Swanson - Great Catch

I recently put together an instrumental guitar piece reflecting on Jeremiah 3:17:

At that time Jerusalem shall be called the throne of the LORD, and all nations shall gather to it, to the presence of the LORD in Jerusalem, and they shall no more stubbornly follow their own evil heart.

I was also struck by John August Swanson’s piece, Great Catch found in CIVA’s collection from Images of Faith. This Old and New Testament interplay gave me a feeling of loops.

A loop in music would be the same phrase being played back the exact same way over and over. But the wonder of God gathering the nations (and how this He reveals this gathering) is not an exact duplicate over time. There are nuances and there is progress, though its easy to see how it is the same promise, the same story, just teased out over time and space.

So, even though I performed this piece live using loops (there are 7 guitar parts), I recorded this the way it should be recorded, myself playing the same phrase over and over (what a loop is trying to emulate), but with different nuances here and there.

Also, I was trying to get at the idea of a building up, a “gathering.” This building up leads to a surprising middle, that again leads to a progressive build up to some sort of end.

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