New Friday Anniversary Thoughts—Communing in Performed Sound at St. Stephen’s Part I

Jazz Piano Concert with Sullivan Fortner at St. Stephen’s, 2019

Since antiquity, performed sound—drama, music, recited/read poetry, multi-media performances—has bonded humans to one other and to the divine. Many see these art forms as manifestations of the sacred, as prayer and meditation.

Setting is vital. The atmosphere, acoustics and meaning of the site (outdoors and indoors) can shape a performance into something unique, transporting and galvanizing. The Physical (bodies, sound, movement in a material frame) merges with the Spiritual. For some Christian churches, such physicality especially in worship is sinful. For others, the Physical instead opens portals, as for Martin Luther, who considered music second to theology in its power to elicit and express devotion. Music, he argued, was even a divine gift to humankind to be nurtured and shared. Like many into our time, Luther also asserted that music heals.

And St. Stephen’s? By the late 19th century, it was renowned for excellent church music and musicians, attracting crowds to its services or concerts. Its reputation and proven sound also made St. Stephen’s a coveted site for outside musicians to rent for performance, a practice that supported churches financially and deepened their community participation. Theater groups, poets and musicians of many kinds appeared at St. Stephen’s to diverse audiences. The Philadelphia Sinfonia, a youth orchestra, became the church’s energetic resident group. 

When St. Stephen’s reopened in 2017 as a church, it planned its own programs by outside professionals. It sought to reaffirm the place of the performing arts in a church’s spiritual life--and to widen the scope of those performed. St. Stephen’s began with secular music in the belief, mentioned above, that all serious arts participate in the sacred, and all have roots in early liturgical music. 

Music that connects the human and divine was consistent with the church’s ministry to a redefined congregation, as it aimed to engage with ever more communities. Those who participated in the programs formed part of St. Stephen’s new fluid, varied congregation. 

I turn to Father Peter, then St. Stephen’s new vicar, to describe the church’s proposed approach to music in the attached video. As you’ll see, he speaks with passion AND authority: Born to a concert pianist mother and music critic father and surrounded by musicians throughout life, he continued deeply involved in music alongside his adult “day jobs.” He’s a trumpet player, respected early music coach and published critic (even on Frank Zappa). 

I’ll only emphasize what you’ll hear here from composer, jazz pianist and educator Fred Hersch, Fr. Peter’s longtime friend. Fred, who practices mindful meditation, swiftly grasped St. Stephen’s unique quality: Its interior enhances its acoustics with a mysteriously enabling atmosphere. This small urban church endows compactness with openness and blends collective embrace with encouragement for personal inner journeys. Cleared of box pews in the late 1980s, like many Episcopal churches, the community zone of the church (the nave) gained a flexibility that lent intimacy to programs sited there. Performers and audience can merge as one responsive body, sometimes interacting during performance or afterwards. Musicians open to the dynamic to experiment, creating something new within the group experience there. All are touched, some are taken to new places, and some possibly healed, one of St. Stephen’s longtime missions.

As Part II, on May 26 we’ll consider a program that exercised these qualities, a series of jazz piano concerts in 2018-9 that Fr. Peter invited Fred to curate called The Future of Jazz Piano. The program brought Fred, three exceptional young jazz pianists and a diverse community of music lovers, musicians, and critics into St. Stephen’s. The convergence of people and music here enriched this special place and marked many who participated, so they told us. That’s precious experience.

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator