Federation Sacred Music

Teachers keep returning to Martha Mier's In the Light of His Glory and Mark Hayes's Praise Classics, the two most widely adopted titles in the collection. Victor Labenske's Sunday Morning Companion and Melody Bober's A Call to Worship round out the working repertoire for many studios. Carol Tornquist's Preludes for Worship has become a fixture for pianists preparing opening pieces for services.

Melody Bober brings her background in music education and piano performance to arranging hymns and sacred works. She studied at the University of Illinois and Minnesota State University, and her arranging work emphasizes pieces that build student understanding of music alongside technical growth. Her A Call to Worship remains one of the most popular titles in this collection.

Carol Tornquist learned piano by ear as a child in Pennsylvania and went on to teach vocal music and keyboard in New York before moving to Nashville. Her Preludes for Worship has shaped how many pianists approach opening hymn settings for Sunday services, and her 10 titles here span multiple difficulty levels.

Victor Labenske holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance and teaches composition and piano at Point Loma Nazarene University. His Sunday Morning Companion bridges intermediate and late intermediate pianists into this repertoire with pieces that feel natural in a worship context.

Mark Hayes is a concert pianist and prolific arranger with over 1,750 published works to his name. His Praise Classics demonstrates why his music appears regularly in church and festival settings: strong harmonic writing paired with accessible technical demands.