This arrangement of Amazing Grace is for a solo vocalist with a piano accompaniment. The video was recorded on a phone in my living room and is not meant to be professional level recording (the piano doesn't come through very well), but it should be sufficient to give you a feel for what the arrangement sounds like. I created this arrangement to be sung by my daughter at my grandfathers funeral (pictured in the video). This song was among his favorites.
The words to Amazing Grace were written by John Newton in 1772. Newton was raised by parents that were both Christian (his father a catholic and his mother a "non-conformist" Christian), yet much of his youth was spent defying religion in both word and deed. He spent much of his young adulthood as a sailor engaged in the slave trade. However, after multiple near death experiences, slowly, Newton began to embrace Christianity and eventually was ordained to the ministry in the Church of England and became a prominent and powerful voice against slavery. While Newton's words were powerful, those words were set to multiple different melodies for many years. It wasn't until 1835 that American composer William Walker assigned Newton's words to a traditional song named "New Britain", that Amazing Grace took the form it bears today.
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