Product Description
I Want Jesus to Walk With Me is my first paid commission. My then-fiance, who had asked me to arrange Steal Away and Glory, Glory, Hallelujah for his Juilliard Masters recital, continued to perform them after starting his doctoral studies at Florida State. It was there that Randye Jones, a soprano and expert on the Negro spiritual, heard my arrangements and decided she liked them enough to ask me to create one just for her. Years later, Maria Clark made I Want Jesus to Walk With Me one of her signature pieces. Her enthusiasm for my music led to our recording of all of the spirituals I had arranged to that point, Soul Sanctuary (Navona), which features cellist Ismail Akbar. The three pieces on our disc that include cello are His Name So Sweet, Deep River, and Wade in the Water, a group which I call Crossing Jordan.
Since Maria and I live hundreds of miles apart, we rarely perform together. When I learned that she, Ismail, and her favorite collaborative pianist, Trey Clegg, had created a version of I Want Jesus to Walk With Me, I decided to do my own, stand-alone chamber arrangement.
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.