Speaking after a concert in the gardens of his Castel Gondolfo summer residence this past July, Pope Leo XIV said, “the music drew all of us into an experience of something new, something that was greater than any one of us alone could create.”
Concertgoers at a unique performance at Coquitlam, B.C., Catholic parish on Sept. 26 might very well have reached the same conclusion. Billed as “Hymn Swing,” the event featured a Presbyterian church’s jazz quartet performing a dozen “jazzified” Catholic hymns in an upbeat singalong concert.
“And, for me, the concert was fun,” Father Lynn said in an interview. “It was fun to have the hymns done that way, with different beats, tempos, and all that. Everyone had a great time, even some of our parishioners who told me they didn’t really like jazz.”
The Catholic-Presbyterian collaboration began three years ago when, at the urging of a friend, Father Lynn, a jazz aficionado, attended a weekly Jazz Evensong event at Brentwood Presbyterian Church in Burnaby, B.C.
Father Lynn said at the time that he was impressed by how the church’s pastor, Rev. Dr. Brian Fraser, had integrated jazz music into the life of his church.
After his renovated basement, newly named St. Bernadette Hall, opened in May, Father Lynn collaborated with Pastor Fraser to arrange the concert. Pastor Fraser said he had obtained a grant to support his musicians’ performance of jazz concerts throughout the Metro Vancouver area. The gig at Our Lady of Lourdes would be the first in a Catholic parish.
Father Lynn asked his parishioners what hymns they would like to see “jazzified,” and they produced a list that included “How Great Thou Art,” “Lift High the Cross,” and “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.”
Brentwood’s “director of musicking,” pianist Noah Franche-Nolan, wrote the jazz arrangements for vocalist Teresa Marie (pictured above), bassist Julia Farry, and drummer Arvind Ramdas.
“They didn’t want to do any hymns in Latin,” Father Lynn said with a chuckle. “I gave them ‘Salve Regina’ because I wanted to put a Marian hymn in there, and they were like, ‘Teresa can’t sing in Latin!’”
The new arrangements gave the hymns a lively and upbeat vibe, said Father Lynn. “It’s kind of cool.”
Speaking with Father Lynn during the show’s intermission (pictured below, right), Pastor Fraser said that transforming traditional melodies into jazz “makes the familiar unfamiliar.”
“You often hear new things in them, get a new feel for them,” he said. “Or catch a phrase that you didn’t hear in them before. So, it’s that continuity between tradition and innovation, tradition and creativity, that I think is so powerful in jazz.”
Pastor Fraser also said that the lessons learned in jazz, about the importance of collaboration between the musicians, is one that everyone is able to use in their daily lives.
“The most common form of jazz in human experience is ordinary conversation,” he said. “So what would happen if you managed the conversations you have, in co-creating our Lady of Lourdes and its future, with the same kind of attention and intention that jazz musicians use when they are playing together? You co-create the community one conversation after another.”
Father Lynn said his partnering with Pastor Fraser was an unlikely success. “Me, I’m a very staunch Catholic, a very orthodox Catholic, and Pastor Brian is a rather progressive person,” he said. “We’re two different people, two different streams of Christianity, and yet we’ve come together.”
He said he found Pastor Fraser’s ideas to be insightful, and that the collaboration inspired him to ponder why he himself loved jazz so much. “So, I picked up my pencil and started writing,” he said. “And I wrote this: ‘Jazz, a movement in the soul that renounces sentimentality. Rather, it engages us in the struggle that is life. And draws us into a deeper, more meaningful place where we may soar into the mystery.’”
For the 50 concertgoers, the performance’s vibe was more fun than philosophy, as they followed Tersea Marie’s lead and sang along to the new versions of the hymns. “I found it uplifting and joyous,” said Mary McKinnon, of St. Joseph’s Parish in Port Moody, B.C. “The music really spoke to me.” Pope Leo said in his July remarks that the effect of the music he heard that afternoon was “the experience of beauty.”
It could be said, then, that for one evening in Coquitlam, jazz, hymns, and two Christian traditions converged to reveal the same truth Pope Leo named: beauty draws us toward God.
