The Gallery
This is the archived 2006 Christmas Newsletter
The original cover.
As Christmas falls at the end of our calendar year it really is an opportunity to reflect on the preceding twelve months!
This, my second newsletter, again comes to you with my love and best wishes for the festive season.
Thank you to you all for the support that you have again given me over the past year - through your purchases, your words (in person, as well as in your many letters and cards), and your prayers. Thank you, too, for those who have so kindly offered me hospitality over weekends away.
Called to Freedom was released at the beginning of April, and I am delighted with the way it has been received. I was getting in a bit of a panic because right up to the last moment this new work was without a title! There were many possible ideas but nothing really standing out, until a conversation over coffee one morning with a friend of mine - during mid-sentence she uttered the words ‘called to freedom’ which made me stop her in her tracks!
Tony Cummings, Editor of Cross Rhythms, who has been so supportive of my music and ministry over the past fifteen years, gave it an eight out of ten and a great review on 16th July; and in August wrote a feature article on John and I for the Cross Rhythms web-site. If you are interested you may read it all at www.crossrhythms.co.uk
Tracks from both Called to Freedom (yet to be actually nicknamed, apart from the rather boring “’n chips”!!) and If You Lead Me (affectionately known in Timberlake circles as “Larry the Lamb”!) have been played on Radio 2’s Good Morning Sunday - our version of Make Me a Channel of Your Peace has been particularly enjoyed by the listeners, and has moved many of them quite profoundly - and it was a real pleasure and delight to have been invited for an interview with Aled Jones back in May (on my birthday, as it happens, which made it very special). After editing it was only a short interview but it gave me an opportunity to say a bit about the music and the way in which it is touching people’s hearts, and in amazing ways. It is all so very humbling, and it is such a privilege to be in this position.
There have been some lovely craft show weekends this year - fourteen altogether - some in beautiful locations such as along the banks of the Thames at Mapledurham. Each annual visit to this show I am reminded of the family holiday that we spent hiring a cruiser on the river when I was twelve - including re-living the occasion when I fell off the boat into the river whilst moored at Goring! It is wonderful how it has remained totally unchanged over all this time - a long, long time!! Concert evenings have included a third invitation to Eastney Methodist Church, Southsea, and St Nicholas’ Church, Old Kenilworth. I so love playing to an audience - there is very much a sense of giving through my music, and for me this really comes into play in a live situation - and they have even appreciated my jokes! I have played at a number of great private parties this year too!
I had always felt and said that the fish was going to be the last recording on the ‘animal’ theme, and that it was time to move on to something else. Well, that ‘something else’ I thought might be our arrangements of well-known songs such as Wind Beneath My Wings and The Rose, to name just a couple; but over the past few weeks (and I write this in mid-November) I have felt a very strong calling to do another album similar to the last two - with our arrangements of some well-known worship songs plus our own stuff (how I love to be technical!!). Continuing the animal theme I was drawn to a donkey - and the more I thought about this and talked it through with people the more it has grown - to the point that the artist Paul Matthews (who has been responsible for the previous four album covers) is already working on a design! We will see where it takes us…
You may like to know that I have a brand new web-site! After six years I thought it was time for a fresh, new approach, but with similar content - and it includes an online shop! Do have a look when you have a moment: www.charlestimberlake.co.uk
May you all have a very happy and peaceful Christmas.