This month’s blog article is a review of David Chapman’s delightful album, Resting Place. A great combination of classical guitar, orchestra, and hymns.
Introduction to a Delightful Album
This, my friends, is the very first “album review” on this blog. I did a lot of research on how to write an “album review” for a blog… okay, I looked at two sites that had contrary positions on writing an “album review.” To be honest, I wanted to share this album with you because I’m a Christian and I like to play the classical/fingerstyle guitar. There’s not much music out there in this genre and, well, I just like this style of music. I mean if you’re into this sort of thing.
Any-who, back to the review.
Today’s Selection of Fine Music is…
Today’s selection of fine music is “Resting Place: Sacred Music for Guitar and Orchestra” by David Chapman. I like this album and think you should go buy it. There, how’s that for a review? No. Well, okay.
David Chapman is a classical guitarist from Antofagasta, Chile, who attended Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. While there, he studied Church Music with proficiency in… trumpet. He also continued developing his guitar skills and was asked to record a guitar duet album called “Sun of My Soul” with Soundforth Music. From all I could find, it seems as though Soundforth has been purchased by The Lorenz Corporation. However, I have that album as well and hope to do a review of it in the near future.
The Delightful Album Details
Resting Place has a total of 17 tracks with a run time of sixty-one minutes (and 13 seconds, if you’re counting). If you have heard modern classical guitar and orchestra albums, then you have a good idea of how the tracks sound. The pieces were originally arranged by Tim Fisher and David Chapman and Tim Fisher produced the album and conducted the orchestra.
It’s a delightfully recorded little album consisting of popular traditional hymns of the day. There are a few that I didn’t recognize, but most are pretty standard in the church. I would like to see a well-recorded album that had more modern hymns that were of the line of Sovereign Grace, Keith and Kristyn Getty, or other good modern hymns. However, there are a few issues with that, the biggest one being copyright. Most traditional hymns are public domain and someone can use them pretty much any way they’d like.
The recording quality is excellent. There are a lot of great guitar albums that need to be remastered simply because of volume issues, but this is not one of those. The mix between the instruments is spot-on and full. It’s simply a beautiful blend and pleasing to the ear.
Purchasing the CD or MP3 Downloads
Resting Place was originally sold by SMS Recordings, but it seems that every time I’ve checked the website the album was Sold Out and it doesn’t look as if the website is being maintained at the moment. You’ll have the same issue with BJU Press, which is another place I found the album. As mentioned earlier, Soundforth was purchased by The Lorenz Corporation and they have a listing without a CD cover image.
Another place that seems to have the album is Majesty Music: Home of Patch the Pirate, which says that they have the CDs in stock. Another site I found was Orion Publishing and it looks like they have the CD also, but before you buy, please see the update below.
Conclusion
It’s hard to find albums like this, which makes me want to purchase the rights to the MP3 downloads. As of the writing of this post, I haven’t looked into this, but now I’m curious. Are there other albums you would like me to review? Drop me a line (or an email) and let me know. I’m always on the lookout for a good Christian Classical or Fingerstyle Guitar album, especially with other instruments and orchestras.
Update: I did some more searching and found out that Southland Christian Ministries are now handling this CD. You can also buy it from Amazon.
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