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Arrangers/Orchestrators: Michael Frazier, Marty Hamby, Bradley Knight, Don Marsh, and Russell Mauldin
Publisher: Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing
Producer: Craig Adams
Song Titles: "Marriage Supper Of The Lamb," "The Old Time Way," "I Have Seen The Lord," "Believing One Day," "Stand Still," "Walkin' And Talkin'," "Get Out Of The Boat," "Love Brought Me Back," "When The Clouds Roll Back," "He Was, He Is, He Is To Come," "Somebody Sing Me A Gospel Song," "He's Watching Me," "As If The Cross Was Not Enough," and "I'm Still Amazed"

If you lead music or sing in a choir at your church, this review is for you. Choral music reviews are a new feature of SoGospelNews.com.

I have been using New Southern Favorites, Volume 2 with my church choir for about six months now, and it gets a solid 4½ stars on a scale of 1 to 5. If you like current Southern Gospel, you should appreciate the inclusion of recently popularized tunes from the past three or four years like the Hoppers' "Marriage Supper Of The Lamb," The Isaacs' "Stand Still," and Southern Brothers' "When The Clouds Roll Back."

You should also be very pleased with New Southern Gospel, Volume 2 if you use CD accompaniment tracks. Volume levels are consistent, rhythms are easy to distinguish in the mix, and the overall music track production quality is outstanding. I've had members of my choir request me to order them a copy of the listening CD . . . and not just for rehearsal purposes . . . for listening enjoyment. They love this book, and the recording is a big part of the reason why. Orchestrations and a conductor's score are also available for churches that have those resources. If you use some type of keyboard accompaniment, the score included in the book is very playable. Unfortunately, this book is perfect bound, which means it will NOT stay open on a piano or organ (unless you treat it violently). The same thing goes for getting it to lay flat in a singer's folder. At 163 pages, it would have been wiser to make this a spiral bound book.

The music in New Southern Favorites, Vol. 2 is stylistically consistent despite the use of five different orchestrators. Bass singers get to shine on "The Old Time Way" while "Walkin' And Talkin' " gives the Sopranos exposure. Ballads like "Love Brought Me Back" and "As If The Cross Was Not Enough" offer a contrast to upbeat numbers like "He's Watching Me" and "Believing One Day." You could use this book for a full concert of songs if you wished. It has a nice flow and there's some variety from one song to the next. "Somebody Sing Me A Gospel Song" doesn't follow the Gold City arrangement, but instead offers a medley of choruses with "Christ Arose," "The Old Rugged Cross," and "When We All Get To Heaven." The collection ends with a medium tempo 6/8 number called "I'm Still Amazed."

My own church choir consists of 30 volunteers including at least two or three in each section who possess some music reading skills. We've found these arrangements to be challenging in spots, but nothing too difficult to pull off after a few rehearsals. I'd call it a "Medium" difficulty collection. Vocal ranges for the ladies' parts are very reasonable. There's a few spots where the Sopranos have harmony rather than melody, which may be a concern if your choir lacks music readers in the soprano section. The Bass vocal range tends to be well within normal standards as well. Tenors, on the other hand, seem to have a dispropotionate number of notes at or near the top of their range. Some passages ask the tenors to stay around the F above middle C for extended periods, for example. A few options for solos are included, but the collection is not overly soloist dependent.

I strongly recommend New Southern Favorites, Volume 2. It's probably beyond the scope of smaller and/or lesser skilled choirs, but medium to large groups will enjoy singing from it and virtually all traditional congregations will love hearing this music.

If you appreciate coverage of choral music at SoGospelNews.com and want to see more reviews along this line, drop me an email or leave a comment below.

Reader Comments

As a choir director and service musician, I have tried to work in more SG into the services. People love it. The previous minister of music liked SG, but didn't really know it.

I have a promo pack for the first one, but need to listen to it. They do sound like some good songs. I don't always like others arrangements of SG songs, but will listen. We have done "Promises One By One", "Singing With The Saints", "It's Still The Cross", "I Am Redeemed", and Gone with Christ Arose from Lillenas and they are all good.
We are working on ones from Prism in a songbook. The ones I like and am using so far are: "We Will Not Fail", "Whenever We Agree Together", "Go Tell Everyone", and "At The Name Of Jesus".

What I need this year is a good Christmas canata. Any suggestions? We have around 25 volunteer members who can sing all four parts. We generally
don't like the easy to excell ones because it doubles the tenors with sopranos and basses with altos too much. We like four part music. Currently due to membership changes the approximate ranges are as follows:

All of the basses can get an F (two below middle c). One can go to a low C and sometimes even a G under it. I try to keep their part from not getting past middle C, although if it is unison with men, they can get to about an E, and some higher. Tenors should really stop at about an F#, but we have done songs where they have G's or Ab's on occasion (but not too many in a row. ). Altos have changed and preferably should stop around an A above middle C, but can go up to about a c above if absolutely necessary. Sopranos stop around F, F# or G at the top, and the G would be more for one note or 2, and not consistently up there. Thanks to anyone who can give me ideas. We loved the cantata called Gloria. Last Easter I picked out the last three songs from the Lillenas ones I mentioned above and added others to make my own cantata. (Complete with text). I might end up having to do the same with Christmas.

No, I haven't used Speck stuff yet, but I did get a preview pack for his more recent. (Another I need to listen to. ) Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely look into them. I do hope for Easter one year (if not next) to put together an entire one from scratch again, but on a larger scale. It was a plan I was inspired to do years earlier, but it will take a lot of work to do them the way I want.

Tenor, have you tried the Down To The River To Pray choral collection and tracks yet? I know you said solo, but this has some good bluegrass arrangements of Unclouded Day, We Shall Rise, the title song (we had already had the octavo). There are some other songs in there that aren't bad, but I think I covered the best ones. The one minor thing that bugs me is that the arranger seems to have a fondness for endings with chords without thirds in them.

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