de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 0:00 This is Episode 38 of Ethics and Culture Cast from the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Welcome to Episode 38 of Ethics and Culture Cast from Notre Dame's de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I'm Ken Hallenius, the communications specialist at the center. In this episode, we sit down with J.J. Wright director of the Notre Dame folk choir and composer of the new album, "Vespers for the Immaculate Conception." We talk about his path to Notre Dame, the process of composing, and how liturgical music ministry is more than just picking songs to sing on Sundays. Let's pop into the Marion Short Ethics Library for this week's conversation. Well J.J. Wright, thank you very much for coming to be with us today. J.J. Wright 1:04 Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:06 So tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What did you do before you came to Notre Dame? J.J. Wright 1:11 So I grew up in Buffalo, New York. I went to grade school and high school there. And after high school, I went to Indiana University Bloomington for one year to study jazz piano, and found that school wasn't quite for me at that point. And so I left school and I actually went out onto a cruise ship for six months to play in the show band. Which was a wild experience but, but really fun and really great experience. And when I got off the ship, I heard from a friend that you could actually play music in the military. And so I went and auditioned for the Naval Academy band in Annapolis and got that job and joined the Navy in May of 2005. So yeah. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 1:58 So for you, the sea was was your life? J.J. Wright 2:01 Yes, absolutely. I actually never went out on a boat when I was in the Navy, which is kind of embarrassing, but. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:07 That's awesome. I read in an interview with you that you had, as a member of the Navy band you played for presidents and all sorts of... J.J. Wright 2:15 I did. Yeah, we played for George W. Bush, right at the end of his presidency. And then right at the beginning of Barack Obama's presidency, we played for him. So it was kind of cool, because a big part of my job was to play jazz piano. So I would play at the Superintendent's house a couple times a week, almost. And he was always hosting, you know, like the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then Secretary of State and so it's kind of cool. You know, I didn't really get to hang out with them, but to be in the same room with them was kind of fun. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 2:43 That's awesome. Well, now you left that behind, and you decided to pursue sacred music studies. J.J. Wright 2:50 Yeah, you know, I, my wife and I actually got married right when I got out of the Navy and I wanted to finish my undergrad degree. So I, we moved to New York City right after we got married, and I went to The New School for jazz. And that was for about three years and we had our first two children there in New York City and lived in a one bedroom apartment. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 3:11 Oh my. J.J. Wright 3:13 And but it was there where I really started to get involved more actively in church music. So I grew up Catholic and had always kind of been playing in church since the time I was a teenager, but was never like a proper music director. And it was kind of a crazy happening. But I got connected with this pastor up in Mount Vernon, which is just north of the city. And within a week, I got this job. And all of a sudden, I was you know, every Sunday I was down for five masses. And so I was loving it. You know, my background is as a Catholic and you know, I could play the piano and all of a sudden I was playing the organ every week and picking the hymns and working with the pastor and the cantors and the choir. And as I started to progress through that, I started to realize that I really wanted to know more about church music because I didn't feel like I had the tools to really do it well. And this is all while I'm studying jazz, of course, at The New School and so kind of by happenstance, I I saw an article in Notre Dame Magazine about the sacred music program here at Notre Dame. And just kind of got curious, I came out to visit and it was a total long shot when I was applying for grad school because I applied to all schools for jazz, and then to Notre Dame for sacred music and got in here and came here and ultimately did my masters and doctorate here at Notre Dame. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 4:36 Wow. So it was a "baptism by fire" because I mean, you were actually doing the ministry. But then, like you say, you wanted to know more about the kind of the, both the theoretical and, and really the theological aspects in a way? J.J. Wright 4:50 Absolutely like it. It was, it's a really cool way to get into and I throughout my life, I've kind of found my way, getting into things that way, you know, kind of getting in by doing and then going back after to fill in the holes but to really know exactly what I want to study, you know. The same kind of thing happened when I was in the Navy when I, I went back to study jazz after and I really got to dig in. And then all the while I was working in the church in New York and then being able to come to Notre Dame and just fill in all those holes was such a great experience. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 5:20 Where does your love from jazz -- your love FOR jazz come from? J.J. Wright 5:24 I don't know. You know, it's, it's something I've been, I've asked myself a lot. Because in the past couple years as the director of the folk choir, we, we focused a lot actually on African American music. And of course, this is a music that I love and have studied passionately. You know, when I was a teenager, that is when I first started getting into jazz and I played in the jazz band in high school and, and started taking jazz piano lessons and but I remember when I first heard jazz, I thought it sounded terrible. And no joke like I just, I remember sitting in my car and listening to this recording. It was Cannonball Adderley playing "Straight No Chaser." And I can still remember being in the car and just like being confounded by what I was hearing and it was like, this is so cool and I don't understand how that any of this is happening but they all know where they are and they're improvising. And from there it just like ignited this passion for me to like really understand what was going on there. And so it's been fun the past couple years working with the folk choir like really revisiting how I first got into it and understanding like how something of course that came out of the African American tradition has formed me so integrally. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 6:38 Yeah. Wow. Well, now your new album "Vespers for the Immaculate Conception," is a project you've been working on for quite a while. Tell us a bit about the inspiration for this particular work. J.J. Wright 6:50 Yeah, so the first iteration of this piece came about while I was doing my doctorate here at Notre Dame. And when I first got to Notre Dame, I sort of had this idea that I was leaving jazz. Right? So like, I was like, Okay, now I'm going to go study church music and get my proper education. And yeah, and so from there, I, when I got here to Notre Dame, I was in a course in the first semester, Liturgical Prayer. And the professor she was like, Hey, you know, your, your background is in jazz, right? And I said, Yeah. And she said, All right, well, your project for this semester is to compose a jazz Vespers. And I was like, I don't know how to do that. But she's like, I can help you, you know, let's just, you know, we'll meet every week, and we'll kind of just talk through it and see how these two things might overlap. And, and so I ended up creating this sort of congregational service for the feast of the Transfiguration. And that was really my first experience of melody and jazz in sacred music. So that really led me to consider more seriously how I could do this in other ways. So, when I was getting ready for this recital as part of my doctorate, I had the opportunity to compose while I was doing musicological research on the Italian Baroque. And so part of the the aim for that concert was to really dig deep into a particular time in the history of sacred music, and do some hard-hitting research, do some transcriptions of the original editions, and then figure out you know, a good way to program that on a concert. And and so as I'm doing these transcriptions of Carissimi and Charpentier from the 17th century, I'm, it's kind of like filling me with all these ideas that I want to be able to say with my own composition. And so this piece just started to like, go from a really broad idea into something very specific by, you know, incorporating the Gregorian chant, the Invitatory from from Vespers and then going into a hymn from Carissimi that I was able to transcribe and then really taking that into my own composition to tell the story that is present in the Vespers for the feast. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 9:05 Well, and this piece, as you've kind of alluded is similar to some of your previous works like that, "Vespers for the Transfiguration" and your best selling 'O Emmanuel,' which they all start with the Psalms and prayers that are found in the Liturgy of the Hours. As somebody who's prayed the Breviary since college and absolutely love it, I found this particular work to be really amazing because it takes these familiar phrases and, you know, from the prayers and from the Psalms, and presents them in a in a new way that is kind of contemplative. And yet it's that verve, that drive of jazz, which I think kind of echoes what you're talking about. Jazz, you know, a jazz musician knows where they are in the music itself, but is presenting it in a fresh way. Out of order in some ways, you know, and kind of riffing on that. J.J. Wright 9:59 In the moment. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 10:00 And in the moment right, you refer to this particular work and some of your others as concertized Vespers service. That's actually drawing upon a kind of a well established musical tradition. J.J. Wright 10:14 Yes. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 10:14 So tell us a bit about kind of this idea of a concert. J.J. Wright 10:18 Yeah, yeah. So the, the best example of a concertized Vespers service, like in the tradition of sacred music is Monteverdi's Vespers, Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. And that piece, really became a huge inspiration for me, because when you see that piece, like you see all these different elements that Monteverdi was, you know, had his foot dipped into and he, you know, you have kind of like this little brass band on one side, and then you have the choir and soloists and then you have like this whole basso continuo section, which in my mind is, you know, identical really to the way a rhythm section functions in the 20th century. And so yeah, this idea of a concertized Vespers service speaks to the fact that it is a concert. And so it's, you know, we're being presented with the music and listening to it and being invited to meditate on the text through the sounds of the music. But at the same time, it is actually Vespers also. And so I think it's a really interesting way to invite people more deeply into sacred music just because, like you're saying, like when when you pray Vespers, you, you know, you spend so much time with each line, right? If you do it over and over, and one of the cool things about getting the opportunity to compose to these texts is that it is kind of like Lectio Divina out loud. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture Right? J.J. Wright Like I, you know, I'll sit there – the, the actual process of composing is kind of boring, right? Like, I sit there with the text and I read them over and over and over again. And I'm sort of, while I'm reading them, I'm hoping and praying that God will kind of inspire me with some idea about how to illuminate what's inside the text with the music that I can write. So. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:06 That's that is an amazing kind of reflection because, yeah, the repetition of reading, and then the, you know, moving towards contemplation, you know, and then you know, having spent time as a Dominican, then giving to others, the fruits of your contemplation is basically writing the notes and then performing it. J.J. Wright 12:24 Absolutely. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 12:26 Is there, with a piece like this. Is there a straight liturgical setting where this can be used as well? J.J. Wright 12:35 Well, I think that's up for debate. Some people, some people I've talked to you are kind of like, yeah, this is this is a Vespers, this. This would be like praying Vespers. Some people are like, well, it's out of order. And yeah, you know, it's, it's more of like, maybe like a devotional idea based on Vespers. When I think about it, it's really, it's like what I do just said, I mean, I'm, I'm using the form of Vespers to which, you know, is a beautifully well established forum and has been established over hundreds of years. Yeah. And, and I'm using that to inspire new ways for me to be able to think about sacred music. So I guess that the jury's out. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:20 Now this is going to be performed as a concert, but in a sacred setting. So you've got a concert coming up on December 5. J.J. Wright 13:28 Yes. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 13:28 Where this will be? Will this be the premiere? Essentially? J.J. Wright 13:31 Yeah, this is like the the CD release. It will be at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which St. Patrick's Cathedral is, is a place that's very dear to me. I had the opportunity to intern there when I was a student at The New School and, and formed a good friendship with their music director, Jenny Pasquale, and we've just stayed in touch over the years and when this project was, was taking shape on recording, I just kind of reached out to her and said you know, we really need a choir for this piece. Do you think the, do you think your choir might want to sing on it and all the pieces came together and we were able to have their choir on the, on the album. And then she was kind enough to invite us to to present the whole work at St. Pat's. Not exactly on the feast, but right before, so it's, it'll be on people's minds at least. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 14:15 Wonderful. And of course, I mean, it's the patronal feast of the United States of America. So, I mean, you're also doing something in a way patriotic. Wonderful. Well, now you've made reference to it a couple times, your day job is to serve as the director of the Notre Dame folk choir. You recently led the choir on a tour of East Africa. And earlier this month here in October, you presented the 26th annual concert for the missions, as well as then, of course, the day to day music ministry that adds so richly to our campus liturgical life. So tell us about working with the choir. J.J. Wright 14:53 Yeah. And so working with the choir has been incredible. This is my third year working with them. And like you said, our main ministry is to sing at the 11:45 Mass at the Basilica every week. And so that's kind of the "meat and potatoes" of what we do every week. And because of the infrastructure that the full choir has, we've been able to, to really embark on these really incredible and transformative projects alongside our main ministry. And they've, they've mutually enhanced each other. So as you said, we we had the opportunity to take a pilgrimage to the Holy Cross missions in East Africa. And so we went to Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, and six or seven different sites all through there. And it's been such a cool opportunity to, to think about Catholic identity, I think because to really be able to go and celebrate and worship with our brothers and sisters in faith, but who come from a completely different tradition.It was just so enriching. And so getting the students into this mindset and all of us working together. To really understand, you know, really different cultural iterations of our faith that are equally beautiful and equally meaningful, has just been awesome. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:12 Yeah. How many members of the choir went with you on that? J.J. Wright 16:15 We had 50 people on the trip. So we are in a high school bus, kind of driving through dirt roads, all through East Africa for about three weeks. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 16:23 Wow. Wow. How has your ministry changed? You know, having done, you know, been a kind of choir director before your formal studies. And now here you are, Doctor J.J. Wright, directing a choir. How how has your own ministry changed? J.J. Wright 16:41 It's changed drastically, to say the least. I mean, I mean, so much of our ministry now in the folk choir is really thinking about how to get the students actively engaged in their faith, not just for themselves, not just so that they go to Mass and pray and lead worship but so that so that through our formation and worship, they kind of break open the church and, you know, really evangelize the campus. And so that's kind of been our underlying process over the past couple years. And, you know, to be able to undertake this, this trip to East Africa and to to explore African American music has taken a lot of hands, you know, we, in preparation for the trip, we did a course through the Kellogg Institute, and everyone who went on the trip had to take the course and it was, you know, every couple weeks, we're bringing in visiting professors who, who all spoke to us, you know, about some of the things that we are going to encounter in East Africa. So obviously, poverty is is a big thing. Discomfort is a big thing, because the standard of living is different. Understanding the political climate, the cultural climate, the religious climate. So these were all things that we were really, really reflecting on as a group for at least six months before we went, and I really think that enriched the trip and helped us to be more in the moment while we were on the trip and to, to understand that, you know, we weren't really we're not going to save anybody, right? Like, you know, we hope we frame the trip is a pilgrimage. And our hope was really to, to meet God in these holy places, right. And as a Holy Cross institution, we understand that, that these are holy places that this is the Church that we're getting to go visit and how can, how can we bring all of our gifts to the table and learn to share with each other in this way so that we can all kind of grow together in faith? de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 18:46 Wow. It's and it's, I mean, imagine that. You were doing this, this formation in the context of a liturgical choir and yet it's human formation and, and the encounter. J.J. Wright 19:01 And so that's that that's a great way to actually summarize your your question, which is how is my ministry changed? It's, it's really kind of taken on this broader sense in which it's so important that we care for each other. And it's so important that we, we care for our brothers and sisters in the Church and outside of the Church. And when I was a younger musician that, you know, I kind of just had my eye on the music. And there's so much that goes into the way that we ultimately express this music. The music is really the expression of our faith, but the music itself, is it the music is not our faith itself. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 19:36 Right? Yeah. Wow. Well, now what are you working on composing now? What's next? J.J. Wright 19:41 Yeah, so right now, we are, I'm composing a new passion setting. And that passion will actually be premiered on April 3 in the Basilica. And this passion is a collaboration between the Notre Dame children's choir, so the chamber choir, which is ages 11 to 14 and the folk choir. And this passion is particularly interesting because we are really exploring the ways that the sex abuse crisis has shaped the church. And looking at the ways that by digging into the passion and understanding kind of our, like the emblem of Christ's suffering, we might be able to get a better lens or understanding of how we can live into this sex abuse crisis and really kind of walk with the church through it. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 20:39 Part of the, this year's ND forum kind of topic as well. Yeah. J.J. Wright 20:42 Yeah. And that's definitely, that that became part of the motivation. And, you know, I think the sex abuse crisis is such a difficult issue. And it's one of these things that's incredibly difficult to talk about. And part of our work around this project. To get back to your last question is to think about the ministerial elements that need to be present in order for in order for the music to ultimately be an expression of our faith. And so our work in the lead up to the performance itself is, is building these small groups in each of our sort of stakeholder communities. And so the one in the folk choir is already begun. And, and we get together weekly, and we have the text for the Passion, and we kind of just talk about what the experience is like, of being a Catholic, in a Church where the sex abuse crisis, you know, we're kind of just fully understanding the full extent of it. And, and especially for young students who we hope will become the future leaders of the church we, we want, at least I want them to be fluent in this. I want to be fluent in this because this is one of the, you know, the biggest issues I think of our time and it's not going away anytime soon. You know, and it's and to be able to talk about it thoughtfully and especially to be able to think it through in the context of faith, and through the light of faith right through. In the Passion we get to see suffering embodied, we get to see betrayal embodied and corruption and deception and all of these kind of same ideas that we're talking through. And by looking at the Passion, we get to see that Jesus already did all this stuff. And we have this beautiful example of the gospel itself that that can teach us if we can, if we can sort of unify our hearts and minds to, to the Passion, we can have a sense of place, in spite of all the evil in the world. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:32 Yeah. Wow. Well, J.J. Wright. Thank you so much for coming to be with us and congratulations on the new album. And, and we look forward to to hearing The Passion. J.J. Wright 22:42 Great. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture 22:50 Thank you to J.J. Wright. You will find links to his new album "Vespers for the Immaculate Conception" and to his previous albums, as well as a link to the folk choir's YouTube channel in the show notes. Subscribe to Ethics and Culture Cast so that you can always get the latest episodes by visiting ethicscenter.nd.edu/podcast. We would love your feedback. Please review the show on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts, and email your suggestions to cecpodcast@nd.edu. Our theme music is "I Dunno" by grapes, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. We'll see you next time on Ethics and Culture Cast. Until then make good decisions Transcribed by https://otter.ai