Jazz Pilgrimage in Cheshire

Jazz vespers evolved in New York City in the 1960s, originally attracting musicians who were too exhausted by their weekend work schedules to attend regular Sunday morning services. Grounded in African American musical traditions, the vespers creatively combined prayer, music, and the spoken word in new ways – much like jazz itself.

The concept has found a monthly home at in Cheshire, where the Theodicy Jazz Collective will perform on Sunday at 5 p.m.

St. Peter's Jazz Pilgrimages series is an outgrowth of the church's monthly traditional Evensong chorister services. "I thought it would great to have something that used a different style of music, but was also authentically part of our home community," said associate priest David Stayner.

Last year Stayner developed the program with the help of Theodicy pianist Andy Barnett, who was then interning at St. Peter's, and local guitarist Joel Renker. "People liked it a lot, so this year we thought that we would try to come up with a format that would be flexible and that people would enjoy," Stayner said.

"The things that are happening in Cheshire are storytelling jazz vespers," said Theodicy drummer Justin Haaheim. "The idea is to mix jazz with the story of someone who is important in U.S. or world or Christian history and integrate them into each other, so that the music is responsive to story and the story is responsive to the music."

"I was thinking that we could choose people whose stories can be inspiring in the sense of giving people hope that they could make a difference in the world," Stayner explained.

The Sunday event will center on Catholic social activist Dorothy Day's founding of Houses of Hospitality to shelter the poor during the Great Depression. A previous program honored  Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman, while figures being considered for future events include naturalist John Muir, abolitionist William Wilberforce, martyred Salvadoran bishop Oscar Romero, and Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W.

For the past two years, Theodicy has presented a program based upon the story of Good Friday at St. John the Divine in New York City, finding common ground in American spirituals, Taizé singing, and the compositions of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Taize' singing began in France during WWII.

Band members typically meet with church leaders for what Haaheim calls "collaborative brainstorming" to choose a theme for each service. "It's an interesting avenue for us to pursue our own faith and shape the church in ways that we think are important," he said.

It is also a steady paying gig. The group was stunned when the church of St. Paul and St. James in New Haven hired them to play at its main Sunday services for a full year. Haaheim acknowledged the risk the church took by incorporating such a non-traditional element into worship services, but noted that attendance has doubled since Theodicy began playing there.

Preparing for the weekly service is serious, time-consuming work, but the fixed schedule allows the musicians to play concerts and vespers at churches in Connecticut and around the Northeast.

"For us this music represents this interesting middle ground of doing something important in the church that in the best of times we feel helps do the work of the church," Haaheim explained. "Also, it's taking what is normal New England Episcopal worship and stretching it, pushing it out of its comfort zone. Over and over again, one of things that's been really meaningful to us and to the places we've gone is finding ways to take the congregation and leaders of the church to do things that stretch them a little bit, so that they find them to be really freeing and opening and cool and beautiful and spiritually meaningful," Haaheim said.

 Stayner said that the music has been popular with an intergenerational audience at St. Peter's, adding that it has been  helpful in providing answers to young people who want make a difference in the world. "The combination of music that gives you a chance to reflect and think and also have a great time, in combination with stories, seems to provide a little window into that."

The Jazz Pilgrimages program based on the life of Dorothy Day is open to the public on Sunday at 5:00pm at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, 59 Main Street, Cheshire.

Theodicy's website can be found on Facebook: www.facebook.com/theodicyjazz

Samples of their music are also available online: http://listen.justinhaaheim.com/album/theodicy