Since 2009, St. John’s has provided four Advent Concerts each year for the Williams Community. This year’s series opens with harpist Carolyn Bame. This first concert will be on November 26, 2017 at 4 pm.
The program for November 26th will be one of meditation and peaceful pieces to help set the mood for the season. Future advent concerts’ guests and programs will be announced here in the church News Blog.
Carolyn Bame grew up in Indiana in a musical family. She received her Master’s in Music in Vocal Performance from NAU in 1972. She taught music and private piano lessons for many years. She moved to Flagstaff in 1966, while her husband, Charles, was completing in Master’s in Music at NAU. In 1971, Charles built a 26-string harp, topped it with a big red bow, and placed it under the Christmas tree, surprising his wife with it on Christmas morning. His gift fulfilled her life-long desire for a harp, and the start of a real love affair with the instrument.
In 1985, Ms. Bame became the Director of Music at Trinity Heights United Methodist Church in Flagstaff. In 1990 she entered Claremont School of Theology, training for the United Methodist Local Pastor degree. She served two years as pastor for a local congregation and five years as Director of United Christian ministries at NAU.
In 1997, the Rev. John Espen, Chaplain of the Flagstaff Medical Center, asked Ms. Bame to bring her harp to the hospital to play for patients. She entered the Music for Health and Transition Program to become a Certified Music Practitioner and then began playing at the hospital. To provide music that was suitable, she began doing her own arrangements and writing her own compositions. With the assistance of others at the hospital, the Music at the Bedside program was established. Her composition work also continued over the years, and resulted in over a dozen books being published for the program and similar hospital music therapy programs.
Her work has also made her passionate about promoting peace. Ms. Bame says, “There is so much in our American life that is geared to pressure and haste and competition and ‘Me first” thinking, especially in the music we hear everywhere. ….I have to think that bringing peaceful music into our lives is a beginning. It opens a possibility for teaching peace – ways of relating to one another peacefully on a day-to-day basis. And even if all I can do is bring a few minutes of peace to a few people who hear the harp’s music that, in itself for me, is a small and rewarding contribution to peace in the world.”