Worship Musician Magazine September 2020 | Page 34

a magnificently orchestrated arrangement
composed by Bernie. What can you tell us
about the song and the musical beauty of this
recording? Didn’t you record that in London,
England?
[Natalie] We did, and boy I’m glad we did it
last year because we wouldn’t be going right
now! (due to the virus) When we set out to
make this record, this is my tenth record, and
anyone who’s been following me for any length
of time know that I don’t create quickly, I’ve
never been somebody who can just turn out
music. I marvel at people who put something
out every twelve or eighteen months. I’m just
not a quick creative, I usually have to fail at
some things, fall down, let His grace pick me
up, and then write songs about it (laughs). So
that requires time to live some life. In 2017 I was
diagnosed with thyroid cancer and told I may
never sing again, so I just had a lot going on
in my life the last few years. The last time I put
out music was in 2015, so this is the longest
I’ve ever gone in-between recordings. When
we went to write this new piece, I didn’t want
to just write another song or record another
record. And it wasn’t about reinventing or doing
something different. It was about these last five
years. My husband and I have become a part
of a church of Nashville that’s transformed
our lives and transformed its families. I’m so
locked in love with so many at the church, not
just singing songs for the church but actually
serving the church and leading worship, and
being involved in the community, and that’s
really where a lot of these songs were birthed
from. God just really re-awakened something in
my life that I didn’t even know had fallen asleep,
and that’s just the love of His presence.
So I went to my husband, who has been
producing my records for a long time, and I
said, if there were no rules, and if you didn’t
need to have an up-tempo and a mid-tempo
song, and if you didn’t need to have a certain
kind of song because it’s what works for radio;
if there were no rules, what would you do? If
you just said, “Holy Spirit, lead me”, what would
He be speaking to you to do? So really, I feel
like this record is as much my husband’s as it
is mine. He said, “We’ll go to London, and we
will record with the London Symphony, and I
want the sound of what I think the sound of
Heaven will be. I want to try to bring that sound
to earth.” And that’s really where it came from,
so much of the record is fully orchestrated. We
recorded a ton live in London with the actual
orchestra at the same time, which was even
different for them. The symphony who recorded
Harry Potter and all of these soundtracks said,
“We never get to do this with a singer live in
the room”, and something really magnificent
happened. We were in this recording studio
called AIR Lyndhurst, which used to be a church,
and George Martin of The Beatles bought it,
and we literally recorded in the sanctuary with
34 September 2020
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