{"id":22848,"date":"2022-05-01T05:30:53","date_gmt":"2022-05-01T09:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=22848"},"modified":"2022-05-01T07:09:42","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T11:09:42","slug":"a-chat-with-blaine-russell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/01\/a-chat-with-blaine-russell\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chat with Blaine Russell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Blaine Russell and wife Christina joined the staff of Fletcher United Methodist Church in 2013. Blaine is Music Director and Christina\u2019s duties include her role as Children\u2019s Music Director. Both have Bachelor\u2019s degrees in voice and Master\u2019s degrees in church music. Blaine\u2019s approach to the music program at Fletcher UMC balances respect for tradition with a wide-encompassing, eclectic approach to music, one that offers an enriching experience for congregants. And a concert series hosted by the church hosts music from outside the religious sphere, sharing it with the larger community.<\/p>\n

Do you see your role as helping to bring the church \u2013 and church music \u2013 into the 21<\/b>st<\/b><\/sup> century?<\/b>
\nAbsolutely. A lot of people, when they think of \u201c’modern church,\u201d they think of guitars and drums, and worship being centered around those types of things. We really try to avoid the contemporary-versus-traditional divide that can sometimes happen. Because church music of the 21st century is just as varied as it has always been. It can mean having a very strong choral program or a really wonderful new organ. But ultimately, what it means is: doing the best with the talents that you have within your congregation.<\/p>\n

Your \u201cAnticipate\u201d service \u2013 scheduled on Wednesdays during certain times of the year \u2013 is unusual. What kind of music does it feature?<\/b>
\nAnticipate is our \u201cancient\/modern service,\u201d and it truly runs the gamut of all eras of church music. We’ll do an ancient Gregorian chant, and then we’ll sing a song out of the hymnal. We’ll do an African American spiritual, and I’ll give percussion instruments to the congregation. And we\u2019ll do a praise and worship song by a modern, secular music artist. Anticipate is our service where we really, experiment; we see how many different types of things we can throw at the wall, and we and see what sticks.<\/p>\n

Fletcher UMC also hosts a series of secular artist performances. Tell me about those. <\/b>
\nIt’s certainly not a situation where the music has to be sacred because we’re a church. We’re treating these as community events, so it really can be \u201csomething for everyone.\u201d I co-coordinate the series with our Teaching Pastor, Randy Sherrill. We started the artist series when Randy started here in 2018. We decided to make that a regular part of our church, to have community events with various artists. Last year [because of the pandemic] we were only able to have one event when Covid-19 case rates went down. That featured the Kruger Brothers, and they were amazing. We just hosted The Australis Chamber Ensemble in February, and we\u2019re in the process of rescheduling twice-postponed shows by David Wilcox and Carrie Newcomer.<\/p>\n

What plans do you have for the future or Fletcher UMC\u2019s music program?<\/b>
\nMy biggest goals moving forward are to continue to bolster our chancel choir and our handbell choir. I want to continue to increase the interest level in the artist series and the other programs that we can bring in. I want to find ways to continue doing what we do well as a church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blaine Russell and wife Christina joined the staff of Fletcher United Methodist Church in 2013. Blaine is Music Director and Christina\u2019s duties include her role as Children\u2019s Music Director. Both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,41],"tags":[4814],"class_list":["post-22848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christian","category-interview","tag-blaine-russell","cat-16-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22875,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22848\/revisions\/22875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}