Son of AGTG: Why So Long for the Next Hurd-Canedo Project?

No one was more surprised at the success of Alleluia! Give the Glory  than Bob Hurd and me. Based on popular requests, Mass of Glory  and several of the album’s songs were quickly added to OCP’s pew resources: Music Issue and, eventually, Breaking Bread, Spirit & Song, and Glory & Praise, Second and Third Editions.  It wasn’t long before people started asking, “When is the next Hurd-Canedo album coming?” 

Over the years, Bob and I joked about creating a new project called Son of Alleluia! Give the Glory, but we just got too busy in our own solo projects and career paths. Bob immediately launched into an exciting collaboration with Jaime Cortez that resulted in their groundbreaking Spanish-English bilingual collection, Somos El Cuerpo de Cristo / We Are the Body of Christ.

Bob started teaching philosophy at Santa Clara University in California but continued more solo liturgical albums/collections well into the 2000s that continued to display his gift for openness to the diverse needs of the multicultural Church: Ubi Caritas; Misa del Pueblo Inmigrante; A Contemplative Rosary; Holy Is the Temple; A Lenten Journey; Cantaré Eternamente / Forever I Will Sing (bilingual psalms compilation); God’s Eye Is on the Sparrow (a retrospective on his years with Anawim); Dining in the Kingdom; Our Common Home (a compilation of various composers reflecting on Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si); The Bread of Your Word; and so much more. I get exhausted just reading this list of Bob’s continuing creative output! 

Meanwhile, in the 1990s, I got involved at St. Monica Parish in Moraga, California as pastoral musician and, eventually, as youth minister. At this parish, I honed my skills as a liturgical composer, writing songs and hymns for the community’s liturgical needs. Unity Music Press, an imprint of the Lorenz Corporation in Dayton, Ohio, started publishing octavos of my individual songs, including “Fly Like a Bird,” which was eventually picked up by OCP. Unity also published my Pentecost musical, We Are a Light.

Most notably, in the 1990s, I met Jesse Manibusan and collaborated with him in youth ministry events throughout the Diocese of Oakland. We had a band that led the music at monthly gymnasium liturgies at Catholic high schools in Oakland, Concord, San Francisco, San Mateo, and other cities in the Bay Area. From this partnership emerged new original songs for youth ministry, including “Holy Spirit,” “Mountain of God,” “We are the Light,” “Power of Peace,” “Fish with Me,” and other songs that were featured in Jesse’s solo albums, and in our collaborative CD, Love Never Fails in 2003. We had a follow-up album in 2016, Fish With Me. 

In 1999, OCP published the first edition of Spirit & Song that included the youth ministry songs that Jesse and I were composing together. In November 2000, I left the Bay Area and moved to Portland to take up a job with OCP as Marketing Assistant. I now work for them as Music Development Specialist while continuing my ministry as a composer and as a pastoral musician at Holy Trinity Parish in Beaverton, Oregon. 

OCP did gather together all the diverse parts of the Hurd-Canedo Mass setting in the Mass of Glory collection (2000) that included the new movements we composed for Spirit & Song, including a Glory to God and the Memorial Acclamations. This was revised in 2010 with the promulgation of the new Roman Missal, Third Typical Edition.

And, within the past 19 years, Bob and I became authors, writing for various liturgy magazines and books. My books include Keep the Fire Burning: The Folk Mass Revolution (2009) and its sequel, From Mountains High: Contemporary Catholic Music 1970-1985 (2018). Bob’s book, Compassionate Christ, Compassionate People, was published in 2019. 

Can you see why it’s taken almost 30 years for Bob and me to finally do a follow-up to Alleluia! Give the Glory? We’ve just been too busy on the paths of our respective lives and ministries. God is good! 

Next blog: More details on the new Hurd-Canedo album/collection!