Summer Festival of Sacred Music at St. Bart's Continues 9/14

The Summer Festival of Sacred Music at St. Bart's continues on Sunday, September 14 at 11 am with a service featuring Bob Chilcott's A Little Jazz Mass.

Bob Chilcott (b. 1955) is one of the most active and prolific choral composers and arrangers in Britain today. Most of his youth was spent singing choral music, particularly as a chorister and later a choral scholar for King's College Choir in Cambridge. As a member of the famed King's Singers, he worked with such jazz luminaries such as George Shearing, John Dankworth and Art Farmer. He also worked as an arranger for the BBC. Since 1997, he has been a full-time composer and is published exclusively by Oxford University Press.

His A Little Jazz Mass was composed in 2004 for the Crescent City Children's Choir Festival in New Orleans. It is a setting of the Latin Ordinary of the Mass in a purely jazz idiom. Chilcott's experience in the jazz medium is clearly in evidence here with brilliant chromatic harmony for the choir and instruments and great ease in writing in styles from swing to blues.

St. Bartholomew's Boy and Girl Choristers will be accompanied by a jazz trio including William Trafka, Pianist, Pedro Giraudo, Bass and Sam Lazzara, drums.

The Summer Festival of Sacred Music now in its 20th season, takes place each Sunday morning at 11 am at St. Bartholomew's Church during the summer months. At a time when most churches reduce their musical offerings, St. Bartholomew's Church provides outstanding sacred music sung by St. Bartholomew's Choir and Boy and Girl Choristers, two of New York City's most renowned choirs. Works include an array of mass settings from the 15th century to the present embracing a diversity of cultures from around the world. The music is sung as part of the 11 am service, the liturgical context for which it was composed. All Summer Festival events are free and open to the public.

The Summer Festival of Sacred Music takes place at St. Bartholomew's Church at the corner of Park Avenue and 51st Street. Subway: 6 to 51st Street. For more information, call (212) 378-0222 or visit our website for the complete schedule.