Ina Allen with Glen Allen: Sunday Morning Reflections

Ina Allen with Glen Allen
Sunday Morning Reflections: Solo Piano Music with Scripture Readings
Independent (release date: 2022)

By Robert M. Marovich

Simply and crisply produced, Sunday Morning Reflections contains 20 attractive ambient Christian music selections for solo piano with a brief Scriptural reading preceding each song.

On this album, Ina Allen performs traditional hymns as well as contemporary Christian songs on acoustic piano. Among the older pieces is the opener, “The Ash Grove.” Listeners will recognize the Welsh folk melody as the one upon which Katherine Kennecott Davis wrote “Let All Things Now Living” in 1939.

It turns out that the older tunes like “The Ash Grove” are far more interesting as piano instrumentals than the modern selections like Michael W. Smith’s “How Majestic is Your Name” and “Agnus Dei,” which cry out for lyrics to give them more of a presence. The older tunes have stood the test of time, like “Amazing Grace” (of course), Doris Akers’ “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” (Akers is the only Black songwriter included in the collection), Helen Lemmel’s “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” and Civilla Martin and Charles Gabriel’s “His Eye is on the Sparrow.” Ina gives “God of Grace, God of Glory” by Pastor Harry Emerson Fosdick and John Hughes the majestic delivery it deserves. Notable exceptions are Darlene Zschech’s 1993 Christian power ballad, “Shout to the Lord,” which radiates as an introspective instrumental; and Don Moen’s warm “God Will Make a Way.”

The congregational chestnut that closes the album, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty,” is a nod to Allen’s Lutheran church work.

A pianist based in Baltimore who serves as director of music at the First Lutheran Church of Gray Manor, Allen has also recorded albums for children, including the recent Nanushka: A Russian Children’s Story. Her MO has been to pair story with music, and hence this album pairs worship songs with Biblical readings, the spoken word segments pleasantly rendered by Glen Allen. Each song is radio-sized and exudes a humility borne of straightforward arrangement without extraneous or unnecessarily effusive expression.

In the end, Sunday Morning Reflections sounds like a recital given by Ina and Glen Allen not on a Sunday morning but in a small church on a restful Sunday afternoon in the late fall.

Four of Five Stars

Picks: “Sweet, Sweet Spirit,” “The Ash Grove,” “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty.”