Music at First Parish of Watertown
When you attend a worship service at First Parish, music is one of the reasons you come back! We want music to engage your body, heart, and soul, and it is always performed live in our sanctuary. Hymn-singing and piano music in many styles are part of our weekly ministry.
Services are often enhanced by guest musicians who come from a wide variety of backgrounds, including Classical, folk, ethnic, world music, some jazz, as well as popular music and music composed by contemporary artists. Those artists are often part of our congregation or friends from the musical community in the Boston area.
The First Parish Choir meets weekly to rehearse, and we sing in a church service once per month. The 2025-2026 rehearsal calendar is here. Again, the music we sing reflects a wide variety of styles to uplift both choir members and the congregation. The choir music we sing reflects the UU monthly themes.
Musicians at First Parish often collaborate on their own, which speaks to the huge amount of talent and interest in the arts that exists in our church community. You need only look across the aisle to see someone who might be happy to create something with you for our annual variety show. This was exactly how our First Parish rock n’ roll band began. Now, the band provides and supports the music at select worship services.
Our music directors welcome input from our community about what they want our music program to be. Please feel free to approach us!
Hand in Hand Hospice Singers serve the wider community in Watertown and beyond. Sponsored by First Parish, this group travels to hospice sites to sing for people who are ill or at the ends of their lives, bringing joy and serenity to their days. They rehearse weekly.
Musically Speaking Blog
Updates and reflections from Charlyn Bethell, Music Director
Musically Speaking – December 2020
Happy Holidays! Yes, we must stay safe and well, and part of that is staying connected to each other. Our community has never been more important than during this pandemic. Now, with the holidays here, we are there for each other to provide light in this season of...
Musically Speaking – November 2020
Do you ever wake up with a song in your mind? I do. Today I woke up singing our Hymn of the Month, The Lone Wild Bird. This is not unusual for me. The music around me really does permeate my inner life. Inside my head, I tend to continue to sing music I am...
Musically Speaking – October 2020
Sometimes Deep Listening for me is to hear something new in a piece of music each time I listen to it. To do that, the music has to be first and foremost the only thing I am thinking about. Music at our house is seldom in the “background”. Years ago, as a college...
Musically Speaking – September 2020
Welcome back to First Parish Watertown! I am so very happy to see you at our Zoom worship services. Guy and I, along with Wendy, Lauren, and Allison have become a tight collaborative unit for creating online worship. I am also excited that we are continuing to do...
Musically Speaking, June 2020
This month’s Musically Speaking is contributed by Guy Urban.
Charlyn is officially the FPW Music Director, and I am officially the accompanist, although it’s probably pretty obvious that we work together on almost every aspect of music at FPW.