Ian Mizen talks to Graham Kendrick about his latest project the Millennium Chorus.

Back in the early nineties Graham Kendrick felt that he should do something special for the Millennium. He believed that it would be a window of opportunity to present the gospel to a more ‘open’ world, due the very nature of the celebrations marking 2000 years of Christianity. But what and how this should be done provided the challenge. Left on the back burner, these thoughts and prayers simmered until Graham was introduced in 1997 to a businessman by the name of Graham Lacey. Lacey had a vision for an hour long TV special for the Millennium; he was looking for a composer to write the songs and music for this project! It seemed that they each had half of the the same vision - the Millennium Chorus was born.

The first broadcast took place on Christmas eve 1999 by satellite to the entire Indian sub-continent, it was followed on New Years eve by satellite and terrestrial broadcasts in at least 11 countries including Chile, Ireland and El Salvador. At the time of writing there is no news as to when it will be broadcast in the UK, but it is anticipated that a 2 hour Special - including behind the scenes interviews with the performers and producer - will be broadcast on April 10th and 11th across the USA and to over 64 countries.

I asked Graham to explain what the Millennium Chorus is, “I think the best way to describe it is as a ‘song cycle’. It’s not a musical because musicals have costume and characters and a storyline, oratorios are much more sung through. The requirement for this, as far as the company that commissioned it were concerned, was that it could fit together, but also be made up of stand-alone artist songs. So the challenge was to find a unifying flow of ideas. The idea that generally tied it together was that of a new day, a dawn, and then finally concluding in a second dawn - a supernatural dawn of a new creation. So there isn’t a story line but there is a flow of ideas. We’ve described it as a musical and visual journey through twelve songs, inspired by the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.”

He continues "Once I got hold of that overall concept and began study the scriptures I was surprised to find how deeply embedded it is in the whole story - Jesus himself was the ‘morning star’ and the ‘day-spring from on high’, and Isaiah described his coming as ‘upon those who live in darkness a light has dawned’’. Even the day of the crucifixion was like a day of two dawns because it went dark at 3 o'clock and then became light again later which could be seen as picture of a new day dawning. After the death of Jesus the resurrection of course was a new day and so on.”

There is an amazing variety of songs on this album, did you find it easy to write them and make the fit together? “No it certainly wasn’t easy, I think it was probably the most difficult writing project that I’ve ever undertaken. Indeed it was made more difficult by the fact that for most of the time that I was writing we didn’t have confirmation of which artist would be singing which songs, and as these are very much artist based songs it does help to know which key, whether it’s male or female, which style they sing in etc, etc!” He continues on this theme, “In terms of the writing process I think the most accurate analogy, which I was very conscious of during that period, is that of mining for gems. A jeweller once told me that for just one carat of diamond you have to mine and process about 400 hundred tons of rock. I immediately saw the similarity - for that’s exactly how it felt. I would write for a couple of weeks and it felt like I had just produced a great heap of rubble. Then suddenly a gem would appear, a line of lyric or a melody which made it all worthwhile.”

The final line up of artists includes names such as Michael W Smith, Maire Brennan, Bob Carlisle, Michael Crawford, American Boychoir and more. I asked what sort of things Graham found particularly exciting in this project? “Several things really. For a start it was great to get back to my roots and write ‘artist’ songs which is where I began before I ever started writing praise and worship songs. And, of course, to be able to write for such a range of excellent singers and performers, such a variety of styles is a great challenge for any songwriter. In addition to that, to be able to enjoy top class facilities in a studio like Starstruck in Nashville, which really is a world class studio, and a top producer like Greg Nelson. The sheer quality he has achieved is fantastic.” He continues enthusiastically, “I think my favourite orchestration on the album has to be on How still how silent, sung by Michael Crawford. I think what Rob Mathis, the arranger, did was absolutely stunning.”

The Millennium Chorus is not the regular praise and worship album that you might expect from the writer of Shine Jesus Shine, although there are a few songs such as I kneel down, No scenes of stately majesty and the theme song This is the year which are already starting to appear in hymn books. Graham explains the story behind the this song, “‘This is the Year’ has been quite interesting. It began as an anthem with the chorus, which perhaps says something about my tendency toward anthemic melodies, we then added a verse and demo’d it as a ‘power-ballad’ and were very excited with the results. A little later on when we began to work on the ‘Finale’. I added another verse for a choir to sing, which had more of a ‘summing up’ content to it, and then it occurred to me that by adding it to the choruses of the artist version we had a three verse hymn.” He continues, “The song is based around Isaiah 61 and Luke 4 - the famous passage beginning with ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon my because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor....’ - which is full of hope and seemed ideal for a special hymn for the millennium year.” After testing this three verse hymn version in a congregational setting, it was decided that it would be good to release it as soon as possible. A ‘congregational version’ and a demo recording was put on the Graham Kendrick website. For those without internet access you can hear it over the telephone by calling 09069 449 449.

So what of the future? “I am involved in a number of events over the coming months where I shall be presenting songs from the Millennium Chorus. My prayer is that the word of the Lord, wrapped up in the package of the Millennium Chorus, will achieve the purpose for which God sent it”.

Ian Mizen works as Office Manager at Make Way Music and is a songwriter and worship leader in his spare time. He attends The Bear Church.

Graham Kendrick is a worship leader and songwriter based at Ichthus Christian Fellowship in South London. He has written many well known worship songs including Shine Jesus Shine, The Servant King and Knowing You. He is also one of the co-founder of March for Jesus.