Musically Speaking

It is summer, and hopefully your pace is a little more leisurely. This week I recommend a group I have been enjoying and thought you should know about if you do not already. The Quebe Sisters are three sisters from North Texas who play triple fiddle and sing tight three-part harmony in a style they call Progressive Western Swing. If you know the Good Lovelies, this group will feel like familiar te...

In March of 2017, I sat on the second row of the closing concert of the OAKE National Conference in Philadelphia with my friend and mentor Lamar Robertson. The American Boychoir, under director Fernando Malvar-Ruiz, closed the program with Stars and Stripes Forever , sung entirely on solfege, piccolo line and all. In this episode I reflect on what that moment revealed about music literacy, the Kod...

This week's episode comes from Atlanta, Georgia, where I am attending the Repairing the Ruins conference, the annual gathering of the Association of Classical Christian Schools. After nine years of leading morning singing in the Grand Ballroom for over a thousand classical Christian educators, I reflect on the workshop I gave yesterday — Real Harmony: Recovering Communal Singing in a Disembodied A...

Scott Joplin gave America the Maple Leaf Rag and the Entertainer. But in 1905, grieving the death of his wife of ten weeks, he wrote something entirely different. Bethena is a concert waltz, marked cantabile, wistful and searching in ways ragtime was never supposed to be. In this episode, I reflect on the backstory behind this neglected composition, a quiet parallel to Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Mi...

Nat King Cole’s first major commercial hit came from an unlikely source, his father’s pulpit. In this episode, I reflect on the story behind Straighten Up and Fly Right, the folk fable at its heart, and what made the King Cole Trio so distinctive. Along the way, I share a few of my favorite Cole recordings, including his shuffle cover of On the Street Where You Live. Sometimes the best advice and...

A few years ago, a friend told me I needed to hear Trio X of Sweden. He was right. In this episode, I reflect on this Swedish improvisational trio and their remarkable reinterpretations of Beethoven, Schumann, sacred music, and more. When they take on the Moonlight Sonata, it is not novelty or irony. It feels like another lens through which to hear a familiar work. Sometimes great art holds up pre...

As America approaches its semiquincentennial on July 4, 2026, composer and pianist Stephen Limbaugh decided the occasion deserved more than a theme song. In this episode, I reflect on his America 250 Symphony, a full four-movement, 28-minute orchestral work documented in real time over two years on X . Working in the lineage of Dvořák, Copland, and Gershwin, and collaborating with Hollywood orches...

On May 22, 1836, Felix Mendelssohn premiered his oratorio St. Paul in Düsseldorf to immediate acclaim. One hundred and ninety years later, one chorus from it still stops people in their tracks. In this episode, I reflect on what made St. Paul significant in his time, what How Lovely Are the Messengers does with a text from Romans 10, and why a group of fourth through tenth grade boys in West Monro...

This week’s episode briefly discusses the role of the choir when it comes to congregational singing in worship. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podcast series from Musically Speaking that features five minutes of music commentary, examples, and recommendations from Jarrod Richey. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episo...

For generations, church hymnals did more than preserve songs. They quietly taught ordinary people how to read music. A passing remark from country singer Ella Langley sparked this one, and this episode explores how the act of singing from the page, week after week, formed musical instincts most people never knew they had. I reflect on the shift from hymnals to lyric screens and ask what role the c...

On May 1, 1786, Mozart conducted the world premiere of The Marriage of Figaro in Vienna. 240 years later, it remains one of the most performed operas on earth. In this episode, I reflect on what made Mozart’s approach to opera revolutionary: music so precisely tailored to each character that you cannot swap their melodies. And in the opera’s very first scene, before the plot has barely begun, Moza...

In this episode, I reflect on why the pipe organ shaped Christian worship for centuries and what it still teaches us today. From Mozart’s description of it as “the king of the instruments” to its role in strengthening congregational singing, the organ models corporate worship: many voices unified under one guiding hand. More than nostalgia, it is theological architecture, breath turned into sound,...

Colm Wilkinson’s Jean Valjean remains one of the defining performances of Les Misérables . In this episode, we listen to three moments from the 10th Anniversary Concert to hear how the grain and color of his voice reveal moral tension, resolve, and prayer. It’s a masterful example of vocal command and authentic storytelling in song. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podcast series from Music...

Easter is not just a day. It is a season. In this episode, I reflect on This Joyful Eastertide , a resurrection hymn set to a 1624 Dutch tune. With its bold proclamation of bodily hope and a refrain that climbs higher with each “arisen,” the music does more than accompany the text — it enacts it. Fifty days to rehearse what we confess. Christ is risen. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podca...

On Good Friday, hope can seem out of place. Yet after hearing Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in Tokyo, Japan, audiences often ask conductor Masaaki Suzuki to explain what “hope” means in the Christian sense. In this episode, I reflect on how Bach’s music carries the logic of death and resurrection across cultures, and why even in the shadow of the cross, Christian hope is never absent. The Friday FIVE...

We tend to think of hymnals as collections of church songs. But they once taught people how to sing. In 1761, John Wesley included seven “Directions for Singing” in his Methodist hymnal. They are not suggestions. They are instructions. Sing all. Sing in time. Sing modestly. Sing lustily and with a good courage. Above all, sing spiritually. In this episode, I read Wesley’s directions in full and re...

Two singers can sing the same note, yet we instantly know who it is. Why? Because before we hear melody, we hear tone. In this week’s Friday Five, we explore the colors of the human voice — bright and dark, nasal and warm, gritty and clear. Through a few rapid contrasts, we consider how tone color shapes interpretation and even carries biography. This week, listen differently. Don’t just hear the...

On this “on location” episode from a cabin in Branson, Missouri, I reflect on one of the most unusual and powerful choral works of the twentieth century: “Rejoice in the Lamb” by Benjamin Britten. Drawing from the eccentric and deeply devotional poem Jubilate Agno by Christopher Smart, written in part while Smart was confined in an asylum, Britten’s choral work bursts with rhythmic energy, playful...

No dialogue. Just four minutes of music — and an entire marriage. In this episode, I reflect on Michael Giacchino’s “Married Life” from Up and how music functions as narrator. Through melody, orchestration, and tempo, the score carries decades of joy and sorrow without a single word. Music does not decorate the story. It interprets it. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podcast series from Mu...

No dialogue. Just four minutes of music — and an entire marriage. In this episode, I reflect on Michael Giacchino’s “Married Life” from Up and how music functions as narrator. Through melody, orchestration, and tempo, the score carries decades of joy and sorrow without a single word. Music does not decorate the story. It interprets it. The Friday FIVE is a weekly five-minute podcast series from Mu...

In this episode I ask a simple question: when you sing in worship, who are you singing to? Drawing on Paul Munson’s helpful framework , I reflect on three audiences that show up in Scripture, especially in the Psalms and in Paul’s epistles: sometimes we sing to our own souls, always we sing to God, and often we sing to one another through teaching and encouragement. Remembering the audience of con...

In this bonus longform episode of Musically Speaking , I sit down with Maestro John Mason Hodges, music director of the Monroe Symphony Orchestra and founder of the Center for Western Studies , for a wide-ranging conversation about music, meaning, and maturity. Maestro Hodges also teaches for us at the Redeemer School of the Arts . What happens when we are surrounded by constant sound but slowly l...

In this episode, I introduce listeners to the Welsh bass/baritone Bryn Terfel, a singer whose career has spanned the world’s great opera houses while also reaching audiences through concerts, recordings, and broadcasts far beyond them. I offer three observations about what makes his artistry so compelling: the depth and flexibility of his voice, his gift for communication and character, and his ra...

As the Winter Olympics begin, I reflect on the music of John Williams and how his work has come to define some of our most recognizable public moments. While he is best known for film scores, Williams’s music reaches far beyond the cinema into television, football broadcasts, and Olympic ceremonies. In this episode, I consider how his commitment to the symphony orchestra, his use of fanfare and le...

In this episode, I share a handful of musical recommendations centered around Joshua Lee Turner and Carson McKee, musicians I first discovered during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning with their delightful banjo and guitar cover of ABBA’s “Mamma Mia,” I reflect on what drew me to their work and to collaborations with Tony Lindgren and Elle Cordova, including memorable covers of “...