Creating the Passion: Notre Dame Folk Choir invites students to compose original lyrics and music
J.J. Wright wanted to reconceive a project he'd started with the Notre Dame Children's Choir when the annual President's Forum asked the campus to reflect on the clergy sexual abuse crisis.
The project was an original composition of the Passion, the Gospel stories leading up to and including Jesus's crucifixion and burial. Wright immediately saw parallels between the religious story and the sexual abuse crisis, ranging from betrayal and cover-up to an unwillingness to stand up for those who are most vulnerable.
He believed the parallels offered an opportunity for the students he now directs in the Notre Dame Folk Choir—because artistic creation could be a way to work through complex feelings and questions. And it came at an intense moment, in that perplexing period when the COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to a halt and sent college students to isolation at home.
“You can make a melody say something,” Wright said. “These are the conversations that you have when you're learning how to be an artist. How do you translate emotion into something material?”
Three years later, those emotions are material in the form of an album released on February 22. Recorded last year during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to experience the story's setting, the 95-minute original composition was featured on a Folk Choir tour of performing arts centers on the East Coast during Notre Dame's spring break this March.
Read more here.
Latest Faith
- Notre Dame Vision program celebrates 20 years of in-person programmingFor the past 20 years, Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s and Holy Cross students of different majors and walks of life have given their summers to empower high school students to ask big questions during one-week summer conferences on Notre Dame’s campus.
- de Nicola Center presents Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal to Robert P. GeorgeClick for a video profile of Robert P. George The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture presented the 2023 Notre Dame Evangelium Vitae Medal…
- Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism names new co-directorsAmerican studies and history professor Kathleen Sprows Cummings, who has led the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism for the past 11 years, will step down from the position in June, with Notre Dame historian Darren Dochuk and theologian David Lantigua becoming co-directors. Cummings, the Rev. John A. O'Brien College Professor of History, has been associated with the center for nearly 30 years, starting when she arrived at the University as a doctoral student in history.
- Confronting cultural change: Divinity students seek intercultural competency to improve ministryStudents in Notre Dame’s Master of Divinity program cited a visit to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe as the emotional highlight of their pilgrimage to Mexico City. Seminarian Johnny Ryan, C.S.C., said getting to experience Mary’s maternal love for everyone was more powerful than he expected even though he was familiar with the story of Mary’s appearance before Juan Diego in a vision in 1531. He brought back prayer cards with the iconic image that thrilled his Latino students at Saint Adalbert…
- Sister Helen Prejean, others to speak at biennial Catholic Social Tradition ConferenceGuests including anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean, of “Dead Man Walking” fame, and Bishop Alfred Agyenta of Ghana will deliver remarks during the upcoming Catholic Social Tradition Conference from March 23 to 25 at the University of Notre Dame.
- Sister Rosemary Connelly to receive 2023 Laetare MedalSister Rosemary Connelly, R.S.M., former executive director of Misericordia and lifelong advocate for individuals with developmental disabilities, will receive the University of Notre Dame’s 2023 Laetare Medal — the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics — at Notre Dame’s 178th University Commencement Ceremony on May 21 (Sunday).
