Album Notes

Joel Rosenberger creates quiet music, featuring extensive use of the piano, and suitable for contemplation, meditation, and times of devotion.

His music is quiet. You would probably fall asleep during his concert. And it's probably not advisable to listen while operating heavy machinery.

Oh yes, and he plays hymns. Constantly. Songs that predate your earliest memory. Your grandmother probably sang these songs in the kitchen. But although Joel performs these hymns in a way that is comfortably familiar, like an old friend, they are still somehow, different.

Because he likes to improvise and invent, borrowing techniques and harmonies from classical, roots, folk, and jazz. His style at the piano is poetic, almost philosophical. Like he's dreaming up new ways to express the melody and harmonies of each piece, in real time. And he probably is. Many of his performances are completely unique for that reason.

So if you don't need to stay awake for some reason, listen to music that is born from and made for contemplation. Check out the countermelody in Be Thou My Vision. The sustained, ambient tones of Angels in the Snow and Ancient Battlefield, at Peace. The climax of God Be With You Till We Meet Again. The soaring clarinet in The Day Thou Gavest Lord has Ended.

Joel Rosenberger performs sensitive, intimate solo piano arrangements suitable for worship, contemplation, or sheer enjoyment.

As a child, Joel taught himself to play the family upright, eventually creating his own arrangements of hymns and popular songs, by ear. In 2005, with no real formal training (he took piano lessons for two semesters in college), and armed with a small, 72-key electronic keyboard, he began releasing his music in 2005 as a series of podcasts. Hymns, of course. He had been improvising and arranging these old melodies for years. Then the e-mail started arriving... from around the world... kind words, requests for sheet music and CDs, permission to use his work.

Several years and several projects later, Joel continues to compose, arrange, produce, and transcribe his own unique style of piano music. His curious nature drives him to refine and improve. And he still loves to get mail.