{"id":309,"date":"2014-08-07T20:58:48","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T20:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/?p=309"},"modified":"2014-08-07T22:25:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T22:25:18","slug":"blog-august-8th-release-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"Blog – August 8th- Release International"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nTwo compilation albums for “Release International”\u00a0 – Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places” and “For Unsung Heroes”<\/p>\n

“A Mustard Seed Of Faith” featuring Lucy Jane Rutherford from\u00a0 an unreleased album “His Story\u00a0Live”<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.risen.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/01-Lift-Your-Heart.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

“Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places” featuring Lucy Jane Rutherford from album “Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places”<\/p>\n

Sorry about missing the blog last week but I was really busy with the Crofton Summer Sports Week – check out www.cssw.org.uk<\/a> for pics<\/p>\n

However I did find time to meet Richard Harley, the writer and producer of the new Christian musical \u201cLove Beyond.\u201d Richard\u2019s\u00a0 work with \u201cLove Beyond\u201d is an amazing story of faith and sacrifice – one that has certainly inspired me to try, with Joffy our MD, to\u00a0 \u201c raise the bar\u201d on our own\u00a0 musical Risen! But in the meantime please don\u2019t miss \u201cLove Beyond\u201d at the Wembley Arena on Oct 1st and 2nd <\/sup>– www.lovebeyondmusical<\/strong>.com\/wembley<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

I have been very fortunate to have had so many brilliant people help me in the work of Mustard Seed Songs.\u00a0 I am indebted to the support and wisdom of our Trustees – Bob Milliken and Paul Knight. \u00a0I have spoken of the recording and arranging of John Hodgkinson and, of course the beautiful singing of Lucy Stimpson- Maynard. Both she and John were also brilliant at converting my awful singing into chords. \u00a0Ross Gill has done the same and has also been invaluable with his recording and producing skills together with his musicianship and singing.\u00a0 Nicola Poustie was amazing as our vocal MD for the Risen! musical of 2012. Paul Clements was a Godsend with the stage direction of that production. And there is no praise high enough for Joffy Girling our MD for Risen!<\/p>\n

Another person I would like to highlight for thanks is Lucy Jane Rutherford. Lucy Jane was a student at Crofton School with Lucy Stimpson – Maynard being her music teacher. \u00a0Lucy Jane was awarded a degree in Folk and Traditional Music and is , at present \u00a0dedicated to her work with Ellel Ministries at Glyndley Manor. \u00a0Lucy Jane sang as part of the Mustard Seed Girls\u2019 Choir, soloed at a concert in Hereford Cathedral and also in our first musical \u201cHis Story.\u201d Lucy Jane has taken some of my songs and transformed them to such an extent that, on first hearing her interpretations; I have ended up in tears. One such song \u201cLift Your Hearts to Heavenly Places\u201d was inspired by the writings of Richard Wurmbrand in his incredible book \u201cTortured for Christ.\u201d\u00a0 This is one of the two\u00a0 songs featured this week.<\/p>\n

Richard Wurmbrand, whose sufferings at the hands of the Communists in Romania, are beyond belief founded the charity \u201cRelease International. \u00a0A dear friend of mine, Imtiaz Asraf was working for \u201cRelease\u201d when he suggested to a friend of his, Joanne Freer that she come to see a production of \u201cHis Story.\u201d Joanne was so impressed that she suggested to \u201cRelease\u201d that \u00a0\u00a0\u201cHis Story\u201d become their project for the 2008 Pentecost Festival in London.\u00a0 And that is exactly what happened with \u201cHis Story\u201d playing at \u00a0Central Hall, Westminster – a fantastic location just opposite the Houses of Parliament. Because we missed last week\u2019s blog I have included another track sung live by Lucy Jane from \u201cHis Story\u201d -\u201cA \u00a0Mustard Seed of Faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cA Mustard Seed Of Faith\u201d is an appropriate title because \u201cHis Story\u201d at the Pentecost Festival had an Asian influence celebrating the work of \u201cRelease International \u201c in that continent.\u00a0 So the production included music from Anal Kant who flew over especially from Mumbai. We also had \u201cThe Angel\u201d Bollywood dancers.\u00a0 The plan was include \u00a0an \u201cAsian Buffet\u201d for the ticket holders to enjoy before the production began, however there were last minute problems with the \u00a0Indian Restaurant that was providing the catering.\u00a0 I tried everything but with no joy until just about my last phone call when I spoke to some wonderful people from a College in London that specialised in catering -they could have not been more helpful and the food was absolutely amazing.\u00a0 Looking back, I remember feeling that, \u00a0although things were getting desperate with \u00a0the tickets sold to include the Indian Buffet, I didn\u2019t have any doubts that God would open a door somewhere and that it would be a door to something better than had originally been planned.<\/p>\n

We later produced two compilation CDs for \u201cRelease International\u201d the pics of which are featured today – \u201cLift Your Hearts to Heavenly Places\u201d and \u201cFor Unsung Heroes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next week I will tell you about the \u00a0album that followed and \u00a0which is the most special to me- \u00a0\u201cPrecious\u201d\u00a0 It comes with an amazing story of how it is never too late to become a follower of Jesus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two compilation albums for “Release International”\u00a0 – Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places” and “For Unsung Heroes” “A Mustard Seed Of Faith” featuring Lucy Jane Rutherford from\u00a0 an unreleased album “His Story\u00a0Live” “Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places” featuring Lucy Jane Rutherford from album “Lift Your Hearts To Heavenly Places” Sorry about missing the blog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ken-shearsmiths-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions\/317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/risen.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}