February 26, 2018 Show with Philip Webb on “The Psalms Project”

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Now, here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 26th day of February, 2018.

I'm so delighted to have for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Philip Webb, who is a critically acclaimed

American tenor in operatic, classical and sacred music, and he is project manager and editor at Hymns of Grace, and today we are going to be discussing the

Psalms Project, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Philip Webb.

Thank you, Chris. It's good to be with you. And after a very long absence,

I'm so delighted to have back on my program my favorite co -host on the old

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program that was broadcast out of WNYG and WGBB in Babylon, Long Island, New York, for quite a number of years.

He was there with me, in fact, as a co -host of my very first broadcast, and it's my honor and privilege to have you back co -hosting on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jim Capo of the

Massapequa Church of God. Thank you, Chris. It really is great to be back. Amen.

Well, it is a joy to have you back, and I'm looking forward to hopefully having a time of face -to -face fellowship with you again.

It's been a long time since we had that, and I hope that you can either pay a visit to Pennsylvania soon, or I can return to Long Island for a visit soon.

Yeah, that would be great. And I'm going to give our listeners our email address right now. If you have any questions for Phillip Webb, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

And since our question is about music, the only reason I could think that any question would be personal and private is perhaps if you disagree with your own pastor on music style or something.

I can't imagine why you would be asking a personal and private message on music otherwise, but we will grant that request if that is the case and keep you anonymous.

But otherwise, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. Well, Phil, it was so good to have you on the program.

One of the reasons is that I had an exhibitor's booth at the

G3 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, and every time I walked over to your booth to conduct a live on -site interview with you, you were not there.

That was probably safe. And I walked right past you when

Todd Friel was interviewing you in the hallway or the aisle there.

But it's good to finally have you here on the program, at least, to have an interview with you.

And this will be a much longer one than the one I would have interviewed, longer than I would have taken the time to do on -site.

I only did brief interviews with a couple of exceptions there at the G3 conference.

That was a really powerful and wonderful experience, wasn't it? It was. It was my first time there, and I enjoyed it.

Looking forward to being back next year as well. Great. And, well, as I do with, typically at least, with first -time guests,

I'd like you to give your personal testimony of salvation before we even get into the heart of the matter of music.

Tell us something about the religious upbringing you experienced and the providential circumstances that the

Lord used to actually lead you, yourself, to salvation, and what led you into the field of music.

Well, boy, this might take a long time. Well, it's a two -hour show, so... I was raised outside Kansas City, Missouri, a little town called

Liberty, Missouri, which was sort of well -known at that time.

All Reformed people should know why Liberty, Missouri was well -known at that time, because there was a college in town that housed

Spurgeon's Library. William James College first housed Spurgeon's Library.

Somehow, they purchased it from the family in England, and that's where it resided, and of course now it's been purchased by Midwestern Theological Seminary, and they have it.

But I was raised in a Christian home. My father was a Baptist pastor,

Calvary Baptist Church of Liberty, Missouri. I was the, let's see,

I was the fourth child in line. I had three older brothers, and I had a younger sister, and our lives were defined by church.

We were at church every time the doors were open. It was a small church. My father had to work evenings all night at a grocery store and pastor the church during the day.

He mowed the lawn. He made sure everything was set up for Sundays. He visited people in the hospital.

He basically oversaw everything, and so our family was, the priority of our family was around the local church, because it was, you didn't have a large, you didn't have a staff, you didn't have a budget, you didn't have all those things, and so the pastor's family did all those things.

I know too, because they didn't pay him well, they let him keep a garden on the property so that he could grow vegetables and things to help feed the family, and that was just the way life was.

So I was always around preaching and teaching and the Bible from a very young age, and one thing that my mother did with all of us as children is every night she read to us.

She either read to us from the Bible, or we had family devotions, or she would read other books with Christian messages in them.

There were, the ones that were popular at that time were something called the Danny Orlis series and the

Sugarcreek Gang, and you know, little, little paperback books like that. I remember one evening when I was five years old, my father was away at work.

I think he worked something like 8, 9 p .m. till 6 in the morning or something like that, and my mother was reading me a story about a girl who was facing death, and she was unsure of where she would spend eternity, and as a child

I was certain that I was a sinner, and I was certain that when

I was to face eternity that I would not be accepted because of my sin. So as my mother finished reading the chapter,

I asked her if I could know that I would go to heaven, and she explained to me that I would need to confess my sins, that I would have to acknowledge

Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and that if I wanted to do that, I could do that.

So there that night I prayed and asked God to save me, confessed my sins, and I remember after that she said, well, now you've got to go call your father at work, and I remember getting up and going and calling my father at work and telling him what

I had done, and that was, you know, you go through the years wondering did that, did

I have a full understanding, and even looking back now, I fully understand that I was a sinner.

I fully understood that that was not acceptable to God, and I fully understood that only

Christ could pay for my sin, and so that's it. Grew up in church, heard the gospel preached many times.

I mean, my father's idea of a family outing was to go to a pastor friend's revival services, so we did not go to movies or secular entertainment.

We drove around the churches and went to fellowships and things like that, so I've heard quite a bit of preaching in my life, and some of it good, some of it very entertaining, some of it scary, so that's my background.

Well, tell us about the musical aspect of your life.

You obviously have an enormous gift, and we're going to be playing some of your music in a bit, but tell us how you recognized that you had this gift and how you entered into the field of opera, because as you well know more than me and more than many others, this is an unusual field it seems for conservative evangelical

Christians to be a part of, and so tell us about that, starting with your first, the fact that you were recognizing a gift in yourself and that others were recognizing a gift in you.

Well, in our family, my mother mandated that every child should start piano lessons at five years of age, and so I started my first lesson at five, and after that lesson,

I determined that I did not have the appropriate amount of time to practice and that I would never be a musician, so I convinced my mother that it was a waste of money to send me to piano lessons, and she believed me, and I think she just didn't want to argue with me, but she believed me, and I didn't have any musical training from an early age.

I did enjoy singing, and we had lots of music in our church, mostly the country gospel type variety.

On Sunday mornings, the way my father would wake us up for church is he would turn on either the gospel jubilee hour or something like that, or he'd put on a record and you could hear the bass just thumping through the house.

He would turn on Christian music and turn it up loud, and that's how he would wake us up, so I was always around music.

I didn't want to participate necessarily, but I loved music, and I remember when

I was a teenager, my brother and I had been given the responsibility of being the church janitors.

He was a little older than I. I think we were paid five dollars a week, and we had two buildings that we had to clean, and during that time, we would entertain ourselves by taking turns preaching and singing.

That doesn't seem like a really fun hobby, but we were exposed to a lot of that, so we thought we would mimic it, and I remember

I decided to sing for him, but I took the microphone behind the door to the baptistry room so that I could not be seen, and I sang, and someone heard it and talked to my parents and talked to the music leader, and they determined that I should sing in church, so I sang a duet with another girl, a song called

There is a River, and I remember my knees just shook the whole time. So my mother at 14 decided that if I was going to sing,

I needed to take lessons. She found a student at William Jewell College who was giving private lessons, and I went and I started taking singing lessons.

I was very adverse to this. I was not the least interested in singing

Italian art songs. He wanted me to sing in a recital.

I worked on my music. It made no sense to me. The Italian made no sense to me, and I felt for that recital that I was having a sinus infection coming on, and I did have tickets to the

Kansas City Royals and the Boston Red Sox game, so I talked my way out of my first recital so that I could sit in the upper deck of Royals Stadium and watch the

Red Sox and the Royals play. I just had no interest in it. I was going to sing in church.

That was fine, but to study Italian art songs, love songs, just did not appeal to me at all.

So that's when I started at 14. I started singing in church, went to a Bible college with a scholarship of some sort in music, did some singing there, traveled around the churches.

At 17 years of age, I was traveling to churches in the western United States and giving little concerts and representing the school, but opera was the farthest thing from me.

I started studying at California State Dominguez Hills, took some voice lessons, and I remember they told me, if you can learn some opera arias and you can sing them well, then we'll give you scholarship money.

So I thought, okay, that's not a bad trade -off, so I did that. Again, I had no desire or anything, and I remember the teacher would get so frustrated with me.

You have this in you, but you don't really seem to want to do it. There are a couple things in life that inspired me musically.

One was a high school choir in Liberty, Missouri, which sang primarily a cappella choral pieces and primarily in foreign languages.

For a high schooler with no training, that was hard, but it was a very, very advanced musical experience, and that piqued my interest.

And then the other thing was, when I was in college, we did a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and I had to sing in the chorus.

They hired four professional soloists to sing the solo parts. I had never experienced anything like Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and I remember being done with that, thinking to myself, you know,

God, would it be possible for me someday to be the soloist in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony?

I didn't know the path to get there, but I loved what happened, and that kind of lit a little fire underneath me.

Fast forward, I became a minister of music at 18, serving in churches, continued taking some voice lessons, moved to the

Chicago, Illinois area in 1987 to assume music minister position in the suburbs at a church there.

One of the requirements of my employment was that I continue to take voice lessons. I did, and again, it was, we want to teach you opera arias.

I remember I had a particular teacher who wanted to teach me more lyric repertoire, because that was what his voice was, and wanted me to sing more

Mozart and more Rossini and Donizetti, and I didn't know anything about opera.

I went to a store, and I found a CD of Pavarotti, and I listened to him sing Puccini and Verdi, and I took the

CD back to my teacher, and I said, look, if I've got to sing opera stuff,

I want to sing the stuff this guy sings, because the stuff you're having me sing, it's painful.

It is painful. I mean, every time we met, he would make me sing these beauties from Die Zauberflut, and I never could make him happy.

So I heard Puccini and Verdi and said, no, this is red meat. This is manly opera music.

So I started singing it. I remember the first thing he made me do was he made me sing for a

Nats competition, and once again, I did it because I was asked to do it, and I was compliant, but I had no interest.

I was thrilled to be done with it and on to the next thing, and he was angry, because he said

I should have won the thing. That just made no sense to me. It did not interest me.

It did not light a fire in me. Nothing. I sang in church. I had a ministry. I couldn't understand why would

God be interested in that for me, and then he had me enter another competition in 1993 in the

Chicago area. There was a family -owned Italian restaurant by two

Italian brothers who put on an opera competition, and this competition was open to singers from all across the

United States. In fact, they held competitions in different cities, and they would send the winners to Italy to study with a very famous tenor by the name of Carlo Bergonzi.

Well, I entered it because second prize was $1 ,000, third prize was $750, and fourth prize was $500.

So I did not enter with the idea that I would win, because if I won, I had to go study opera.

But if I could play second, third, or fourth, I would get cash. So I entered it.

I went first round. I sang for these men in this dark ballroom at the restaurant.

I sang two pieces. They didn't look at me. They didn't say anything, and I thought, okay, that was a waste of time.

Nothing of that. About three or four weeks later, I got a phone call. You're going on to round two.

Well, round two was a live audience and about, I don't know, 12 or 14 other singers. These were all kids who were 20 -some years old.

I was 30. I had two kids. I had a wife. These were people who were going to Northwestern University, Manhattan School of Music, Indiana School of Music.

They had seen operas. I'd never seen an opera. I knew like five arias. So we're at the second round.

These other singers are just excited. This is their ticket to something. They're looking at this as a major life event, and I'm looking at it as just cash.

So I went in the second round, and I sang, and I won. Then they said, okay, you're going on to the finals.

Well, now this was an even larger audience, and I did something interesting. I had been singing in each round.

I had been singing an operatic aria called Cielo y Mar from La Choconda.

The opera's not done very often. The aria's not real well known, but it's a nice, it's got several

B -flats in it. I sing it in the shower every morning. Just kidding.

You know what I'm talking about. No, actually, I don't. I'm sorry. Okay. The other piece

I sang was an Italian song called Corengrato, which had several B -flats in it, and it was nice and high.

But for the finals, I thought, you know, I'm going to make a switch here. Somebody needs to sing

Nessun Dorma from Turandot. So I went to Salvi Monastero, and I said, can

I switch my arias tonight for the finals? Can I sing Nessun Dorma instead of Cielo y

Mar? He said, perfetto. Well, I ended up winning the competition, which because of the

Gulf War, that summer, they were sending the winners, there was about eight of us, to the campus of Northwestern University to study opera intensively for six weeks.

We were studying with a very famous bass baritone by the name of Giorgio Totsi. So here

I was stuck. I won. I didn't get any cash. I had no cash. That was not a good thing in my eyes.

I had to go live on campus with these other people younger than me. I had to have a roommate.

I'm 30 years of age. I've got two kids. So this is not the life that I had envisioned. And I remember the first day of class,

Giorgio Totsi looked at me and said, I want you to sing first. So I sing

Cielo y Mar. Everybody's talking in Italian. They're talking about opera stuff. And I am clueless.

I have no idea about anything. I don't know the name of the opera I'm singing about. I don't know the character.

Nothing. After class, Giorgio Totsi pulls me aside and says, listen, there are some things that are certain in this life and some things that aren't.

But he said, I'm pretty sure if you will pursue this, that you will be successful. Wow. And what could

I do at that point? Just my wife and I decided to start praying about it.

And I decided to start working harder. At the end of that six weeks, I got to stand on stage with a full orchestra and sing for the first time in my life

Nessun Dorma with a full orchestra. I'd watched Pavarotti sing it with a full orchestra from Central Park that summer.

And I thought, boy, God, is that something I could do? Is that possible? By the end of the summer,

I'm singing Nessun Dorma with a full orchestra for the first time in my life. And at that point, it's like, this is beautiful.

To be able to do this to the glory of God is beautiful. So that's where it started.

I didn't go to school for it. I didn't go to conservatory. I didn't have a rich benefactor pushing me.

Most of the time that I was singing opera, I was also serving in a church. So I never really wanted to break those ties.

There's a lot of politics in opera. There's a lot of things that happen for political and other reasons. I just have to say

God blessed me in amazing ways. God put me in the right situations. God made sure

I knew the right repertoire. And it was all God. So that's how

I got started. And no, I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else. Jim Capo is my co -host today.

And he's my co -host for a reason. He is a thoroughly knowledgeable opera buff.

Of course, he may be too humble to describe himself that way. But he knows more about opera and appreciates opera more than anybody

I know personally. And in fact, on at least two occasions, it may have been three, but I think it may have been two, that we had

Jeanette Vecchione on my program, who's a professional opera singer. And basically, those were the only two times

I can recall on my program's history when I was really the co -host and Jim was the host, because he had to ask much more of the questions, since I am so ignorant of this area.

And I'm going to have Jim, I'm going to have you pipe in with some questions. But first, I want to play at least one song to begin with by our guest today,

Philip Neal. And this is one of my favorite songs, being one especially who has experienced sorrow and grief in my life, not only losing my parents, but also being a widower.

This is a song, a hymn, that means more to me than I can possibly describe.

And here is Philip Webb singing, It Is Well With My Soul.

I see this, of this glorious thought,

I see not in part, but the whole,

His hand to the cross, and I bear it no more,

Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, For my soul, it is well with my soul.

Oh, praise the day, when the faith shall be sight,

The clouds be rolled back, and it is well with my soul.

His hand to the cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, For my soul, it is well with my soul.

Amen. Hallelujah. What a beautiful, beautiful rendition of that classic hymn.

And we are going to our first station break. And when we return, my co -host, Pastor Jim Capo, I'm sure, is biting at the bit to ask some questions of Philip Webb.

Jim, being a thoroughly knowledgeable opera singer, opera fan, opera buff is what

I meant to say, and aficionado, whatever you want to call it. He, in fact, is a frequent attender of the opera and invites others with him.

He actually attempts to cultivate an appreciation for opera in the lives of his friends and has done a very good job explaining operas to me personally.

In fact, I'm almost certain that one of the songs, the primary songs that our guest

Philip Webb mentioned before, now that I've waited so long to ask you about this,

Jim, it slipped my mind what it is, me knowing nothing about opera, but it's a song that I believe you have mentioned to me.

It was a song that was involving a Phil singing it solo in a cappella, I believe.

But we'll get into your questions for Philip Webb when we return from our first break.

If anybody would like to join us on the air yourself, in fact, we already have several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered by Phil.

And if anyone would like to get in line, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com. ChrisArnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back with Phil Webb right after these messages from our sponsors.

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And if you would like to join us on the air right now with a question for Philip Webb, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And for those of you who just tuned in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Philip Webb, a critically acclaimed American tenor in operatic classical and sacred music, and he is project manager and editor at Hymns of Grace.

We are discussing the Psalms Project. In fact, before Jim Capo, my co -host, who is the pastor of the

Massapequa Church of God on Long Island, New York, and also a very enthusiastic, knowledgeable opera buff, tell us,

Phil Webb, about Hymns of Grace and tell us about the Psalms Project, which we will be getting involved in in more detail in a little bit,

God willing. Uh, okay. A couple years ago out at Grace Community, our hymnal was getting old and ragged and Dr.

MacArthur wanted a new hymnal primarily because we felt that there had been a lot of good hymns written over the last 30 years that were not being included in hymnals and that there needed to be some updating.

So we produced a hymnal, which is called Hymns of Grace. It's available at our web store, which is www .hymnsofgrace

.com. We published a pew edition. We have several more editions, and we're trying to create resources for personal and corporate worship.

We're trying to be just a place where you can find things that maybe are a little unusual, a little different, or maybe people who don't have a big publisher or somebody behind them.

So we're producing that. We're trying to provide good musical resources for the

Church that will help people just to use in a more serious and more purposeful way.

One of the interesting things about Hymns of Grace is we believe that the public reading of Scripture should be a priority in corporate worship.

So Hymns of Grace is the only hymnal which has ESV responsive readings in it, and the

Scripture readings are placed within the hymnal and given the same priority as the music is.

And we also divided these up into bold and normal print so that you can read them responsibly, but we went through and divided them up not based on verse numbers, but based sometimes on sentences and thoughts.

So it's a unique hymnal. I don't think there's any other hymnal out there that uses the ESV, but reading

Scripture as part of our worship, we believe and we hope should be just as much a priority as singing a hymn.

So that's a part of the hymnal. People buy these for devotional and personal use also.

We also put in it, we put in a lot of hymns that are new, a lot of older hymns with new melodies, and then we tried to go back and find some hymns that are several hundred years old that have fallen out of use.

So it's kind of a mixture of those things. I know people give it different labels. Some people get, we don't have a lot of the songs from the revivalist age down there, probably because we don't sing those at Grace Community, and there are hymnals that you can buy that have those sort of songs in them.

So we wanted something new. We wanted something different. We realized that the music publishing companies may not be doing hymnals for much longer, so we felt that if we were able to do it, that is what we would do.

So that is Hymns of Grace. We really would love for you to visit the website. For churches that need more resources, let us know.

We're trying to provide, you know, accompaniments to hymns. You know, we've got a version that comes on a loose leaf paper that has the chords written above it for people who need to play guitar.

We have an accompaniment edition that provides actual keyboard arrangements, and little by little, we will be adding, you know, some violin parts, some cello parts, other things like that.

But it's an ongoing ministry, and that's of course why I was at G3. One thing

I wanted to quick ask you, but before you go to the Psalms project, I have to just quick ask you if my favorite hymn of all time is in the

Grace Hymnal. I'm hoping it's in there. Before the Throne of God Above, is that song in there?

Oh yes, of course, of course. Well, you say of course. The Trinity Hymnal does not have it, and that's the hymnal that my congregation uses, and I love that song, although we put that song in our bulletin to sing very often, actually.

Yeah, I mean, those are very old lyrics. Yes, I know. You know, that's why it's in our hymnal, because it wasn't in anybody else's hymnal at that point, so that's why we put it in there.

We put some hymns by Chris Anderson, a pastor who has written a lot of hymns. We put some of his in there, which are very good hymns.

So we just, you know, I think we have over 100 new hymns or hymns with new melodies in it, and you know, most churches only sing about 60 to 90 hymns a year in their rotation.

So that's sort of how we designed it. You know, I didn't put

Just As I Am in there, and I did not put Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, and stuff like that, which are fine to sing, but we just don't use those at our church, and like I said, there are hymnals that have those in them that you can purchase from.

Do you want me to go to the Psalms project? Yes, yes, and we'll get involved in more detail with that after Jim asks you some questions, but yeah, tell us about the

Psalms project. Well, you know, we're told in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3 to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Now, I'm not going to get into a long discussion about what those words specifically mean, but at the very minimum, we're encouraged to sing the

Psalms. And I've grown up in church, and I've been in ministries all my life, and in my circles, we don't use a psalter, and we really don't have a repertoire of psalms, and that's due to a lot of reasons.

That's due to people have tried to take the psalms as they are in a translation of the

Bible and put music to them, and that the result is often clunky in a lyrical sense.

That's a technical term, I guess. Or musically, it just is not appropriate or fitting for a congregation.

And what we're trying to do, and I'm not an expert at this, we're trying to spark an interest in paraphrasing and versifying the

Psalms in a way that becomes singable and memorable for congregations, and that we can start to build a repertoire of congregational songs that are based on the

Psalms. We don't have many. I don't know if people can name, if your congregation sings five or ten of them, but we just don't have a history.

I mean, the most memorable one that people probably know is the Maranatha one as the deer pants for the water.

But we haven't really developed that musically, and it's hard.

It is a challenge, because if it was easy, then Christian contemporary music would have flooded us with all sorts of varieties and samples of this, but they haven't, because it requires serious artistic ability and understanding of the

Psalms to do this. So we are joining together with the Institute for Church Leadership.

The Institute for Church Leadership is part of the Master's Seminary. If you go to tms .edu,

that's the seminary website, go to tms .edu, and look at that menu there and go to Resources, you'll see the

Institute for Church Leadership, which is an online training program that we offer for local churches and their lay leadership to go through on various subjects.

They have quizzes, they have reading, they have lectures they watch online, and discussions.

It's a 10 -week, each topic is a 10 -week thing. So we're teaming together with the

Institute for Church Leadership, and we're creating online resources that talk about this issue.

And it's not just singing the Psalms, we also want people preaching and praying the Psalms. So we're going to be filming and putting together some videos to deal with this.

We're going to have Kevin Twitt of Indelible Grace talking about the revolution of Isaac Watts, and his paraphrasing of the

Psalms. We're going to have Bob Coughlin talking about the themes of God's glory in the

Psalms. We're going to have H .B. Charles talking about preaching in the Psalms. We're going to have Matt Boswell talking about Spurgeon's paraphrasing of the

Psalms and versification, and the history of Psalm singing in the Baptist churches.

We're going to have Ligon Duncan explaining the Psalter to us, and singing the Psalms in corporate worship.

We're going to have Tom Pennington about praying the Psalms. We're going to have Will Varner, who's a professor at the

Master's University, who's written several books on the Psalms, talk about reading the Psalms devotionally.

We're going to have Bill Barrick, former professor from the Master's Seminary, about the poetic structure of the

Psalms. And we're going to try to give people resources to understand the Psalms, what's in them poetically, grammatically, and then what we're trying to say is with all this understanding and the history, now go find talented people, poets, musicians, who can go out and start doing the work in your church, and try to come up with one, two, three, four singable versifications of the

Psalms that you can make part of your worship on a regular basis. This is a hard project.

I don't have all the answers. I don't know what all the resources we're going to do yet. We're still putting this together. We may offer a clearinghouse on our website where people want to submit paraphrases or find versifications that they can put melodies to.

We just want to start drawing talented people together to do this, and I think the body of Christ, we have enough people who can accomplish this, but we want to give people the tools to start going in this way.

Will we publish a book afterwards? I don't know at this point, but I would like to see this revived in our corporate worship, and so we're trying to take the first steps.

Great. Well, that sounds phenomenal, and of course, I'll be repeating this later, but the website to find out more information about the

Psalms project is hymnsofgrace .com. hymnsofgrace .com.

That's hymnsofgrace .com. Now, Pastor Jim Capo, as I said earlier, one of the key reasons

I had you on the program today is not only because I miss your fellowship and enjoy having you co -host with me, but you are a lot more knowledgeable on music in general and on opera specifically.

In fact, what makes you very unusual in our day and age is that not only are you a pastor in the

Church of God Cleveland, Tennessee, who's a five -point Calvinist, but you are also an evangelical and a conservative who loves opera.

Yes. But if you could, you can ask away some questions before we go to the break, and then, of course, after the break, you can continue as time permits.

I appreciate that. In my defense, you probably know more about opera than I do.

You do need to know, though, that as far as Chris is concerned, he doesn't know the difference between Giorgio Tazi and Giorgio Armani.

He probably has no idea who you are referring to, but I know who you're talking about. I'm sitting here getting chills as you're describing this, but before I get to that,

I have to ask you about the hymns of grace, because what has the response been to that?

Because the concerns that you say hymns of grace addresses are, as a pastor, those are the concerns I have and many pastors have for the worship in their congregation.

So what has the response been to this? Well, we've sold over a hundred thousand copies in two years.

So I think there are people out there using it. Personally, I think in looking at the sales, it's a lot of the smaller churches, and I assume they can't afford the technology or can't afford the expertise to run the technology to put everything on a screen.

I had one person email me. He says, you know, we use everything, but they never work.

It's never right. It's either the wrong words or the wrong song or the wrong spelling. There's always a problem, and that's frustrating.

The technology is expensive and the expertise. I'm not saying throw away your screens or quit using them, because there are new songs that come along that you need to print out.

Like, we don't have the spaghetti song for the cause in our hymnal, because it came out after the hymnal was out.

But, you know, we print it out on paper and we'll sing it separately. So I'm not saying it has to be the hymnal or else.

I'm just saying I would like churches to start thinking, you know, the hymnal is one tool. The screen or printed pages is another tool.

But I think the hymnal, in fact, there are some interesting studies. I read a study the other day that came out that showed that kids absorb, you absorb more knowledge from reading on actual paper than you do electronic books.

Really? That's very interesting. Yes, but there was just a new study that came out the other day. I forgot where I saw that at online.

And there was a study previously several years ago that said the same thing, that we look at the text on a book, we process it much like we do the terrain map.

So when we look at a map of someplace, that's kind of how we process what we read on an actual printed book.

So you have time to think, to go back, to look at things on a book that you don't have time on a screen.

That's right. Because once they flash on the screen and it goes to the next slide, you can't go back in your mind.

And if you're looking at a hymnal, you can stop singing the fourth verse and look back at the first verse.

So there is an advantage to using a hymnal that a screen doesn't provide. But I'm not saying throw them both out.

I think it's a wise thing to be able to use both in your churches. Yeah, that's incredible.

I just love this project, the way you're describing it, because I love the hymns. And I would just love to see this, you know, sweep through the churches.

And in fact, Jim, I'm gonna have you ask any additional questions when we return from our break, because I don't want to cut you off in mid -sentence.

So we have to go to our midway break right now. And this is a longer break than normal. It's a break that Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us. Between our two hours, they require a 12 -minute break.

So please take this time, not only to make note of our advertisers and take down their contact information, but also send us a question.

Get in line with those who are already waiting to have their questions asked and answered by our guest,

Phillip Webb. And send them to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question is about a personal and private matter.

And now, as we go into the midway break, we're going to play for you another song by Phillip Webb, How Great Thou Art, another classic.

And then we will have some commercial time and you will be hearing us reintroduce

Phillip Webb sooner than you think. So we look forward to returning to our discussion right after these messages from our sponsors.

And here's Phillip Webb singing How Great Thou Art. But my

God, when I in awesome wonder, consider all the worlds thy hands have made.

I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.

And when I think that God his

Son not sparing, sent him to die,

I scarce can take it in, that on the cross my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, how great thou art, how great thou art.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, how great thou art.

With shout of affirmation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart.

And I shall bow in humble adoration, and there proclaim,

Then sings my soul, my

Savior God, to thee.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am

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We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how

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We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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That's l -i -y -f -c .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned to Iron Trepans Iron Radio, our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour to go is

Phillip Webb, a critically acclaimed American tenor in operatic classical and sacred music, project manager and editor at Hymns of Grace, and we are discussing the

Psalms Project. And our co -host today is Pastor Jim Capo of the Massapequa Church of God on Long Island, New York.

If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, and I know that we already have some of you waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered.

And in fact, I know that's a guess. I don't know if you're waiting patiently. You could be very angry right now and filled with anxiety.

I don't know. But we will get to all of your questions as long as time permits, as soon as possible.

And our email address, if you'd like to join them and get in line, is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. And only remain anonymous if your question is about a personal and private matter.

I just have a couple of announcements to make before I return to Philip Webb's discussion today.

The spirit of the age and the age of the spirit is the theme for this year's Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology.

And that's going to be held in two places. That's going to be held first from April 13th through the 15th at the

First Christian Reformed Church of Byron Center, Michigan. And the second location will be

April 27th through the 29th at Proclamation Presbyterian Church in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

That's the location where I will be, God willing. And the theme, as I said, is the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit.

The plenary speakers include Daniel Akin, Richard Gaffin, Daniel Hyde, and the greatest preacher alive on the planet

Earth, in my humble opinion, Conrad M. Beyway, pastor of Cahuatla Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, a friend of mine since 1995.

You do not want to miss hearing him preach and seeing him preach when he comes to visit the

United States on several occasions a year. Richard Phillips, another friend of mine, pastor of Second Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.

The workshop speakers include Jonathan Master and David Murray, who have both been guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And Scott Oliphant of Westminster Theological Seminary, who I'm hoping to get on the program very soon. If you'd like to register for the spirit of the age and the age of the spirit, the

Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology 2018, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on the Philadelphia Conference on Reform Theology.

Please tell the folks at the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals that you heard about these events from Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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And now we are returning to our discussion with Philip Webb, critically acclaimed

American tenor and operatic classical and sacred music and project manager and editor at Hymns of Grace.

And we are going to be addressing the Psalms project. We already started speaking about it and we will continue to do so.

But Pastor Jim Capo, I know that you have some more questions that you'd like to ask of our guest,

Philip Webb, because I know that the field of music, the subject of music, is something that is very important to you and near and dear to your heart.

Yes, and I am particularly devoted to opera, as you said before.

And Phil, I have to say, it was very interesting to me when you said that you had no interest in the

Mozart and the Rossini, because as a fan, I love what you sing operatically.

That's, you know, Verdi, Puccini. I'm not a fan of Mozart operas. I'm not a fan of the

Wagnerian operas. I'm certainly not a fan of, well, I'm a fan of the Italian and the French operas.

I probably like the Belcanto, the Bellini and Donizetti more than you do, but I was so happy to hear you, you know, explain how you came to sing what you did.

And I have to ask you, I mean, I have some, I want to ask you about, you know, the criticism that's levied.

I know I hear it all the time as just as a fan. I'm sure you must hear it as a singer, or at least questions people have about the compatibility or lack thereof between Christianity and opera.

But before I ask that, I have to ask you about the occasion of your

Metropolitan Opera debut. I happened to go on the archives last night, the

Met archives, and I saw you. I remember this incident. I didn't know it was you, okay?

But I remember the incident. You made your Metropolitan Opera debut very unexpectedly, filling in for Marcelo Alvarez halfway through Il Trovatore.

And if you could just tell us about that and what you were thinking. And not only did you have to come in halfway through, you had to come in at the single most difficult point in the opera as a tenor, singing two of the great arias that everybody is waiting to hear.

And here you come. What do you remember about that night? Tell us what happened. Well, don't you think that maybe

Marcelo knew what he was doing when he didn't want to go back out for the second half? Yes.

Well, first of all, what people did not know is my wife at that point was in Indiana.

Dying, waiting for a liver transplant. Wow. She had been...

My wife had been sick since 2000, diagnosed with a liver disease called primary sclerosing cholangitis.

And the only cure, or it's not a cure, but the only thing that they can do is give you a liver transplant. She had been listed in Chicago.

While we lived there, we moved to California. She'd been listed at UCLA. And at that point, the doctors at UCLA said the wait is too long.

There are more things that can go bad. She could develop liver cancer.

So we need to find another transplant center. So I had sent her and my eight -year -old son to Indiana.

And she was being listed at the Indiana University Medical Center. Her MELD score was very high.

And she was waiting for a transplant. And I believe, what day was it?

I don't even know what day my debut was. It was March 13, 2009. Okay, yeah.

It was basically a week before her transplant. Wow. So I was there to cover

Trovatore. I was also there at the same time covering

Fro in Das Rheingold by Wagner.

The Metropolitan Opera, God used them. They knew my wife was sick for many years.

And they came to me and they said, look, we have very good insurance here.

If we employ you a certain number of weeks, you can get this insurance. You will have to pay for half of it.

So the Metropolitan Opera, knowing my wife's situation for many years, made sure that I was employed for four to six months a year there.

Wow. Wow. They let me do things that they would normally not let the person do.

A cover is a person who has to rehearse most of, a lot of the rehearsals and be ready to go on at a moment's notice for the lead.

And they would sometimes have me cover two lead roles in one day.

And that's normally not allowed. But there were times when I, like on a Saturday performances, there were times that I covered the matinee and I covered the evening performance.

That is not allowed anymore. But for some reason, they made a lot of exceptions and God used them to be very, very gracious to my family.

Peter Gelb was very gracious to me. God used the people at the Metropolitan Opera to help me in great ways.

And that enabled us, for my wife, to go to a place like Indiana because we had great insurance that said, yes, you can leave the state of California, find where you want to go.

We had friends who lived there. She went to stay with them. So that night was about the third week of waiting for a liver.

And usually livers would come on weekends. And so that's what was in my mind all those months.

I knew that I would have a Met debut at some point. They knew it. They said, we hope it comes on a night that you don't have to go back to Indiana.

But yes, they all knew it. And so what I did as a cover, and a lot of this

I did because I'm a Christian. You know, if you're a cover and you show up and you don't know your music, you can be fired.

And it does happen. It happens a lot. As a cover, you are told you have to be within 15 minutes of the theater.

My practice was I was in the theater every performance I covered. That's great.

Most performances, you can't see me, but most performances I'm standing just off stage.

Or I had a place where I would hide in the curtain well, stage left. There's a space in there.

There's nothing in there. I would sometimes hide in that curtain well. I would be just a few steps from the stage, but that's the best seat in the house.

So what I would do, my routine was I would eat lunch about 3 p .m.

And then about 6 o 'clock, I would go to the theater and I would warm up and I would just walk around, speak with people.

And usually by intermission, you know, this David McVickers had, it was a new production of Il Toro Vatore.

It was on a turntable, which meant that the scenes rotated on the turntable.

So there was no, there was only one intermission. And that makes,

I think that makes Toro Vatore a little easier to accept. And so the intermission happens before a

Fi Ben Mio and Di Quello Piero, which you're right, are two of the hardest things a tenor has to sing. But there's also a rule, if you want to get paid your full fee, you have to sing half the opera.

So at intermission, I went down to the cantina to have a bowl of soup and just thought, you know what, nothing's going to happen tonight.

And as I was sitting there, one of the musical staff came running in the door and said, Marcello says he doesn't feel well.

I think they need you upstairs. So I walked up the stairs and I walked into the dressing room area and the man who is in charge of dressing the tenors was standing at the tenor dressing room door and said, he's sitting in there in his underwear.

I've got the pants. You need to get in here and put them on. And I thought all along,

I thought it would be this big discussion, this big administrative decision that was being made. And it was just musical staff and dressers deciding he's not going back out, he is.

So at that point, they asked me, they said, how much time do you need? And I said, you know, they said, we could give you seven, we can hold the curtain for seven extra minutes.

So the conductor came up into the room and I had already rehearsed. I'd sung this many places before.

I didn't need rehearsal or anything like that. I wasn't nervous about that. We just ran through a quick couple of sections.

You know, at the Met, you're so far from the conductor, but, you know,

I never had any problems following or working with a conductor. So it was not going to be difficult for me.

I knew I was fine. I had done a lot of the rehearsals. I had done a lot of rehearsals with Dmitri Horoskovsky.

Every night also, there's another thing. This particular production starts off with a sword fight between the baritone and the tenor.

So I would come every night and we would go through the sword fight.

Even if you're covers, you just have to do that because you can't risk the sword fight messing up.

And especially if it's Dmitri because Dmitri was just an aggressive guy. He forgot that we were playing most of the time and he would just, he would try to kill you.

And so I got dressed - Sadly, he just passed away, you know. Yes, he did. He did. Sadly, he did.

What a wonderful man. Yeah. So I remember walking towards the stage doors and my dresser said, don't worry, we'll turn the

Pavarotti mics on for you. And I looked at him and I said, there are no microphones to that. He goes, I know, but we always tell

Alanya that because he's convinced that Alanya, that Pavarotti always sang with mics. So whenever Alanya sings, we just tell her.

I shouldn't say that about Alanya, but that was what the dresser told me. I heard that.

So it's safe. And so I just went out. It was funny.

I mean, I sang the Acid and Meal. The crowd went nuts. They were throwing pieces of the program down on the stage and Sondra Radvanovsky, her back was the audience and she was talking to me and she's saying, bite your lip to get more saliva, bite your lip.

And then we did the Dicolo Piura and I remember in the middle of it, I didn't realize this, but they had staged the men in the chorus to give me a drink from their canteens.

To give me some water while I'm singing. And I turned around in the middle of Dicolo Piura where I'm not singing and these chorus guys were shoving the water in my face and I thought, oh,

I guess I can have a drink. So I took a drink, sang it and everything.

We ran off stage and it was a successful debut.

It was unusual. The next day it was on all the newspapers all over the world.

But what people didn't realize - I did not. People did not realize that my wife was dying.

We did not know if she was going to get a liver and she got a liver on the 21st of March. We did not know.

And so that's, I sang the next, I sang the complete next performance as well. And yeah, people do not, people, she did, she had a successful liver transplant, but people don't, people don't know.

That's why when I walked out, Dimitri ran over and hugged me the way he did. Praise God. I heard,

I read that in one of the reviews, he hugged you at the curtain call. Yes. Yes. That people don't, nobody knew.

Nobody outside the Met knew that my wife needed a liver transplant. And if she didn't get it soon, she was going to die.

Her organs were shutting down. Her male score was up to 36. She'd been waiting for several years.

And that's why Dimitri ran over and hugged me the way he did. Wow. Nobody, I've never told,

I've never told anybody. That's why Sondra was holding on to me the way she was. That's why all that happened the way it did is because those people knew they knew me.

They knew my testimony. They knew my wife was sick. The Met knew my wife was sick. Everybody backstage was, was praying, whether they were believers or not.

Everybody at the Met was praying for my wife. Wow. And we all, everybody knew that.

The reviewers didn't know that. The audience didn't know that. But that's the circumstances with which

I made my debut. Wow. And I'm, I'm just thinking of the providence of, of asking

Jim Capito be my co -host, because that, that part of the story probably never would have been brought to light if Jim had not asked the question that he did.

By the way, I'm sure all of my listeners are wondering, Philip, how is your wife today? Yeah.

You know, unfortunately, she's been battling colon cancer the last year. Oh boy.

And, and she's in fact, she's having chemotherapy right now. She, her liver disease was tied to a colon disease.

And she was diagnosed with colon cancer about a year ago. She went through chemotherapy out in LA and the doctors were afraid to be aggressive with her.

So she had very aggressive surgery at Johns Hopkins University in November.

A very difficult 11 -hour surgery. And as follow -up to that protocol, they believe they got all the cancer.

We pray and we hope that they did. But they were, they were very aggressive. And as follow -up, she needs to do several more rounds of chemo as part of the protocol.

So she's, she's going through that right now. We hope to be done in a few months. And hopefully, hopefully all this will be exactly what she needs.

But it's, she's had a rough life. You know, liver transplant. And one of the problems out here was that they were afraid to do surgery on her, the tumor in her colon because they were afraid, the surgeons out here were afraid they would bump and hit her liver because she has so much scar tissue around her transplant.

But her liver transplant was successful. She's never had any rejection problems or issues and she's done well.

But she's got this, this battle right now. So we're, you know, you have to understand my wife has impacted so many people over all over the world.

She went with me last May after one chemo treatment to Wittenberg, Germany to be part of a pastor's conference in Wittenberg.

Wow. And people just, people are praying for her. And she just has a huge ministry to people.

She's, she's been a very supportive operatic wife. Most wives aren't in the opera business.

And she, you know, God uses her in that way. And praise God, I've got three kids who love and follow the

Lord. And they've dealt with all this in far better ways than any of us probably could have.

But yeah, that's what we're, that's what the current state is. And we hope and pray that everything will be successful and she can start recovering normally in the next few months.

Well, I'm going to have our listeners pray for your wife and also pray for you as you seek to hold her up in the midst of this trial.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters in Christ, please remember to keep Philip Webb's wife in your prayers that she comes to full recovery and that we hear a wonderful praise report soon.

And I'm sorry if I missed it, but what is your wife's first name, Philip? Her name is Barbara.

Barbara, okay. Well, please pray for Barbara Webb. And we're going to go to our final break right now.

And we will go to some questions to our listeners. And then we can also have

Pastor Jim Capo ask some questions of his own. Perhaps we'll start with a question with Pastor Jim, but we need to get some of our listeners' questions included before we run out of time.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. And before you hear some of our commercial ads for our sponsors, here is another beautiful song by Philip Webb, He's Alive.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. The gates and doors were barred and all the windows fastened down.

I spent the night in sleeplessness and rose at every sound.

Half in hopeless sorrow, half in fear the day would find the soldiers breaking through to drag us all away.

And just before the sunrise, I heard something at the wall.

The gate began to rattle and a voice began to call.

I hurried to the window and looked down into the street expecting swords and torches and the sound of soldiers' feet.

There was no one there but Mary, so I went down to let her in.

John stood there beside me as she told us where she'd been.

She said they moved him in the night and none of us knows where.

The stone's been rolled away now, his body isn't there.

We both ran toward the garden, then John ran on ahead.

We found the stone and the empty tomb just the way that Mary said.

But the winding sheet they'd wrapped him in was just an empty shell.

How aware they'd taken him was more than I could tell.

Well, something strange had happened there but just what,

I didn't know. John believed a miracle but I'd just turned to gold.

Circumstance and speculation couldn't lift me very high.

I'd seen them crucify him, then I saw him die.

Back inside the house again, the guilt and anguish came.

And everything I'd promised him just added to my shame.

When at last it came to choices, I denied I knew his name.

And even if he was alive, it wouldn't be the same.

Suddenly, the air was filled with a strange and sweet perfume.

Light that came from everywhere drove shadows from the room.

Jesus stood before me with his arms held open wide.

And I fell down on my knees and just glugged him and cried.

He embraced me to my feet and as I looked into his eyes, love was shining out from them like sunlight from the skies.

Guilt and my confusion disappeared in sweet release.

And every fear I'd ever had just melted into tears.

Peace. I am

Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Welcome back. This is Chris Ornson. If you just tuned in for the last 90 minutes and the next 25 minutes or so to go, we have had as our guest and are continuing to interview

Philip Webb, critically acclaimed American tenor in operetta, classical, and sacred music, and project manager and editor at Hymns of Grace.

We are discussing the Psalms Project and many other things involving the life and ministry of Philip Webb.

And if you'd like to join us, now is the time to send us an email before we run out of time. It's chrisornson at gmail .com.

Before I go to our listener questions that we already have, Pastor Jim Capo, if you could ask at least one question and then we will go to our listeners.

Sure. So I heard you say earlier when you were coming to music and you had, you know, this revelation no,

I don't mean that, a mystical revelation that you realized. A realization, let me put it that way.

You had realized that you could glorify God singing Nessun Dorma.

We're going to bring up Jim Capo at the next Strange Fire conference. I want to avoid that.

I don't want to be brought up. I might be in the church of God, but I have definitely moved over to the cessationist side of things, just to make that clear.

But in any event, how do you, now, so you realized that you could glorify God. Now, so how do you distinguish or don't you distinguish between the sacred and the secular in your music and in your singing?

No, the way I glorify God is by being obedient to the gifts and the calling that He's placed upon me.

It really has, the content is secondary. I have a personal responsibility to develop and use the gifts that God has given me.

So the ultimate expression of that, of course, is standing on stage and singing it.

And as long as it doesn't, you know, that's an interesting thing, but as long as it's not conflicted,

I'm not being asked to do anything on stage that doesn't glorify God, then

I don't make a distinction. I mean, I realize that most of what I'm doing on stage is acting out a story or a play and that I'm trying to, in many ways, show some life lessons from that.

But no, the part about glorifying God is a personal situation with me as a Christian, developing, being disciplined, being prepared.

You know, someone early on in my career told me, one of the ways you can really get more work in this business is just by showing up and being prepared.

And that really is true, and that's part true of life also. But yeah, glorifying

God, I have a responsibility to glorify God with the gifts He's given me, whether it's in church, whether it's at a computer software company, whether it's for working for the

Department of Water and Power, whatever it is, whatever I do, God has given me the ability to do that well.

He's given me the ability to develop it, and my responsibility is to do that, not to just sit on it.

So let me ask you then, because I get criticized, and I have to answer a lot of questions, and you know, as a pastor,

I don't want to be a stumbling block, but everybody knows I'm an opera fan, and I always amass questions about how I reconcile my

Christianity with the fact that so many of these stories are quote -unquote ungodly.

They're about, you know, murder, lust, revenge. Suicide. You get questions like that?

Suicide, right. You get questions like that? And how do you answer that? Well, sure, but God's people are not immune to murder, lust, suicide, all those things.

Those have been a part of God's people's stories all their lives. And they're in the Bible. Yeah, yeah,

I know. Like I said, usually the people who ask those questions know very little about opera, and like I said,

I'm being asked to portray a story much like I would, I could do the same for content in the

Bible. Early on in my career, I sang a particular role in the opera

Zalame. And the opera Zalame has had a lot of criticism over the years because it is rather, it's usually portrayed in a rather grotesque moment when she does the dance of the seven veils, and then when she comes back and she's given the head of John the

Baptist and she sings to it, that's a very disturbing moment for audiences. And I, early on in my career,

I sang the role of the fourth Jew quite a bit, because it's the one who has to sing

High Seas. And I was in that opera quite a few times, and the funny thing was, that's probably one of the most disturbing opera productions

I've been in, but yet at the same time, it's a Biblical story. So I had a hard time, it's hard for people to understand, hey, this is this is a reenactment of something that actually took place, and actually happened.

And yeah, it's very uncomfortable, but it's some beautiful music, and it really, you know, if you know the story, if you know what happened, then it makes it all a little bit more real for you.

But yeah, I do get that question every once in a while, but usually people don't know the actual stories of operas.

Now, it's more disturbing in Europe, where there's sort of this movement to make everything more vulgar and more realistic, and to depart from the actual story, and try to find some sort of sub text in the story, which that becomes very dangerous.

And yeah, I've had to draw lines and say, no, I'm not going to do that, and no, I'm not going to do that, that sort of thing.

That's where I struggle now, as a Christian opera fan. Because I see them as morality plays, sin is usually punished, there are consequences, the emotions are very real, and those emotions are set to beautiful music.

The problem is with the modern settings. I took a pass to a friend of mine a few weeks ago, we saw

Pagliacci, Cavalier Risticano Pagliacci at the Met, with Roberto Alagna, and unfortunately, in the love duet, or maybe the lust duet of Pagliacci between Neda and Silvio, and they're having an illicit affair, normally,

I mean, they can just stand there and sing it. Unfortunately, they had them simulating a sex act.

Yeah, they basically were simulating a sex act, while singing. And it was embarrassing. We both looked away.

And that's what's happening more and more. I have to be more careful, I feel. Right, you do, because the operatic world has decided that that is the way to attract young audiences.

And what the people who run opera don't realize is it's the music that sells tickets.

It's not putting vulgarity on stage. But they do not realize that, and they're not succeeding in selling tickets.

But they push the boundaries, they don't understand that the vulgarity is contained with just, it's within the words, it's within the music, and you don't have to show the whole picture for it to be understood.

I say that all the time. It's suggested. You don't have to see it. Right, right.

And unlike real life, you know, it's not always in your face in real life, although it's becoming more in your face.

And that, yeah, that is a problem. I have not really been active in opera for about four years, and I would probably struggle.

And I had a reputation, I had a reputation as a Christian. The other thing is, at a place like the

Met or Vienna, the acting component is not really always stressed.

Sometimes it's just, come to the edge of the stage and sing as loud as you can. Right. Yeah. It's the smaller houses and regional companies that that really becomes a problem, and it is a problem in Europe.

It's a big problem in Europe. Although I'll say, with the new, you know, the HD broadcast they do now around the world, from the

Met, now they're starting to really emphasize the appearance of the singers and the acting because of the fact that they are now satellite, beaming these via satellite around the world in high definition, and of course making

DVDs of them. So it's becoming more and more...

You know, it starts in Europe and then it works its way over here. And unfortunately, I think it's hard to see that influence, but what do you think?

Yeah, and Gelb has taken it a step further. He is, as far as broadcasting opera, he has, the

Met is the most successful in the world by far. But that's because in Europe, people are more inclined to go to live performances.

But Gelb, yeah, Gelb has always sort of taken over the casting for the

HD productions. And yeah, it is smaller people. It's about looks, it's not about singing.

It's definitely cast with how do you look in a picture frame type thing.

Okay, we better go to some of our... Do you have plans to go back to opera or to sing any staged opera in the near future?

Or no? No, not unless that's... Not unless God has that in mind and I don't know about it.

I've moved on, I don't have an agent anymore, I don't feel like... There are some people who feel

I should, but, you know, my wife's situation kind of consumes me and I teach for Azusa Pacific University.

The business has changed really rather dramatically in the last four years. It really is all about younger people and younger looks.

It's not about voices anymore. And honestly, I'm not sure that...

You can't sustain the art form with that type of marketing goal.

Most of my colleagues and people my age have either retired or died or...

You know, for goodness sakes, I was good friends with Johann Botha. Johann Botha was one of the greatest

Wagnerian tenors we had. And he's gone. And no one can sing.

Well, he had liver cancer. And no one can sing Meisterzinger the way that guy could sing Meisterzinger.

Now, he professed to be a Christian, but no one can sing the

Prisari from Meisterzinger. After five hours of opera, no one can sing like that man could. No one anymore. No one.

They don't exist. Salvatore De Cicero was a very good friend of mine. And he had a beautiful voice.

He ran into some problems like a lot of us do. He ran into some vocal problems.

And then all of a sudden, he hit a curb with a scooter and threw his body into a stone building and died of internal injury.

He's gone. Dimitri's gone. We just don't...

We don't have the Pavarotti's anymore. We don't have the Domingos anymore. And we're not training...

Academia is not training voices in the same way. And the art form is going to suffer.

The art form is really going to suffer. As one of my friends from... As one of my friends put it, Academia hired

PhDs instead of performers. Wow. PhDs don't know how to perform because you can never replicate the stage.

Never. Every time you go out on stage, it's different than the other time you went. Well, I think we should go to some of our listener questions.

We have Joe in Slovenia who wants to know, will you print a psalter with lyrics and music for congregational use through your

Psalms project? I don't know. It's way too early for me to say that.

I don't know. I don't know. Well, guess what, Joe, in Slovenia, you have won a free copy of the

Grace Hymnal, the Pew edition, compliments of our friend Philip Webb.

And we know that they have been already shipped out to us. They're on their way. So thank you also,

Joe in Slovenia, for giving us an American address where your daughter lives in Georgia so it can be shipped much more affordably to you.

And we thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service for shipping out all of our winners their free books,

Bibles, DVDs, CDs, and everything else that they win when they submit questions to our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And we have, let's see, we have Patty in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

And I have to enlarge Patty's question because the font is very small and I'm going blind.

Let's see here. Sorry about the delay, folks. And if you want to write in a question, it's

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Patty in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania says,

How do you put an imprecatory psalm to music that puts the right tone and yet makes someone want to listen to it?

You know, that is a very good question. And it can be done.

And I think that's one of the topics that Dr. William Barrick is going to be discussing in our seminars.

In fact, if you wanted to know more about that, I would suggest we're going to have resources listed, but Bill Barrick has a website where he has talked about, he's got some lessons on the psalms.

And I was just looking at one of them here. Let me find his website. There's a website that you could go to that might give you some ideas about this.

This is from drbarrick, d -r -b -a -r -r - i -c -k dot org.

And he has some teaching in there. And he's got some teaching on psalms books one and two.

You can listen to some things, some audio things. It is hard to do. And it seems a little strange in this day and age to be singing in that way.

So I don't have a straight answer for you, but we hope to cover some of those issues with some of the sessions that we're doing.

Thank you, Patty, in Cumberland County. And you'll be getting your copy of the Grace Hindle as well, thanks to your question.

And thanks for your question. And keep submitting questions to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We have

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, what is your favorite and what is your most difficult style of music to sing?

Is it opera? Is it sacred music? Is it classical music? Or is it modern contemporary music?

Well, my favorite is usually whatever I'm singing. I prefer to think that a good technique should be accessible with any style of music you sing.

What I sing in church is not as hard as my operatic repertoire. Probably the most difficult role that I sang was probably

Otello, because it requires you to be emotionally on edge, and you don't want that to always transfer into vocally on edge.

I don't really sing pop or contemporary things. I mean, I do sing sometimes I will sing a little bit in a pop style, but I don't do that really anymore.

Now, how would you describe your rendition of He's Alive, which is considered a modern song.

It is a modern song, and it was sung beautifully, however, but what category would you put that style of singing in?

You know, I don't think I sang it in an operatic way, but I sang it with the same approach that I used to opera.

There's this... Opera has this caricature out there where people do an operatic, quote, imitation, and they think that that's opera singing, but that's not real opera.

Those people don't get hired. When people are confused...

And when I sing in church, I try to not sing with probably as much vocal energy or space as I would an operatic piece.

I try to sing in more of a speech kind of way, but I don't know that I sang

He's Alive in a pop way, but I definitely wouldn't say it was an operatic way.

Well, Ronald, you have also won a free Gray Seminole, compliments of our friend Phillip Webb, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will be shipping that out to you.

Please make sure we have your full mailing address in eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. We have

RJ from White Plains, New York. And RJ says,

Do you think that some of the battles in the music realm of worship could be easily settled if younger people were just to learn to appreciate the more traditional music more?

They can listen to other forms of music outside of worship and then just sing the types of songs that the body of Christ universally seems to have loved and sung for centuries.

Wow. There's a lot in that question. So let me try to say several things.

First of all, musical styles evolve over years. And what's acceptable to ears in one time period becomes not acceptable to ears sometimes rather quickly.

And I think even with the advent of electronic recording devices still available, I think that that process of musical evolving takes place at a faster, much faster pace now.

We don't know what music sounded like in the Old Testament, and it probably would not be acceptable to our taste now.

We think we would have loved to hear Bach's music, but probably it would not be acceptable to our taste now, and certainly the use of minor keys at that point would not be much acceptable to our taste at this point either.

So it has to do with musical style and taste, and I think the question is, I think the body of Christ, the older generation has to be accepting of where musical styles and tastes are going, and the younger generation has to be accepting that the musical styles and tastes of the older generation carry with them deep meanings and emotions and memories and things like that.

I think culture informs the meanings of styles and tastes.

I think our culture brands certain sounds a certain way, so you may hear a sound nowadays that you think is not appropriate, but a thousand years ago a sound, it may have been appropriate in a different setting.

So I think it requires the body of Christ to be flexible. I think a good worship leader tries to bring both groups along in his church.

I don't like separating the age groups by musical style. I don't think that accomplishes anything, because I think we're to worship together and we're to love one another and to bear with one another regardless.

So I don't think it's as easy as that. But I think the other thing to keep more reminded is, our primary responsibility in our worship is to sing to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

And I think if churches would emphasize the responsibility to sing, and the context of both of those passages is sanctification.

It's not all of a sudden Paul has come out with an opinion about music. Paul is speaking about life in Christ, and after he talks about psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, he goes right into okay, now that you're in Christ, here's what your family should look like, here's what your workplace should look like.

So what he is saying is, now that you're in Christ, here's what your worship should look like, and it should involve singing to one another.

And churches have gotten away from the calling that we are to sing about God, about the

Trinity, and we're to sing about life in Christ. That's part of our sanctification.

Not not Phil? I think that we lost

Phil. Phil, I guess we lost Phil. Uh, well, Okay, yeah, you're breaking up really badly for some reason.

But I think that you made your point clearly, and in fact, if you could hold on, I want to invite you on back on the program very soon, and if you could hold on until after we go off the air,

I just want to play one more song by you. Okay. And I know that your websites are philipweb .net,

and that's philipwith1l and webwith2b's philipweb .net philipwith1l and webwith2b's.

And the other website is hymnsofgrace .com hymnsofgrace .com. Any other contact information you care to give?

Uh, you know, that's my opera website. There's also philipwebsacredarts .org

philipwebsacredarts .org Okay, philipwebsacredarts .org Any other? Yeah.

That's about it for now. Yeah, we can hear you. Can you hear him,

Chris? Yes, I can. Is there a website that gives the information on the Psalms project that you gave earlier, with all those names and what they'll be talking about in the video?

Not yet. I'm working on that. We're going to have... That's going to be on... Hymns of Grace will probably direct us to...

We'll probably do a sub -website called the Psalms Project. Great. I look forward to that. I really do.

Okay, well... ...as a part of that. Okay, great. Well, we've run out of time. We can't play the final song that we were intending to.

But I want to invite you back on very quickly, so please hold on, Phil, and we'll discuss that after we go off the air.

I want to thank you so much for being our guest today. I want to thank my friend Jim Capo for so superbly co -hosting the program today.

I miss having that after such a long absence. I want to thank all of you who wrote in questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater