{"id":24941,"date":"2015-01-22T09:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-22T14:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=24941"},"modified":"2015-01-21T19:17:57","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T00:17:57","slug":"the-classical-traveler-a-music-man-on-a-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2015\/01\/22\/the-classical-traveler-a-music-man-on-a-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"THE CLASSICAL TRAVELER | A Music Man on a Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Conductor,
Conductor, Roger McMurrin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tucson, Arizona | \u00a0I caught up with conductor Roger McMurrin recently in Tucson, Arizona. In a few weeks time he was scheduled to make a return visit to Bishkek, Kyrgystan for a series of concerts, but home these days is Kiev, Ukraine where he has been making music and preaching the Gospel for the past 22 years.<\/p>\n

Why did Ohio-born McMurrin, in the midst of a flourishing career in Florida, uproot himself and his family and move to Kiev, where, at age 74, he is busier than ever? Obviously, he is no ordinary American musician.<\/p>\n

The big breakthrough in McMurrin\u2019s career came in 1972 with his appointment as Music Director of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.<\/p>\n

I was teaching choral music at Otterbein College in Ohio at the time when I got a call from a tiny church in Florida. They wanted to interview me for the position of Director of Music. I really wasn\u2019t interested but Columbus, Ohio in February is very dreary and I thought a weekend in Ft. Lauderdale would be very appealing. After the interview, I still wasn\u2019t very interested, but I found to my horror that Otterbein had now decided to consider tenure only for three senior members of the Music Department and I wasn\u2019t one of them. I decided that Florida looked pretty good after all.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Coral Ridge Presbyterian was a very small church at that time but its first pastor, James Kennedy, was determined to make it bigger. His dream was to make it the largest Christian church in South Florida, and he believed that to fulfill that dream his church needed music – lots of it. That music also needed to be of the highest quality. With the appointment of Roger McMurrin, he had selected the man who could help him realize that dream. Roger was to be assisted by Diane Bish, a young woman who became one of the foremost organ soloists of her generation.<\/p>\n

Within a few years, Dr. Kennedy had grown the church and raised the funds to build a magnificent mega-church seating 2,800 with a 300 ft. tower, and Roger and Diane had selected a fine Rufatti organ worthy of such an imposing structure. The Coral Ridge concerts became famous for their quality and over the years featured some of the most famous names in classical music, among them Van Cliburn, the Atlanta Symphony, the King\u2019s Singers and the Canadian Brass.<\/p>\n

In 1992 Roger was invited to guest conduct in Kiev, Ukraine. It was such an inspiring experience that it changed his life. Later, while on a flight to California he became convinced that he had been called by God to go back to Ukraine to live and work. Roger said that when he arrived at his destination and met his wife Diane there, he was afraid to tell her what he had decided. Much to his amazement \u2013 she had been on a separate flight \u2013 she told him that she had had the same experience and reached the same conclusion!<\/p>\n

Roger and Diane moved to Kiev and started what became known as Music Mission Kiev (MMK). It wasn\u2019t easy. Ukraine was in terrible shape after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Soviet system was gone but as yet there was nothing to replace it. The economy was in a shambles, cultural life was adrift and many people felt abandoned and confused. In this depressing vacuum, Roger saw a need and an opportunity. Without being able to speak either Russian or Ukrainian, Roger used music to lift people up – and not just any kind of music. He concentrated on Christian sacred music, which had not been allowed in Ukraine for several generations. The musicians didn\u2019t know Handel\u2019s Messiah<\/em>, Bach\u2019s St. Matthew Passion<\/em> or Poulenc\u2019s Gloria<\/em>. Even great Russian orchestral pieces like Tchaikovsky\u2019s 1812 Overture and Rimsky-Korsakov\u2019s Russian Easter Overture<\/em> had been \u201ccorrected\u201d by the authorities. Roger brought back the choral masterpieces and the original versions of works that had been mutilated by the Soviets.<\/p>\n

\"Music
Music Mission Kiev<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But Music Mission Kiev did much more than bring back Christian sacred music classics for the people of Kiev; the music was a means to inspire people in Kiev to understand and relate to the Gospel. The goal was to introduce them to Christianity. For more than 20 years now Roger and Diane have been trying to carry out that mission. Apart from concerts and church services, they put a great deal of effort into humanitarian activities. The government of Ukraine provides only a pittance to the elderly and they can\u2019t begin to provide for themselves. One of MMK\u2019s ongoing programs provides food and medicine to widows and pensioners. More recently, MMK has done its part to help refugees from Crimea and eastern Ukraine. The turmoil of the last few years has taken hundreds of lives and made economic recovery even more difficult throughout the whole country.<\/p>\n

About a year ago Roger handed over leadership of Music Mission Kiev to a Canadian, Wes Janzen from Trinity Western University of British Columbia; the work goes on.<\/p>\n

Although I don\u2019t share the religious convictions of Roger and Diane, I am convinced that their dedication arises from a deep commitment to their fellow man and to the people of Ukraine. The lives of \u201cchurch musicians\u201d are sometimes thought to be boring and uneventful – not so in Roger\u2019s case. Combining his faith and his talent, Roger has spent his life building institutions that can serve the needs of others, and to judge by the energy and enthusiasm I saw in Tucson, I don\u2019t think he is done yet.<\/p>\n

\"Roger
Roger & Diane McMurrin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Diane McMurrin has written four books about her and Roger\u2019s experiences in Ukraine; these can be ordered through the organization\u2019s website: www.musicmissionkiev.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For something more\u2026<\/em>In the mid-1990s Naxos Records produced and released a series of CDs under the title \u201cUkrainian Composers,\u201d on their Marco Polo label, which generally featured pretty obscure music. Most of the performances were by the Ukrainian National Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Theodore Kuchar. This past year Naxos re-released these recordings under its flagship \u201cNaxos\u201d label. There is some wonderful music here; I\u2019ll discuss some of these recordings in my next article.<\/p>\n

Paul E. Robinson<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tucson, Arizona | I caught up with conductor Roger McMurrin recently in Tucson, Arizona. In a few weeks time he was scheduled to make a return visit to Bishkek, Kyrgystan for a series of concerts, but home these days is Kiev, Ukraine where he has been making music and preaching the Gospel for the past 22 years…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[118,875,4967,4933],"tags":[5251,5252,5250],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/01\/RogerMcMurrinMMK.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-6uh","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24941"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24947,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24941\/revisions\/24947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24941"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=24941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}