Wednesday, April 27, 2011

A wonderful moment in Nashville

I don't know much about music, but I know what I like. From pretty much the time I was a four- or five-year-old kid, I loved the hymn "How Great Thou Art." It was always one of my dad's favorites, and he'd even sing a verse or two in the car on long trips, which is probably why it became ingrained in me so early. To this day, I can hardly sing the first lines of the last verse, "When Christ shall come, with shouts of acclamation..." without choking up a bit. Whether my funeral is next week, or 40 years from now, I hope it gets sung again then.

But I never before heard it sung like you'll hear it in this video from Carrie Underwood and Vince Gill during a recent Academy of Country Music event. It was televised Good Friday on CBS, and you can now see it everywhere, with over three million hits on YouTube alone. It's an incredible performance, and one of the real testaments to its power is the way her fellow artists in the audience react. They know they are hearing something special. It made me cry, and I hope you enjoy it.

(Side note: And there's a hockey connection as well. Carrie is married to Mike Fisher of the Nashville Predators, who last week celebrated the first playoff series win in franchise history, with Fisher leading the team in scoring in a six-game win over Anaheim. Every time he'd score, they'd show her cheering in the audience.)

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