2025 Good Friday Musical Meditation: King Crimson's "In the Court of the Crimson King"

Friday April 18th, at 7pm, we are grateful to offer the 10th expression of this meaningful tradition of a hybrid concert/worship service, where the musicians of Pine Street Church perform an entire album chosen from the “secular” ranks. The experience is framed with narration that considers the music and lyrics through a lens of the story of the season, the Passiontide.

This year’s album is King Crimson's, In the Court of the Crimson King. In a 2019 50th anniversary re-issue of the 1969 album Pitchfork’s Ryan Reeds had the following to write about the debut alum of the legendary band.

It’s all there in the Schizoid Man’s face. Barry Godber’s cover art—a man mid-scream, nostrils flared, gaze fixed on a horror we can’t see—teases a manic, transformative head trip. In the Court of the Crimson King marks a vast fault line in the geology of rock music, refining a nascent genre into a pinnacle of the progressive rock form. The Moody Blues’ symphonic grandeur, Brian Wilson’s expansive production, the psychedelic experiments of Pink Floyd and the Beatles—these are some of prog’s essential building blocks. But with their first record, King Crimson shaped those pieces into a monument, wielding a sorcery unduplicated in the five decades since.

Please plan on joining us and inviting all of your friends, family and neighbors to this unique signature event of the Pine Street Church Music Program. Friday April 18th at 7:00pm.

In place of the 10min, free-form, mostly atonal, and arhythmic instrumental improvisation at the end of Moonchild, the fourth song on our Good Friday Musical Meditation Album, In the Court of the Crimson King, we’re instead going to premiere an original composition by the uber-talented, Phil Norman (also playing bass guitar throughout) called Moonchild Fantasy.

You don’t want to miss this opportunity to experience the beautiful and hypnotic sonic creation made for violin, viola, flute, and clarinet, performed for the first time ever.

​This event is free and open to all. Any donations will go towards Pine Street Church's Off Broadway Preschool scholarship fund. Valuing and cultivating Curiosity, Creativity, and Compassion, Off Broadway Preschool is an arts and music focused preschool whose mission is to provide excellent creativity-focused education for preschool aged children. Learn more about Off Broadway Preschool HERE.