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
- Center for Literacy Education names ‘A Wish in the Dark’ 2023 Alexandria Award winnerThe Alexandria Award recognizes a middle grade or young adult book that advances Gospel values through the positive actions and portrayals of tenacious adolescents. It is named for St. Catherine of Alexandria, an adolescent Christian of the fourth century who was an eager student and a famed orator. Copies of the book will be given to schools across the country, including local schools in South Bend, and will be accompanied by a curriculum insert designed by an expert teacher offering a sample lesson plan.
- John and Sue Sobrato receive Notre Dame Award for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic EducationThe Alliance for Catholic Education awarded John and Sue Sobrato, known for their deep support of Catholic schools in the Bay Area and beyond, the 2023 Notre Dame Award for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Education. The award is the highest honor bestowed by the Alliance for Catholic Education.
- de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture co-sponsors conference on legacy of Pope Benedict XVIThe de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, in partnership with the Ratzinger Foundation and the Benedict XVI Institute, is hosting a series of academic panels discussing “Benedict XVI’s Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, Culture, and Politics,” with the first event to be held Wednesday (Nov. 29) at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
- Notre Dame to observe 100th anniversary of the death of Servant of God Brother Columba O’Neill, C.S.C.The University of Notre Dame is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of Servant of God Brother Columba O’Neill, C.S.C., on Nov. 20 (Monday), with a series of events including a novena, a Mass and a spotlight exhibit at the Hesburgh Library.
- ND experts respond to ‘Laudate Deum’: Tackling climate change is ‘a fundamentally human and social problem’On Wednesday (Oct. 4), Pope Francis released “Laudate Deum,” an apostolic exhortation on climate change, intended as a follow-up to his 2015 environmental encyclical, “Laudato Si’.” Below, experts from the University of Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters and Keough School of Global Affairs offer their insight into the new document.
- de Nicola Center to award 2024 ND Evangelium Vitae Medal to Elvira ParraviciniDr. Elvira Parravicini, founding director of the Neonatal Comfort Care Program and associate professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center, will receive the University of Notre Dame’s 2024 Evangelium Vitae Medal — the nation’s most important award for heroes of the pro-life movement — at a Mass and dinner on April 27 at Notre Dame.
