir David Willcocks’s (1919–2015) “Postlude on MENDELSSOHN” has become a modern classic of the organ repertoire. Willcocks was a British choral conductor, organist, composer, and music administrator. He was particularly well known for his association with the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, which he directed from 1957 to 1974, making frequent broadcasts and recordings. Several of the descants and carol arrangements he wrote for the annual Service of Nine Lessons and Carols were published in the series of books Carols for Choirs, which he edited with Reginald Jacques and John Rutter. He was also director of the Royal College of Music in London.

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