A Spark of Faith: A Rock Cantata by Anne Phillips

Description

A Spark of Faith, sub-titled A Rock Cantata by Anne Phillips, is an album by the American composer Anne Phillips, released on ATSF in 1973, a label connected to St. Paul’s Church in New York. The LP sleeve is labeled “Original Cast, Recorded Live, March 18, 1973. Limited Edition.” Words and music written by by Anne Phillips.

A studio version of the cantata was as well recorded in 1979 and released on Conawag Records as A Spark of Faith – A Gospel Musical by Anne Phillips, featuring new cover art.

LP tracklist:

Side One
A1. “I Know the Way”
A2. “Did You Hear Him Say?”
A3. “So Close I Never Saw You”
A4. “Keep It Growin'”
A5. “Hello, My Name is Jesus”
A6. “In His Works He Shall Appear”
A7. “Just You and Me, Jesus”

Side Two
B1. “A Spark of Faith”
B2. “Back To Where We Started From”
B3. “The Old Oak Tree”
B4. “In Rememberance of Me”
B5. “I Will Rise”
B6. “Bless Ye the Lord / The Lord’s Prayer”
B7. “A Spark of Faith Reprise”

Jingle Writer Pens Cantata
by John S. Wilson, March 11, 1973.

PARK RIDGE – The creative mind that has been producing rock jingles for the last nine years for commercials has also been concerned with the New Testament for the last three of those years.

The result is a rock cantata called “A Spark of Faith,” which will have its world premiere next Sunday evening at 7:30 in the Park Ridge High School Theater. The production will be put on by a professional cast that includes 35 singers, many of whom performed in Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”; two dancers from the Alvin Ailey company; Jerry Dodgion, the jazz saxophonist, and a six‐piece band from New York.

The composer, lyricist, director and all‐around impresario of “A Spark of Faith” is Anne Phillips who lives with her husband, Bill, and three children on Glen Road. She and her husband run Siana Productions, a New York company that produces commercial jingles.

The cantata began very casually three years ago when Mrs. Phillips, who had sung with the Ray Charles Singers, the Ray Coniff Singers and the Norman Luhoff Choir, evolved “a folk‐rock kind of thing” while strumming her guitar. She later wrote the lyrics and it became “Keep It Growing with the Spirit of Love.”

“From that, I went to another one and another, all in the same vein,” she recalled the other day. “Whenever I write, I go like blazes. One thing leads to another. Pretty soon I had six or seven songs and I felt there must be some way to tie them together.”

Tied to Parables

She found the necessary cement when she ran across a 39‐cent paperback copy of “Good News for Modern Man,” a contemporary translation of the New Testament, and realized that the songs would have more meaning if they were tied to the parables. Thus from the opening song, “I know the Way,” a statement of belief in God, “A Spark of Faith” moves from parable to parable, using rock, folk‐rock and even country music as the medium.

Mrs. Phillips had gone to Sunday school as a child in Reading, Pa., but she was not an adult churchgoer until her three children began growing up. Then she joined St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Montvale, which each year holds a benefit performance put on by local residents. Two years ago, Max Morath, the ragtime pianist, did his “Turn of the Century” show. Last year Dorothy Collins, who was then starring in “Follies” on Broadway, and her husband, Ronald Holgate, gave a concert.

“This year,” said Mrs. Phillips, “they looked at me and said, ‘You’re in show business.’ Well, I just happened to have this cantata, which was almost finished. I had asked the minister, Wayne Schwab, to look over the way I had used Scripture, to see if it fit. He said it would be perfect for the benefit.”

Her decision to go ahead with it came when she went to see Alvin Ailey’s dance company do “Mary Lou’s Mass.” Later, she mentioned the cantata to some of the Ailey singers, most of whom she knew from her years of choral singing and as contractor for 90 per cent of the singing groups that were recording in New York a decade ago.

“Would you like to do Annie’s thing?” Albertine Robinson, one of the Ailey singers, asked the other. Right away Mrs. Phillips had 10 volunteer singers for her cantata. With this as a start, she began calling singers she had been using for years on her jingles.

Then she started assembling a band—Gary Chester, Burt Bacharach’s drummer; Julie Ruggiero, the bassist In the “Tonight” show band when it was In New York; Joe Cinderalle, a guitarist who played in a jazz group Mrs. Phillips and her husband had had years ago; George Devens, who played vibes with George Shearing; and others.

As conductor, she got Bhen Lanzerone, musical director of the Broadway musical, “Grease.” And her neighbor on Glen Road, Jerry Dodgion, a jazz saxaphonist who plays with Benny Goodman and the Thad Jones‐Mel Lewis band, agreed to play a solo in the opening number of the second act.

At 1 P.M. next Sunday, with only six and a half hours until performance time, a run‐through will be held at the high school at which Mrs. Phillips will see the entire cantata for the first time. She is completely unflustered by the prospect.

“It’s a mere matter of getting all the pieces and putting them together,” she said with the calm confidence of a professional who knows she is working with other professionals.

Tickets, for which a $5 donation to the church is asked, may be obtained by calling (201)‐391‐3181. [John S. Wilson, The New York Times, March 11, 1973, Page 97]