by Frank Bolton
When I was a sophomore at Brooklyn Preparatory School, then a Jesuit high school in Crown Heights, I played trombone in a six-piece band that parishes would hire for teenage dances.
Although it was at the cusp of the rock ’n’ roll era, most of the music we played was music common at wedding receptions like “The Bunny Hop,” “The Mexican Hat Dance,” and the “Charleston.”
The following year, I was corralled by the band’s drummer in the hallway at Brooklyn Prep, handcuffed (in fun) to a pipe, and told to sing. It was my audition for the spring performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan musical. I was not chosen.
Shortly after receiving the habit of a Jesuit novice years later, all of my classmates auditioned for the choir. I remember nothing about it except that again, I was not chosen. And then, a year and a half later, Jim French, a good friend a year behind me in the novitiate — a man who’d spent three years at the Cleveland Conservatory of Music majoring in piano — approached me. He asked me to join the choir.
Several weeks later, I was told to join the schola, the smaller select choir. A month later, he and Carl, a man in my year, told me I would become the music director for my year when Carl skipped ahead. That action by French, who was ordained a priest in 1974, changed a piece of my life.
Fast forward to Feb. 1, and the community chorus I’ve been singing with for more than 25 years, and have been the principal officer of for most of that time, performed in my parish “Mass for the Endangered,” a hymn for the voiceless and discounted, accompanied by a 12-piece orchestra.
The music combined the traditional Latin text used by Bach and Schubert with poetry by Nathaniel Bellows. The text touched on the dangers some people face.
We, and most other community choruses I know, don’t usually perform in Catholic churches. Some buildings are not appropriate, acoustics and accessibility being among the issues. But such events draw audiences. Some people, including singers, cried at the end of our performance. Father Robert Lauder has at times emphasized the importance of the humanities in fostering belief.
Here is a way to attract people to come into our churches. Seekers might accept an invitation to attend Mass with us. But anyone who is the least bit interested in music, or knows the singers performing, may attend a concert. It’s another way we can draw people to Christ and the Church.
Frank Bolton is a parishioner of St. Saviour Church in Park Slope.