Music at St Bernadette's

Saturday Night Vigil Hymn CD’s

Recently the parish invested in a set of 10 CD’s entitled “No Organist No Problem –Catholic Hymns”. Every week Fr Stephen selects the hymns to be played and emails the list of hymns to Paul Moore. Paul then burns these selected hymns onto a disk, and takes them along to the Vigil Mass on a Saturday, where they are played through the recently acquired P.A. system.

In fact over the years we ahve built up a bank of hymns which cover every Sunday in the 3-year cycle of readings, an excellent resource.

In the future we plan to try using playlists to play the hymns through an mp3 player, such as an i-Pod.

Link to No Organist No problem

Music at 9.30 a.m. Mass

A new music group started at the 9.30 a.m. Mass towards the end of October 2008. At present this consisits of Paul Devlin on keyboard, and Johanna and Judith Reilly on vocals. We hope that other musicians and singers will join in soon. If you would like to join the group, just come along on a Sunday morning at 9.20 a.m.

Paul, third from the left, with the ALMA pilgrimage in July 2008

The Parish Choir

The parish choir sings in St Bernadette's on a Sunday morning at the 11 a.m. Mass, and at all of the main celebrations in the life of the parish and the church, most notably the Easter Vigil and Christmas Midnight Mass. Midnight Mass saw them perform a Mass setting by Paula O'Sullivan, a former choir member, and lead the congregation in many Christmas favourites at the carol service which preceeded the Mass.

Pat puts the choir through its paces at a practice

They also provide the music for funerals and enhance the liturgy at such an important time in the life of a family. Other major occasions feature the choir, most notably recently at the united service for Advent celebrated by St Bernadette's and North Motherwell Church.

The choir always welcomes new members. If you would like to join, feel free to wander up to the choir after 11 a.m. Mass and speak to choirmaster Betty Neeson.

6 p.m. music group

The music group was founded in 2005, and has been going strong ever since! It plays every week at 6 p.m. Mass on a Sunday, and also some of the big Masses at Christmas and Easter.

Its members are:

Sandra McLean, voice

Yvonne Montgomery, voice

Jamie Dungavel, voice

Mary McAuley, violin

Catherine Ann McRoberts, violin and bodhrain

James Bennett, guitar

Fr Stephen Reilly, guitar

The group practices on a Sunday afternoon about 5.20 in the church. If you would like to come along and join in please do. Just turn up at the practice or speak to us after the 6 p.m. Mass.

Sunday afternoon practice (right)

The group also has an alter ego, called On High, which plays at many parish functions. We have played a Hogmanay show every year since 2006, and also the Church Workers' Social, the Senior Citizens' Lunch, St Patrick's Night etc. Last year we even branched out and played Fr Stephen's parents Golden Wedding party, a senior citizens' Christmas dinner in Bellshill and a British Red Cross office party in Hillington!

The group is great fun and we sometimes have nights out, too!

We are very indebted to Tommy Turner, who has loaned us all of our sound system and microphones, which are also used in playing the hymn CDs on a Saturday night and Sunday morning.