Activities of the Hyo Jeong Music Committee for 2018

In an October 22 Sunday sermon which he gave in Vienna, Dr. Eaton said, “Music… has the ability to help us heal, to help us transcend our current situation and think of higher virtues. That’s the power of art.”

In accordance with True Parents’ direction and as part of the providence centered on the culture of filial heart, Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon’s Secretariat, the Department of Cultural Promotion, the Hyo Jeong Cultural Center and the Holy Song Compilation Committee initiated the process of creating of new holy songs that reflect Cheon Il Guk. The time frame for submitting songs for the initial contest was from December 15, 2016 to January 21, 2017.

The inaugural Cheon Il Guk holy song composition contest aimed to celebrate True Parents’ Birthday and Foundation Day 2017, as well as enrich the existing Holy Song canon by adding new Holy Songs in preparation for a new hymnal. Over a hundred songs from nine countries were submitted for consideration and the Hyo Jeong Music Committee assessed the songs over a period of six weeks. The judges for the assessment of the songs were Mi Ran Kim, Yasuko Sakada, Shuji Hata and Sun Han Kim from Sun Moon University and I.

In the 2017 competition, Matt Ishizuka and Young Bok Gomez earned first prize for “We Are One.” Both Diego Bellavotti, for “God’s Family” and Nina Kosareva, for “Child’s Heart,” earned second prize, whereas Sunmarie Burns, for “Truth Brings Peace,” Joseph Knanga, for C’est par amour (That’s by Love) and Priscila Mbuyi Wambuni, for “Multiply the Lineage of God” all earned third prize. Earning participation awards were Lawrence Baer, for “The Miracle We Are,” David Rendl, for “Sailing With Our Father,” Nathalie Komagata, for “One World Family,” Tsuchida Yoshiha, for “The Path My Father Walked,” and Sylvie Gatta and J.C. Mokama, for “Le Missie est Sur la Terre (The Messiah is on the Earth).

The second annual holy song contest

As with the inaugural contest, the Hyo Jeong Cultural Center and the Holy Song Compilation Committee will gather new entries and compile new songs that praise Heavenly Parent and True Parents as well as

manifest the values and significance of Cheon Il Guk — filial piety, true love, living for the sake of others, one family under God and other virtuous narratives. The announcement of the winning entries will be made in March 2018. The songs from both contests will be recorded in 2018 and made available on the forthcoming Hyo Jeong Music website. Commemorative plaques and financial awards will be presented to the winning composers as was the case in 2017.

In addition, the HJ Music Committee is gathering historical songs that have been composed by Unificationists over the years. Many of the songs were composed for providential occasions such as Blessings, church holy days and True Parents’ speech events. The creation of a song database will provide members with the opportunity to hear these songs as well as to know more about occasions for which they were composed and the composers who wrote them.

Standardization of holy songs

When I as the chairman of the HJ Music Committee, first arrived in Korea in 2016, my first order of business was to standardize the four-part harmonizations of the Holy Songs that are in the Korean, Japanese and American songbooks. As Dr. Eaton examined the existing church hymnals, he noticed that there was no consistency in the harmonizations in the various national songbooks. He therefore began the process of creating definitive versions that the worldwide membership could use in their worship services.

Consulting with Motoko Ijichi in Japan, Kevin Pickard in the United States and Mi Ran Kim in Korea, the process of standardization took place for a year culminating with Motoko Ijichi spending a week at the Hyo Jeong Cultural Center in Korea working with Dr. Eaton, Professor Kim, Shuji Hata and Yasuko Sakada. With that phase completed, the next task will be to set the songs to the languages of Korean, Japanese and English. Due to the syllabic differences of the lyrics in the various languages, rhythmic accommodations will need to be made accordingly. This process will continue throughout 2018 with recording and sheet music to be produced with the intention of using these new harmonizations in a new hymnal in 2020.

Youth orchestra

It is our True Mother’s hope to establish a youth orchestra in the Seorak community comprised of blessed children. Obviously, this is a long-term project but the initial, exploratory steps will be taken in 2018. The HJ Music Committee is examining the Venezuelan youth orchestra model, known as El Sistema (the system) as a potential method to employ for the development of a high-level youth orchestra program.

If done well, we hope to invite professional-level instrumentalists within the international FFWPU community to Seorak to teach and train young musicians in the art of orchestra performance. Moreover, this ensemble could present concerts for the local community and eventually participate in the large-scale productions at the Hyo Jeong Global Arts Center. We could then commission composers to write music and create arrangements specifically for the ensemble.

This in turn, could assist in the creation of a music academy at the Cheongshim International Youth Training Center in the style of the renowned Western music camps such as Tanglewood (Massachusetts), Apsen (Colorado) and Interlochen (Michigan). In addition to music, the academy concept would also include dance, martial arts, fine arts, cinema, recording technology and game development, in accordance with True Mother’s vision.

A Tri-Nation Harmony CD

At a recent address to students at the Cheongshim International Youth Training Center (January 9) True

Mother stated, “What I am doing by making Korea, Japan, and America into Heavenly Korea Heavenly Japan, and Heavenly America,” is saying, ‘Let us attend God.’ We cannot stop at just knowing God; we have to become a family, a tribe, a nation and a world that attends God.”

In April 2017, True Mother held a ceremony for the unity of Korea, Japan and America. She has encouraged artists from these three providential nations, as well as for Manhattan Center in New York and Japan, to cooperate in order to realize God’s ideal through the arts. With that as a source of inspiration, the HJ Music Committee embarked on the production of a CD of twelve songs by artists from three providential nations, Korea, Japan and America. The CD’s title, Harmony, reflects the importance of the creating unity among artists who share True Parents’ vision for 2020 and beyond.

Included in these songs are three songs with lyrics written by members of the True Family; True Mother (“True Parents’ Birthday Hymn- 2016”), Hyo Jin nim (“Eternal Love” — the commemorative song at the 30,000 Couple Blessing in 1992), and Kwon Jin nim (“Glorious New Day” — commemorative song at the 3.6 Million Couple Blessing in 2001).

Other songs include Kevin Pickard’s 2013 “Foundation Day Anthem,” Jeong Hwa’s moving song, “Family,” Dan Fefferman’s tribute to True Mother, “She Stepped Up,” as I arranged it and performed by Matthew Hill, Shuji Hata’s beautiful arrangement for solo guitar of “Song of the Spring Breeze,” Moto Ijichi’s orchestral arrangement of Hillie Edwards’ tune, “I’ll Never Leave You,” Diego Bellavotti’s inspirational song, “Love Will Reign Forever,” and the final movement of my music for the Tong-il Moo- do martial arts ballet, “The Three Hearts of God.” Artists from the three providential nations who also contributed to the Harmony CD include Mi Ran Kim, Reggie Woolridge, Steve Honey, Yeunhee Chang, Miyuki Harley, Masahiko Harigai, Sharky McEwen, Tatenori Hamasaka, Hyo Min Cho, Koichi Nakai, Oji Behian, Karin Nishinaga, Hitomi Sakabe and Raoul Joseph.

Hyo jeong education

There will be a continued effort in 2018 to educate artists in accordance with the ideals True Parents set forth in pursuit of a culture of peace. In 2017, I traveled to Vienna to present a Hyo Jeong Seminar to ninety artists and musicians about the Hyo Jeong philosophy of culture. These types of Hyo Jeong educational seminars will continue in 2018 with events being planned in the United States, Japan and Korea. A central point of the presentation was True Father’s words regarding the importance of art. In his autobiography, True Father offered this perspective about the power of art and the effect of beauty in shaping our attitudes.

People often think that politics moves the world, but that is not the case. It is culture and art that move the world. It is emotion, not reason, that strikes people in the innermost part of their hearts. When hearts change and are able to receive new things, ideologies and social regimes change as a result.

Rev. Moon offered this perspective in the context of his founding the Sun Hwa Arts School in Seoul in the late 1950s. At the time, Korea was still recovering from the Korean War and the Japanese occupation. Funds were scarce and the prospect of building a major arts academy when his early church was struggling financially seemed unwarranted to the church elders. Yet, as the aforementioned quotation reveals, he intuited the necessity of the arts in the process of forging a global vision for peace.

True Mother is continuing True Father’s artistic legacy via the Hyo Jeong cultural providence. It is our hope to continue to support this legacy by building bridges through song and to produce music that awakens the original minds of all humankind. It is our belief that by uniting with True Parents that miracles will happen!