An Easter song performed by the musical orchestra ''Stupovi'' and various Serbian singers and celebrities. The video is dedicated to the resurrection of Christ, made as part of a campagin to raise funds for reconstruction of a medieval Serbian Orthodox monastery named ''Pillars of Saint George.''

The lyrics are taken from a poem by St. Nikolai Velimirovich, one of the great Serbian saints of the modern era.

In his Epistle to the Galatians (3:28), St. Paul tells us that in the Church "there is neither Jew nor Greek...,"  nor, we might add, Slav or Arab or American, "for are all one in Christ Jesus." As true as this saying is, in our parishes here in America, every leader of church singing or choir director has to make concrete choices about the style of liturgical singing that is used in the community: will it be "Greek," or "Russian," or of some other Old-World nationality? As more and more Orthodox missions spread out across the North American landscape, the likelihood is great that any given parish will include people of many different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, including converts. In the first part of this program we feature a CD, entitled Resurrection! by Archangel Voices (I-70), that explores how two different musical traditions -- the Byzantine chant tradition and the tradition of harmonized choral singing that came to this country from Russia and other Eastern Slavic lands -- can both be adapted into English and integrated within a single liturgical service, in this instance, the Matins of Pascha.

Yesterday, the Orthodox Church celebrated Palm Sunday. During the Divine Liturgy at St. Demetrios Church, Fr. Chris Metropulos delivered a special homily for Palm Sunday entitled "What Kind of King Do We Woship?" Click here to watch the Divine Liturgy, and fast-forward to 1:38:05 to watch the sermon. This file require RealPlayer to view. WATCH NOW >>

Our new television series on Orthodox faith and life in the modern world is here! The first episode features an interview with His Grace Bishop Savas of Troas on religious freedom and the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This Webcast is currently available in RealPlayer format. Click here to download Realplayer for free if you don't already have it. WATCH NOW >>

This program showcases a CD that came out just before Pascha in 2007 -- Russian composer Alexandre Gretchaninoff's Passion Week, as recorded on the Chandos label by the Kansas City Chorale and the Phoenix Bach Choir, under the direction of Charles Bruffy. This superb recording was nominated for five Grammy awards, including Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance, and it ended up winning one Grammy for Best Engineered Classical Album. The CD got absolutely glowing reviews in a number of magazines and periodicals, which gave wide exposure to Orthodox church music in a positive light. Read two of the best reviews here and here. 

Certain circumstances make this particular recording quite dear to my heart. I had occasion to work with as a consultant with the Kansas City Chorale and its enormously talented conductor, Charles Bruffy, in the mid-1990s, when they recorded Sergei Rachmaninoff's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Here was a major American choral conductor with a serious interest in the music of the Orthodox Church. Ever since the success of that project, Charles would ask me from time to time, "What else is there in the Orthodox choral repertoire that we should perform and record?' So a few years ago I gave him the score of Gretchaninoff's Passion Week which our publishing company, Musica Russica had published. After "living with the score" for a while, as conductors will often do, Charles decided to program the Passion Week, first in concerts in Phoenix and Kansas City, and then as a recording project.