Music CD + DVD
New VeggieTales Movie debuts Feb 27th
LA - On the thematic story line of Pinnochio, a lonely toymaker named Gelato and his assistant Cricket decided to carve a little boy out of wood. When Pistachio tries to do things his way, he lands in a “whale” of a situation! Will he decide to listen to the wisdom of a loving father in time to save his whole family from becoming fish food? Find out in this all-new adventure with a lesson about the importance of family and learning to listen.
Nelson releases new audio Bible (NKJV): Word of Promise
NASHVILLE/LA - The Word of Promise® Audio Bible features compelling narration by Michael York and the work of over 600 actors. Each beloved book of the Bible comes to life with outstanding performances by Jim Caviezel as Jesus, Richard Dreyfuss as Moses, Gary Sinise as David, Jason Alexander as Joseph, Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene, Stacy Keach as Paul, Louis Gossett, Jr. as John, Jon Voight as Abraham, Marcia Gay Harden as Esther, Joan Allen as Deborah, Max Von Sydow as Noah, Malcolm McDowell as Solomon, and many others.
The set is over 90 hours on 79 CDs and includes an interactive Bonus Features DVD that includes actor interviews, worship resources, and a fascinating look at how dramatic audio theater is produced.
The nearly four-year project, released in October,was the inspiration of Carl Amari, a Chicago-area producer of radio programs.
“I always thought it would be cool to do a radio drama of the Bible,” said Amari to an LA Times reporter, who grew up “not real religious.” ”You’re dramatizing the greatest story ever told. It’s God’s word. How can you make God’s word lift off the page? With great actors, great sound effects and music.”
Amari pitched the concept in early 2006 to Thomas Nelson Inc., a Nashville-based publisher of Christian books, software and videos. He was an admirer of the company’s 1982 modern translation of the King James Bible.
Performing the Bible verbatim from Genesis to Revelation was a huge undertaking, involving more than 1,000 actors, technicians and musicians.
JoBe Cerny, a voice-over and character actor perhaps best known as the voice of the Pillsbury Doughboy, directed 175,000 takes over four years, Amari said. Stefano Mainetti, an Italian film and TV composer, wrote the music and conducted a 150-piece orchestra.
The first portion of the project, the New Testament, was released in 2007 and honored as the Christian Book of the Year for 2008 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Assn. It was the first audio Bible to receive the award and has sold more than 700,000 copies.
The audio Bible, sold in a box about the size of a child’s jack-in-the-box toy, is available at Christian bookstores and online through ProBuColls Christian Literature Cenbter (414-344-7300 // 9733 W Greenfield ave West Allis WI 53214) and other outlets.
Click here to listen to the entire Book of Jonah from The Word of Promise® Audio Bible.
For audio samples, free downloads, and for more information please visit www.thewordofpromise.thomasnelson.com.
Gospel Music Channel :: fastest-growing cable channel with 46.7 million
GA - From his little studio and offices here, the son of one of America’s early televangelists launched the squeaky clean Gospel Music Channel, potentially reaching more than 1 million homes with its first broadcast in October 2004.
In the years since, Charley Humbard and his investors can claim that what’s been called “MTV for Christians’’ has been the fastest-growing cable channel, now with 46.7 million subscribers, according to SNL Kagan, a media research and analysis firm.
The channel, privately owned by investors Humbard spent two years assembling after he walked away from a career at the Discovery Channel, does not release earnings. But it’s no secret that since its earliest days, television has provided a living for the Humbard family.
Humbard’s father was the guitar-strumming, singing preacher Rex Humbard, who started his TV show in 1952. He added his four children as singers and musicians and then his grandchildren by the mid 1960s. At the height of its popularity in the 1970s, more than 1,000 US and foreign stations carried the “Cathedral of Tomorrow’’ broadcast.
“As Dad said, ‘If you don’t sing, you don’t eat,’ ’’ Humbard said. “He said that lightly, but we got it.’’
Humbard, now 48, worked his way to a senior vice president position at Discovery Channel before the appeal of music led to Gospel Music Channel.
“It is very deep in all of us,’’ Humbard said.
As a kid, young Charley hung around Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, Mahalia Jackson, and Andre Crouch. He met Elvis, a family friend. By 7, he was teaching himself guitar.
Mike Privette, the road manager for Rex Humbard’s show, recalls young Humbard asking Privette if he would bang on a piano in a recording studio so Humbard could practice manipulating the slides, dials, and switches on a recording board.
Much later, he mentioned to Charley Humbard a little Tennessee cable channel for sale that was devoted to gospel music.
One big thing stood between him and the channel – the average $100 million it would take to start and fund a new cable operation with top-notch production, Humbard said.
Humbard called contacts, seeking advice and potential investors who would view the channel not as a ministry but as a profit-driven business. In two years, they had enough investors – Humbard declines to say how much they put up – to start their own channel from scratch and start broadcasting.
For fans, the music on GMC is more than just entertainment, according to media economist Jack Myers. “The content of the music has relevance and importance in their lives,’’ he said.
(Source: Globe Newspaper Company)
COME ALIVE by Mark Schultz to debut August 25
NASHVILLE – Singer/songwriter Mark Shultz invites all to “Come Alive” with his latest collection of songs that explore life’s greatest joys and toughest challenges while celebrating God’s presence in every moment.
Perseverance, creativity and a strong will are qualities that have served Schultz well throughout his career. A native of Colby, Kansas, Schultz moved to Nashville to pursue his musical ambitions and found inspiration and encouragement while working as a youth pastor. With the support of the congregation, he booked a show at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. The show was a sell out, an unheard of feat for a fledgling artist that earned him a deal with Word Records.
In crafting songs for the new record, Schultz co-wrote with some very accomplished friends, among them Matthew West, Mercy Me’s Bart Millard and Barry Graul, Joy Williams and Bernie Herms, who is one of the producers on the album. “I’ve always done a record with one, maybe two producers and this one has four on it,” says Schultz, who worked with Herms, Shaun Shankel, Paul Mills and Brown Bannister. “It’s my 10th year to have done this and it feels like I’ve just started. I thought ‘what a great way to say it’s been a great 10 years.’ Let’s open it up to a few different producers who I’ve worked with and a few new ones, just to create a very diverse record.”
As he always does, Schultz pulled from real life experiences to create the songs on the new record. “He Is” was inspired by two different stories. “Payton Cram was a girl who came to one of my concerts in Michigan with her dad,” recalls Schultz. “She had cancer and I was really amazed at her maturity for her young age. When it started to get bad, I flew up and spent a day with her and prayed with her and her family. She was a beautiful girl. She was never going to blame God for it. She never asked ‘Why me?’ She just always knew there was a bigger purpose in it.”
During the same time Payton was battling cancer, Mark’s wife came home and told him about a missionary family whose fourth child was born on a Friday and on Sunday they found out the mother had terminal cancer. “The father of the family said, ‘well we can’t praise God on Friday and curse him on Sunday. He’s the same God on Friday as he is on Sunday. We have to trust that He knows what’s going on,’ and that’s when the idea of ‘He Is’ was born,” says Schultz. “It really encapsulated Payton’s story and that family’s story too. He is, he was and always will be. It’s been a special, special song for me and I hope people really enjoy it. It’s a pretty important message—no matter what kind of rough road you are riding through to be able to say ‘the same God who has given me so much is the same one that’s in control today through this rough stuff.’ It’s a pretty strong thought.”
Another poignant song on the album, “What It Means to Be Loved,” is “the only song I’ve ever played in concert that received a standing ovation before the end of the first chorus was over,” recalls Schultz. Kate was again a source of inspiration for the song: “My wife said to me, ‘Since you are adopted, I think we should adopt kids too. I think we should adopt kids with special needs…maybe someday we adopt kids with special needs that doctors know are only going to live for a year or two,’” recalls Schultz. “I replied, ‘Honey, why would we do that?’ She answers, ‘Because, before they go to heaven, I want them to know what a great Christmas is like and what a great birthday is like and let them know they were loved well before they get to heaven.’ That’s the kind of wife I’m married to.”
This conversation was sparked by the story his wife told him about a family who was expecting a child and were told that tests revealed health issues that meant the baby probably wouldn’t live long. Although the doctors suggested terminating the pregnancy, the mother decided she would love the child as long as she could. Schultz channeled those emotions into the “What It Means to Be Loved” lyrics: I want to give her the world / I want to hold her hand/ I want to be her mom just as long as I can and live every moment until that day comes/ I want to show her what it means to be loved.
“As Christians, we are called to be love,” says Schultz. “If that means loving a baby that will be here seven minutes or 70 years, it doesn’t make any difference.”
The song is a powerful work of art, teeming with emotion. Schultz’s clear, compelling voice conveys the sense of sadness, yet shares the spirit of hope and abundant love that lie at the heart of the song. It’s his ability to capture life’s most fragile moments in song, and lead people closer to God by revealing His glory in every situation, that make Mark Schultz such a gifted artist.
For Freedom….a video tribute.
CELEBRATE GOD’S GIFT OF FREEDOM IN OUR NATION – HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!
FREEDOM (Michael W Smith)
Celebrate the historic meaning of freedom on the Fourth of July and living in the greatest democracy in the world! Freedom by Michael W Smith (via YouTube)
New John Mandeville CD Gets Major Boost from Mainstream Partner
(Nashville, TN) -I.P.O. Records has partnered with Thompkins Media Group to distribute award-winning singer/songwriter John Mandeville’s solo debut We Belong To Heaven to the mainstream market. The new CD has just been released via Sony Music’s RED division to stores such as Target, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble as well as online retailers Wal-Mart Music Downloads, Amazon, iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, Buy.com, among others. RED – An Artist Development Company (formerly Relativity Entertainment Distribution) is a Sony Music Entertainment-owned sales and marketing division that handles releases for 50+ independent record labels. Successful RED acts include Andrew Bird, Nine Inch Nails, Dwight Yoakam, Switchfoot, Mandy Moore, Third Eye Blind, among many others.
Thompkins Media Group was founded by T.C. Thompkins whose resume includes top executive positions at Stax Records, Capitol Records, ABC Records and CBS/Epic Records. Thompkins helped develop artists such as Sade, Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson (including his “Off the Wall” and “Thriller” projects, the latter of which still holds the title of the largest selling album in music history.)
In addition to mainstream alliances, the Salem Radio Network will be featuring several cuts from the We Belong to Heaven project this month on the Today’s Christian Music Radio Network that airs on over 100 radio affiliates as well as the SkyAngel Network. Mandeville’s first radio single, “Glorify,” is already garnering adds with Inspirational and Soft A/C radio reporters. Through various social networks, Mandeville has already given away over 1200 free downloads of We Belong To Heaven and the current single “Glorify.”
Mandeville is one of Christian music’s most acclaimed songwriters, penning tracks for artists such as Avalon, 4HIM, Point of Grace, and Tammy Trent, among others. He earned eleven top 10 hits, several #1 songs and three Dove Award nominations for Song of the Year. Mandeville dropped out of the Christian music world after a major label record deal fizzled due to corporate restructuring, sending the artist’s life into a tailspin of financial difficulties and what he describes as “ugly manifestations” that led to addiction and marital problems.
“This new CD project really wrote itself as a result of what I was living through, it was meant to be a monument of change for my family, sort of like David wrote the Psalms,” Mandeville says.”This was the turning point, the line in the sand, to see all the drama come to a close. It was my chance to find my heart and return to a place of hope, while also returning to the heart of who I am as an artist.”
Though We Belong To Heaven may have originally started as a private lament, it soon caught the ears of the veteran Thompkins, who was so moved by what he heard that he reached out to Mandeville via MySpace, struck up an immediate friendship and eventually offered his professional support of the project.
“I was immediately attracted to his music for the sake of the art and message, even though my background wasn’t in Christian music,” Thompkins confirms. “But I know artistry when I see it, and between the style of his arrangements and the message, I was hooked.”
“It’s interesting timing in the sense that the times we are living in are forcing people back to a different understanding of what prosperity and personal peace really mean,” notices Mandeville. “This record is a message of total surrender to whatever God has in store for your life, as opposed to building all your treasures around material wealth.”
Mandeville is also currently serving as worship pastor for a church near Washington, D.C., and his role in leadership allows him the flexibility to do concerts and events around the world. The church and its leaders are fully supportive of any opportunity for John’s music and message to reach a wider audience.
“It’s been a process of walking step by step to put my marriage back together, coming out of an addictive life, and giving my family vision and purpose,” he adds. “I didn’t really intend to get back into the music business. But after a long detox from the industry, I picked up my guitar, or found myself at the keyboard, writing and singing about 35 songs that came down to these, while pulling a few from a catalog I had written previously. For the most part, the songs on this project were all written in response to impossible circumstances in my life, but God showed up for me and I have no doubt He will for listeners as well.”
For more information, visit www.lifestyleofworship.com.
MT ZION Celebrates 10 Years of Music Ministry
What do an environmental lawyer, a corporate director of sales and a corporate purchasing manager have in common?! Quite simply—their 
love of music and their desire to proclaim the Gospel, glorifying God and serving the body of Christ with their musical gifts!
David Ruetz (drummer), David Murdock (lead vocalist) and George Welch (guitarist and songwriter) are founding members of Mt. Zion Band, which has served southeastern Wisconsin for a decades. With years of experience, their work is not only intended to be God-honoring, but their talent achieves a level of musical skill that transcends simple entertainment.
Mt. Zion was originally conceived while serving in the local music ministry of Northbrook Church. Now, the band, with newest members Scott Kardell (keyboardist), Leslie Ashford (vocalist), and David Ciepluch (bass guitarist), represents five different churches in the Milwaukee Metro area.
“Unity in the Body is very important to us,” shares Ruetz, “While we have different styles and preferences, we are all in the Body of Christ. We really enjoy supporting each others’ churches.”
When asked what has kept them together so long, David Murdock responds, “I think the special glue that holds this group together is our love for the Lord and our interest in sharing that love through music.” Welch agrees, adding, We share…”a common bond that music can be spiritual and inspirational, as well as an appreciation of and encouragement for each others’ gifts.”
Musical maturity is obvious in Mt. Zion’s repertoire which ranges from contemporary worship for church services to more performance-oriented, original material presented at coffee houses and local events. Ruetz muses, “When I think of our band, I think ‘eclectic.’ Our members have diverse musical backgrounds and interests. Elements of the different styles fuse together and create a synergy evident in the finished arrangements.”
Mt. Zion performs at the Wisconsin Christian Expo, Family & Music Festival on Saturday, June 6 at 10AM.
SEE YOU AT THE EXPO!
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