SERMON
This Sunday: “Giving Thanks: Friendship”
Bible Study Leader: The Reverend Ken Feske
Bible Study Topic: John 15: 12-17

Bible Passages: Ecclesiastes 4: 7-12, 20-21; Psalm 133; John 15: 12-17
Lector: Tom Rusert
Crucifer: Darren Peterie
Ushers: Kathy Gray and Peggy Pfeifer
Fellowship: Maxine Kallenberger
Flowers: Lloyd Nattkemper

Prelude

9:45 am
David Rondeli Elyoussoufi, cello

Suite No. 1 in G Major……….J. S. Bach
Prelude
Suite No. 5 in C Minor……….Bach
Courante
Orbit for Solo Cello……….Philip Glass
Suite No. 2 in D Minor……….Bach
Prelude
Sarabande

Offertory
Grateful……….John Bucchino
Jubal Joslyn, tenor

Postlude
Excerpt from Toccata in E Major……….J. S. Bach

Bach composed six suites for unaccompanied solo cello while he was working as director of music at the princely court of Köthen in Saxony-Anhalt. The music was not published, but fortunately, Bach’s wife, Anna Magdalena, copied out a complete version by hand. In Bach’s time, solos would more typically have been played along with a harpsichord for accompaniment. But Bach challenged the cellist to provide the complete texture as a soloist.

The beautiful suites are now a signature of the cello repertoire, due in part to an accidental discovery. In the late 1890s, the young Pablo Casals, already destined to become a world-famous cellist, found an early edition of the suites in a second-hand shop in Barcelona. Many decades later, he recorded the suites, beginning with Nos. 2 and 3, at the same Abbey Road Studio in London that was later made famous by the Beatles.

Welcome to guest cellist David Rondeli Elyoussoufi! Now a high school senior, David was introduced to cello as a part of Monterey County’s Orchestra in the Schools Program when he was nine years old. He has been a member of Youth Music Monterey for the past seven years.

David was selected to perform at Carmel Sunset Center for the 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2024 Carmel Bach Festival’s Young Musician Showcase, and won Distinguished Performance awards in 2021 and 2022. David also won the Youth Music Monterey Honors Concerto Competition twice. With YMM, he performed the Lalo Cello Concerto in February 2023 and will be performing the Dvořák Cello Concerto in March 2025.