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saI-natIOnal.ORg sPRIng 2014 PAN PIPES 7 dIstInguIshed memBers By ChrisTopher GaGe KCMeTropolis.orG s ince 1976, John Schaefer has been the canon musician at the Episcopal Cathedral of Grace and Holy Trinity in Kansas City, MO KCMetropolis contributor Christopher Gage sat down with Canon Schaefer to talk about his role in the Kansas City arts scene, and how things have changed over the past few years. christopher gage: thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me. i understand you just hosted a concert this afternoon. can you tell us more about the groups that perform at the cathedral? John schaefer: In the past, we have invited groups from outside, but now, we are more a welcoming venue for groups like the William Baker Singers. e Harriman-Jewell Series has brought English choirs here, and the cathedral itself recently sponsored a concert by the St. omas Choir School in New York. cg: How did you get started in sacred music? Js: My aunt and my uncle were both church musicians. It was fascinating to watch my aunt play the organ, these two keyboards and all the stops, and, fortunately, we were affiliated with churches that had good music programs—or if they didn't, we were close to others that did. I liked the sound of the organ and the music that was being done, and when the time came to go to school, I chose to go to Ohio State, where the organ and church music professor Wilbur Held was really nurturing. cg: Have you always worked for episcopal churches? Js: My background is Lutheran, and I went from Ohio State to Union eological Seminary, where I had a Lutheran church for two years. I had the good fortune to go to England and spend a year in London at the Royal Academy of Music. I was also at New College Oxford, one of the two colleges at Oxford with choral programs. cg: who has been the biggest influence on your career? Js: David Lumsden was the organist of New College, and what I do has been inspired by the way he did things. His musicianship was profound, and he was interested in nurturing new composers and exploring new music. cg:what has changed about the Kansas city arts scene since you have been involved? Js: My wife and I came here in October of 1976, and the William Jewell series [e SAI Chapter of Gamma Psi is at William Jewel College in Liberty, MO.]. had already been established. e [Kansas City] Philharmonic was then the orchestra, and e Friends of Chamber Music were just getting started. If there were any churches doing really fine music that I can recall, they were St. Andrew's and Second Presbyterian. Of course, nothing had blossomed quite as now; it was a pretty sleepy place—even the cathedral. We did not have a very good choir—we started with five boys, twelve men, and an organ that was falling apart. My first job was to grow the boys' choir, and the program, including the [adult] Trinity Choir, began to develop pretty nicely. Some of the members of the boys' choir have gone on to do pretty significant things in and beyond the arts. e Trinity Choir became rock-solid around the early 1980s. e organ was installed in 1981, and that made a significant difference in our lives because we were able to do better literature than before. We had for ten years the Cathedral Artist Series, then two troubled years when the nave was shut down; somehow, we lost the energy to keep the series going. But the choir was working really hard, and we did significant choral pieces, like the Bloch Sacred Service and the Mass in C of Beethoven. We have concentrated on choral evensongs in the past couple of years. cg: evensong is a wonderful tradition; how did it get started at the cathedral? Js:e Evensong service is a unique service to the Anglican tradition, started in the time of Henry VIII, and brings together aspects of the devotional offices of Vespers and Compline, as would be found in monasteries. We started doing it because we were touring and we needed rehearsal; that was the inspiration for doing Evensong. ere had been some Evensongs before I arrived because there was a pretty decent batch of evening canticle settings in the choir room, so, somewhere along the line, my predecessor got it started. cg: and the trinity choir has an england tour coming up? Js: We took a tour last year to four cathedral cities, and we're talking about going again in 2016 to two cathedral cities, Exeter and Norwich, for two residencies, each of which is one week. When we do Evensong, it's preparation for that particular tour. cg: Does the choir go to other places in europe, as well? Js:In 2001, we went to Europe and sang in Paris, Salzburg, and Florence. cg: where do you see the music program's role in the anglican choral tradition? Js:We subscribe to a traditional approach, although we don't necessarily ignore some more recent developments in church music—for example, we do some Taizé chants, and today we did a pretty hot spiritual that dealt with Lazarus. If people were looking for a church with traditional music, we'd be it, and our reputation seems to be along those lines. Fortunately, we have an adult choir that can support that. cg: what is your favorite kind of music to play or conduct? Js:Vaughan Williams and Howells, but also Byrd and Gibbons. ose are the four composers whose music I really enjoy. I also like William Mathias, the Welsh composer, a lot. cg:if you could talk to someone who has never been to the cathedral, what would you tell him or her? Js: To expect to worship in a very beautiful, spiritual place; to be encouraged to participate as fully as possible; to know that there would be a welcoming group of people. It's not a cold congregation, and it's a very diverse one. A lot of people have come to the choir because of the literature and the quality of performance, but they've stayed because of who we are as a congregation. Movers, Shakers, Stalwarts: National Arts Associate John Schaefer National Arts Associate John Schaefer is article first appeared April 16, 2014 on the KCMetropolis website. Used with permission. SHAEFER continued on page 7

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