Voices-only Wednesday: Hauntingly beautiful a cappella

Welcome to Voices-only Wednesday, a selection of our gleanings after we’ve scoured the web for interesting and unique a cappella videos.

This week’s selections are the result of a web search I did for “Everlasting God.” That’s the title of the latest offering in the “Praise & Worship” a cappella worship series compiled by Keith Lancaster. 

I found a video that said “Everlasting God” and clicked on it. It’s not what I was looking for, but here it is:

Granted, it’s not the most exciting video in history. But the song is quite beautiful, I think.

The producer of the video, Jake Sanderson, describes himself as “a minimalist music composer, orchestrator, and conductor who works on films.” I couldn’t find many more details on him (hence the “minimalist” description, I guess). He has several other a cappella offerings in his collection, including the haunting “Hymn to the Creator of Light.”

If you found that piece a little too haunting, here’s Sanderson’s rendition of a favorite among Churches of Christ — “The Greatest Commands.” (I always thought the song was supposed to be singular, although I guess the actual verses it’s based on, 1 John 4:7-8, talk about loving one another, which Jesus describes as the second-greatest commandment in Matthew 22:36-40. The Internet, of course, has multiple versions of the title both ways.)

I like this rendition — especially the tempo. Too often we have a tendency to slow down this song into a near-dirge, I think.

By the way, here’s a video that promotes the “Everlasting God” Praise & Worship CD for which I originally searched: