Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

The COVID‑19 pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021 were hugely frustrating for everybody. For me the silver lining was the opportunity to create music in ways that I could not have dreamt of before lockdown. For over a year during the pandemic, the Sunday services of City of Edinburgh Methodist Church could not take place in the building but were conducted via the video­conferencing software Zoom, and live‐streamed on the video‐sharing platform YouTube, and to that end I produced videos of the hymns for each Sunday.

This was the opening hymn for Easter Sunday, 4 April 2021. It is a well‐known traditional African‐American spiritual and it appears in several mainstream hymn books.

The singer is Liz Taylor, contralto, and I am at the piano. I wrote the piano arrangement of the last verse for the occasion. I thank Liz for her permission to use the video on this website.

Christ is risen. Alleluia!