Candlemas

[JM]

Quote:

PARISH PRACTICE​

The church I serve is profoundly attuned to the promise of liturgy and the needs of people new to a liturgical community. Jazz came to Saint Peter’s in 1965. It was innovative, it was edgy, and people who otherwise would not be found in church flocked to that new thing, a Jazz Vespers. They felt connected to God and connected to church. A recent visitor to Saint Peter’s told me about an early encounter at Jazz Vespers, when decades ago he heard for the first time someone shout “Amen” during a sermon. Gleeful, he introduced himself to the woman who had raised her voice so enthusiastically. She returned the courtesy and said, “I’m Ella.” As in, Ella Fitzgerald.

Over the intervening years the needs of the people of the city of New York have changed just as much as the city itself has. Where in the 1960s and 1970s jazz musicians or jazz aficionados seeking a relationship with God were delighted to play jazz or hear jazz in a church, nowadays people long for this and more. Perhaps it is the aftermath of 9/11 and a world at nearly constant war and turmoil. We crave ritual and its beauty, crave not so much its answers but the questions it raises, crave a safe zone in which to open our hearts to God, and vice versa.

With my senior colleague Amandus Derr, our Director of Music for Jazz Ike Sturm, and a host of committed lay leaders, we have, for nearly a decade, gradually reached into the great tradition of the church with the goal of crafting liturgy and music in a way that is accessible for people who are new to church or to jazz or to both. Because Saint Peter’s also is home to a richly developed liturgical community and a growing Spanish-language community with an equally robust misa, some people have thought we were simply importing these or other traditions into Jazz Vespers. To follow this approach would be disastrous, however, since most of the church’s rich liturgical traditions have developed alongside and interacted with a number of musical traditions other than jazz.

What we have done is to develop a liturgy that is truly infused with and guided by jazz. Ike has composed several settings of the mass. Jazz Vespers now includes a complete Lucinarium (Phos Hilaron and all) in which people leave their seats and share light from the Vesper candle, a congregationally-sung Psalm improvisation, readings, sermon, prayers, and a Magnificat in which people do not simply join their voices to Mary’s song of praise but are also invited to receive anointing with oil, laying-on of hands, and prayer for healing. Everything is geared toward those new to or returning to church. (Much of this material has been published in a variety of sources both in print and online and is in use in a number of settings. Ike’s reflections on the relationship of musical and liturgical materials for mass and Vespers are also widely available.)

SOURCE: Reintroducing Candlemas — Lutheran Forum

 

[The Liturgist]

Quote:

PARISH PRACTICE​

The church I serve is profoundly attuned to the promise of liturgy and the needs of people new to a liturgical community. Jazz came to Saint Peter’s in 1965. It was innovative, it was edgy, and people who otherwise would not be found in church flocked to that new thing, a Jazz Vespers. They felt connected to God and connected to church. A recent visitor to Saint Peter’s told me about an early encounter at Jazz Vespers, when decades ago he heard for the first time someone shout “Amen” during a sermon. Gleeful, he introduced himself to the woman who had raised her voice so enthusiastically. She returned the courtesy and said, “I’m Ella.” As in, Ella Fitzgerald.

Over the intervening years the needs of the people of the city of New York have changed just as much as the city itself has. Where in the 1960s and 1970s jazz musicians or jazz aficionados seeking a relationship with God were delighted to play jazz or hear jazz in a church, nowadays people long for this and more. Perhaps it is the aftermath of 9/11 and a world at nearly constant war and turmoil. We crave ritual and its beauty, crave not so much its answers but the questions it raises, crave a safe zone in which to open our hearts to God, and vice versa.

With my senior colleague Amandus Derr, our Director of Music for Jazz Ike Sturm, and a host of committed lay leaders, we have, for nearly a decade, gradually reached into the great tradition of the church with the goal of crafting liturgy and music in a way that is accessible for people who are new to church or to jazz or to both. Because Saint Peter’s also is home to a richly developed liturgical community and a growing Spanish-language community with an equally robust misa, some people have thought we were simply importing these or other traditions into Jazz Vespers. To follow this approach would be disastrous, however, since most of the church’s rich liturgical traditions have developed alongside and interacted with a number of musical traditions other than jazz.

What we have done is to develop a liturgy that is truly infused with and guided by jazz. Ike has composed several settings of the mass. Jazz Vespers now includes a complete Lucinarium (Phos Hilaron and all) in which people leave their seats and share light from the Vesper candle, a congregationally-sung Psalm improvisation, readings, sermon, prayers, and a Magnificat in which people do not simply join their voices to Mary’s song of praise but are also invited to receive anointing with oil, laying-on of hands, and prayer for healing. Everything is geared toward those new to or returning to church. (Much of this material has been published in a variety of sources both in print and online and is in use in a number of settings. Ike’s reflections on the relationship of musical and liturgical materials for mass and Vespers are also widely available.)

SOURCE: Reintroducing Candlemas — Lutheran Forum

The St. Peters in question I assume is the one rebuilt during the construction of the Citigroup Tower, and located in its plaza?