THROUGHOUT WORLD HISTORY, MUSIC HAS HAD VARIOUS PURPOSES. SOMETIMES TO STIR AN ARMY TO WAR, OTHER TIMES TO WOO AND COURT A WOMAN, TO TELL A STORY, SET A STAGE FOR A DRAMA OR SIMPLY TO EXALT BEAUTY THROUGH THE ART ITSELF.
MOST IMPORTANTLY HAS BEEN THE USE OF MUSIC TO APPROACH GOD IN WORSHIP. EVERY RELIGION HAS A WAY OF MUSICALLY REACHING OUT FOR GOD, OR SINGING TO ONE ANOTHER ABOUT THEIR CREATOR/SAVIOR.
PIANIST AND COMPOSER DEANNA WITKOWSKI HAS TAKEN RARELY APPROACHED CHALLENGE OF MELDING MUSIC ASSOCIATED WITH CHURCH, BE IT HYMNS OR LITURGY, AND ADDING THE SENSIBILITIES OF JAZZ. HER LATEST ALBUM, MAKES THE HEART TO SING, IS AN INSPIRING COLLECTION OF SONGS FOR A SUNDAY MORNING, BUT WITH THE ADDED JAZZ DIMENSION, BRINGS NEW WINE INTO OLD WINE SKINS.
WE RECENTLY HAD A CHANCE TO HAVE A TALK WITH MS. WITKOWSKI, AND HER INSIGHTS ON JAZZ AND WORSHIP IS QUITE ILLUMINATING.
THE HYMNAL ALBUM IS QUITE A CHANGE FROM YOUR PREVIOUS ONE, WHICH FEATURED MUSIC BY CHOPIN
All of my records are different from each other. I have four other recordings. Three are arrangements of jazz standards and one earlier one that dealt with sacred music with vocals.
YOUR EARLY CAREER HAD YOU WITH LIZZ WRIGHT. DID SHE GET YOU INTERESTED IN RELIGIOUS MUSIC?
I met Lizz before she signed with Verve. I had been in the Atlanta area doing some gigs, and met her; she needed someone for her band for the summer. We did a bunch of European jazz festivals. That was great because she was touring for her first record, Salt. It was a lot of fun, and the music had a lot of gospel influence.
But I’ve grown up with church music. I’ve started writing for churches when I lived in Chicago right after college in the mid 90s. I attended a church there (LaSalle St Church) that had the first Sunday I went there a Dixieland jazz band that was meeting there as guest musicians for the day.
The main thing I remember noticing was that the people liked the music, but the congregation wasn’t really singing. It was like they were an audience.
I joined that church and told the pastor “I’m a jazz composer and if you ever want to do a jazz service again I’d love to try putting something together.” That’s how I started doing it.
We did 3-4 jazz services, and I played a lot there but had no choice of the music. I was given the hymns and told them, “Let’s see what we can do with them.”
We did a vocal quartet version of “Come Sunday” to bring the church and jazz together.
I moved to New York at the end of 1997 and got a full time church musical director job. They wanted a composer; they had a gospel choir with different instrumentalists, so I wrote two jazz masses there. Lots of responses for the congregation to sing.
When I left that job I realized I had the beginnings of a body of work that other people might want to use. I eventually wrote out piano scores for all of my sacred music as a lot of church musicians are not jazz players, but they could now use it.
This latest record is in that line.
YOUR MUSIC IS PRETTY ECUMENICAL. DID YOU GROW UP IN A PROTESTANT OR CATHOLIC CHURCH?
I grew up in Protestant churches, but moved a lot. By the time I was done with high school I had moved 11 times. So, practically speaking, we’d go to towns and go to whatever church was open. There was one town where my mom didn’t have a car so we had to go to a church where we could walk to it.
I went to Wheaton College in Illinois, which is a Christian college and started attending an Episcopal church. The church I also went to in Chicago was not any denomination, but they were involved with social justice and tried to mix different traditions from different churches and liturgies.
After attending different churches in New York I converted to Catholicism as an adult in 2009. But, I still mostly work in Protestant churches doing a lot of guest work.
LITURGICAL MUSIC OF ANY SORT IS RARELY DONE, OUTSIDE OF ARVO PART. WHAT IS THE ALLURE OF SACRED MUSIC? WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
For me, it came organically, marrying group singing with jazz. I grew up as a classical pianist, so I was used to things being written out.
Anything that you do, week in and week out, whether it’s church or some other ritual, can very easily become old. Especially things like hymns and formal prayers that are done to the same tune every week, a lot of it just passes by.
Part of what jazz in particular brings is surprise and a newness. I think that the harmonies help deepen the text so that you can stay with a word or phrase more
I think a lot about the text when I’m arranging or reharmonizing a hymn. I want people to actually be able to have a medium for an emotionally deeper experience.
I really believe that especially in the US there are not many chances for people to sing together other than religious communities or in choirs people may join. It’s not part of our culture as in Brazil, where singing together is just what people do!
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Part of what jazz in particular brings is surprise and a newness
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MUSIC HAS A GREAT WAY OF UNITING PEOPLE. WHAT DID YOU NOTICE ABOUT SINGING WHEN YOU SPENT SOME TIME TEACHNG IN KENYA?
One thing that I saw a lot, and it kind of made me sad, is that the churches I visited were doing only Western songs
DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU APPROACH MUSIC DIFFERENTLY IF IT IS HYMNS, SACRED MUSIC OR MORE CONTEMPORARY SONGS?
I can’t speak for the people that write the “pop” material, because I don’t know what their approach is.
I think that, for example, you are in an African-American church where they song choruses that are really short that are repeated a lot with very similar texts such as “I’m so glad that Jesus lifted me,” there is something that comes with the repetition. It helps make the text get deeper.
I think that with hymns, one thing that often happens because even if it’s a short form such as “How Firm a Foundation” you may remember some snippets, but it’s harder to remember the whole text, because there’s a lot of it.
A lot of text goes by really quickly, which is why I do hymns arrangements where I want there to be moments where you can sit with the text and feel it differently.
I also write a lot of originals songs for congregational singing and they are definitely jazz -influenced, particularly in the harmonies. When I write original material, I try to figure out where it fits in the service, what might happen before or after. If I’m writing or studying a text I want the tone to influence it.
HOW DID MARY LOU WILLIAMS INFLUENCE YOU?
I started learning about her in 2000 when Billy Taylor asked me to bring my group to play at the Kennedy Center for the Mary Lou Williams Festival. At the time I didn’t know any of her music, so I figured that if I’m playing at a festival dedicated to her, I’d better go learn something!
There was a new biography about her called Morning Glory and got my hands on whatever recordings I could find and that’s how I learned that she had all of this liturgical music.
She was a very inventive composer who was ahead of her time; she was always experimenting. She was playing chords that didn’t become commonplace until bebop before even beboppers were doing it.
She was also rooted in the blues and boogie-woogie, having a swing feel that was amazing which goes through a lot of her music.
She was always studying, learning to write orchestral music when the formal training of orchestration. Her trajectory of music was huge; she had this huge breath of musical styles that she played. She didn’t just live through the various periods of jazz; she played them!
One thing that I think is really beautiful about her liturgical music is that she has this mission that jazz should be a form in everything, including churches. It was a natural thing when she converted to Catholicism and started writing liturgically. She rarely had to work to get places to perform them.
I feel these parallels with her, as she would go all over the country and get her Masses done with different choirs. It could be amateurs, and she would adapt the music if she had to because she wanted people to be singing it.
I’m just now signing a contract to write a biography of her
HAVE YOU HEARD DAVE BRUBECK’S LITURGICAL MUSIC?
Yes. I’ve heard “Light in the Wilderness” and while I don’t feel I’ve been too influenced by him, I certainly appreciate how a jazz composer mixed his worlds together.
WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO TAKE AWAY FROM THE HYMNS AND CHOPIN ALBUMS?
I think people can come to the Hymns album from different places. Some of these hymns were American folk tunes, like “How Firm a Foundation.” Someone can come to it and not know the original tune and still appreciate the trio. They might not know how different this arrangement is from the original, but still enjoy it as a record.
People that may be familiar with the songs, or know the text have told me things like “I was listening to your record and singing the text that I know along with it.” It gives people a new way to experience these hymns and enjoy them differently.
Also, thinking of “hymns” is not just four part harmony with an organ!
MORE MODERN SONGS ARE HARDER TO SING ALONG WITH, AS THEY ARE MORE RHYTHMIC THAN MELODIC.
Some of the modern music is not really written in a way for groups to sing. It took me a long time with my original music that really goes into things like range that jumps. I don’t want people to have to sing big jumps unless they are set up really well.
As far as rhythm, I think that the only hymn that I have on the record that is really syncopated is “All Creatures of Our God and King” and if you sing along with it, you can catch on, even if you don’t get every beat.
THE WAY PEOPLE SING IS HOW THEY APPROACH GOD, AND IF YOU ONLY HAVE ONE DYNAMIC IN SINGING, YOU INHERENTLY LIMIT YOUR RELATIONSHIP IN TERMS OF RANGE AND DEPTH OF EMOTIONS
Exactly, just like there are different forms of prayer. There’s also silence and then there is speaking.
One of the things that I appreciate about being a jazz musician and mixing it with sacred music is that somehow, what I do allows spaces of rest.
DEANNA WITKOWSKI HAS FOLLOWED THE PATH OF JAZZ ARTISTS LIKE THOMAS DORSEY, ARVO PART, MARY LOU WILLIAMS AND DAVE BRUBECK IN THAT SHE HAS BEEN ABLE TO MAKE JAZZ THAT IS INSPIRATIONAL IN THE TRUEST SENSE. CHECK OUT THE HER LATEST ALBUM, AND GET READY FOR SPENDING TIME IN APPRECIATION OF HER CREATION AND HER CREATOR.