Holly Near wrote the song “I Am Willing” in 2003. She sang it May 18, 2006, at a peace rally outside the White House, with Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow singing back-up. I learned this song from Laurie Loosigian, and it has become my new religio-political anthem. It’s easy to sing, with a powerful chorus:
I am open and I am willing,
for to be hopeless would seem so strange —
it dishonors those who go before us,
so lift me up to the light of change.
I’m going to introduce this to my church this fall, and after you listen to the song, your church might want to do the same. (You can find a score of a gospel-y arrangement, with recordings of all four parts, here — scroll way down. It’s not to my taste, but you might like it.)
Do you, by chance, still have the arrangement you linked? The web site is still there, but the rehearsal scores were taken down. It would be nice not to have to start from nothing on a transcription. Thanks!
No, unfortunately I did not keep the arrangement. The choir I was directing at the time wound up doing an improvised harmony that we liked better. And no, unfortunately I didn’t bother the transcribe that improvised harmony — though I can tell you that our basses basically hung out on the 1 and 5 notes, we had men and women sing the melody (singing an octave apart), and our high tenor did his magic over the melody. We started in C, modulated to D after 2 verses, then modulated to E for the last verse and chorus — which for that choir made the tone progressively brighter as we went on.
Sorry I can’t give you more than that!