Phil Evans, vocals; Anne-Renee Gumley, piano; Eric Shelton, flute; Naomi Stamoolis, oboe; Allison King, clarinet; Erinn Mobley, cello; Joel Stamoolis, double bass

Song by Phil Evans, arranged by Allison King

From Phil: Dedicated to Tatyana (Tanya) Kovtun, a student from Providenya, brought to Alaska by missionaries as a cultural exchange student at Cook Inlet Academy in Soldotna. Tanya, along with Alotia, Olesya, and Nastia, started attending UAA in Fall ‘94 and got involved with College Gate Baptist Church, as had I. I asked about their favorite Bible verses. Tanya’s was Psalm 56:11 To my knowledge, Tanya has never heard the computerized instrumental version or the basic vocal version of this song.

The Psalms are Hebrew songs and poetry, rhyming ideas rather than sounds, yet easier to turn into song than prose. In Psalm 56, verses 4 and 11 parallel each other. Verse 4 includes part of verse 10. So, I combined verses 4, 10 and 11 and added a reassuring implication: “I’m in God’s hands for eternity.” On May 9, 1995, I wrote this Russian sounding melody, thinking of adding a Russian translation as a verse or possibly as a round. After getting a Windows 3.1 computer in late 1996, I finally added the sounds swirling in my head to the basic melody and lyrics note by note with a mouse and computer keyboard, copying parts where I could, and tweaking parameters, such as tempo, individually throughout the song. A struggling college student couldn’t afford one of those fancy Windows 95 machines, let alone a Mac. This was the first, and probably only, entirely computer-generated piece ever presented at WBC. Tonight is the first public performance with the actual instruments. The original instrumentation (clarinet, piano, pipe organ and violin) is the same as adding a pipe organ to the UAA music professors known as Alaska Pro Musica. I’ve never had good manual dexterity, and don’t play any of those instruments. Once the instruments start to take off, you begin to get a feel for the crazy sounds swirling inside my head.