You can view the albums they’ve produced and buy them as albums, but you can also buy and download individual songs. About half of the songs listed on every album give a listening sample. There’s is a lot of music at this site but we bought enough individual hymns from this site to burn a sizeable hymn CD for ourselves.

Admittedly I don’t have as sensitive an ear to the choral work; I’m probably more attuned to the quality of the mixing and mastering. I wish there was some middle ground between the “cathedral” recordings (a lot of British sacred recordings) and the warmer, more intimate sound of more popular music, even some of the Soundforth stuff. Soundforth’s recent “King of Love” is probably a reasonable balance in this regard.

Speaking of radio, I wish there were decent Christian radio options on Sirius/XM. There’s nothing even close right now. I would love to put together a schedule of solid preaching and music for a national Christian radio station.

I’m not so thrilled with the choral quality of the Fettke albums, but I agree they’re better than a lot of stuff.

Yes, unfortunately Religious Affections Radio is gone for now. Evidently the government put more stringent mechanical license restrictions on internet music, and so the broadcasting site I was using had to significantly raise the price for broadcasting. I was receiving some donations for the station, but not enough to keep it afloat.

We’ll see what happens in the future; I’m looking into some other options as well.

From what I know of WCTS, I would think the albums above would be a pretty dramatic change. I think some simple, more familiar hymn collections might help soften the adjustment.

These collections aren’t Collegium, but they also aren’t John W. Peterson (I don’t think!):
A Capella Hymns (vol 1 & 2) - Greentree
Hymns For The Home (vol. 1 & 2) - SMS

Also these are good:
Classic Hymns - Summit
The Best of Brass & Organ - Summit

BTW is Religious Affections Radio gone? I could never get it to play in the past. I recently got a new computer, so I thought I would try again. I can’t find any evidence that it still exists.

I think you actually mentioned the hymn/classic focus in the article, but somehow I overlooked it.

WCTS is one of the better Christian radio ministries in the country. It would have been my first guess for existing stations, however I was hoping perhaps a new station with this focus was going on the air. I think we need more like WCTS.

Chris

It’s WCTS out of Minneapolis, a station owned and operated by Central Baptist Seminary.

Chris, we’re going for a little bit of a different content than Abiding Radio, more hymn-based/classic kinds of things.

Many of the recordings you list, Scott, I already own. But here are a few additions:

All Things Bright and Beautiful - Decca
Alleluia: An American Hymnal - Nimbus
Anything by Johann Sebastian Bach
Beloved Swedish Psalm Melodies - BIS
Choral Evensong - EMI Classics
Faire is the Heaven - Naxos
Hadyn: the Creation - I have Robert Shaw’s recording on Telarc
Hymns of Heaven and Earth - Dorian Recordings
Psalms and Hymns - Koch Classics
The Psalms of David (volumes 1, 2, and 3) - EMI Classics
Simply Baroque II - Sony Classics
Wesley, S. S.: Anthems - Naxos