A Note from Nicholas

Organist, singer, and choir director Nicholas Halbert sang in our boys’ choir and was St. Paul’s Organ Scholar in his teens. He returned to serve as our Artist in Residence for the past year. As of August he will be moving on to the next step in his musical career.

Dear Cathedral Family,

Music is at the heart of Christianity. The Old Testament testifies to the presence of singing and instruments in the Temple of Jerusalem, and throughout the Psalms we are urged to worship our God through music. We still have hymn texts from the earliest days of the church, and western harmony and counterpoint emerged from Notre Dame in the Medieval era. Every church carries on the tradition of sacred music, and we all join our voices in the eternal song each week when we sing hymnody or meditate on the music of the choir and organ. There are many facets to the ministry of the cathedral, but certainly one of its most public is its musical offering to God and his community.

At St. Paul’s, we are lucky to have inherited an institution that was built over decades – an institution committed fundamentally to worship. Sacred music at its finest points the listener towards God and helps them to experience transcendence within worship. Equally important, it is an offering to God, a physical manifestation of faith. Especially in the last century, churches are also increasingly becoming cultural centers within a community, and the presentation of non-liturgical music has become an opportunity to increase fellowship between the congregation and its neighborhood. Many of us, myself included, came to St. Paul’s for the beauty of worship, and then found community and spiritual nourishment here.

The pandemic has been a challenging rift in that tradition, and our entire society. People have become isolated, and the interest in communal activity has shifted. Recovering from the pandemic has been more difficult than any of us could have imagined due to its deep and lasting psychological effects.

The role of an institution is to provide constancy, in good times and bad. At St. Paul’s, we have proudly worked to reinstitute that reliability this last year. Evensong is now heard every week of the year, one of the few churches in the United States to maintain that frequency. This allows our congregants to worship in the special beauty of that service without a pause, and we have heard from people all over the country that they watch our livestreams at the end of their Sunday routine. As we have faced challenges reliably filling some open spots in our choir (as every church in this county has this year), we have continued to perform choral music of the highest quality. There are not many churches where at every service you will hear the finest organ music ranging from Bach and Widor to incredible improvisations being created in the moment.

The choristers have successfully begun the process of preparing to return to singing Evensong. After concerns over the most recent Omicron variant in the Fall, most families reached a point of feeling comfortable with starting rehearsals in late January. Over the last six months, the group of brand-new young choristers has steadily grown both in number and musical confidence. Choir camp will occur the third week of August: please help us spread the word to any children you know. Being a chorister here is a life-changing experience. We hope that some of the choristers will be musically ready to appear in liturgy at the cathedral later this Fall.

St. Paul’s presented an incredible concert season this last year. We are fortunate to have two wonderful spaces for music on campus: the Great Hall, with its stunning Steinway piano, and the Cathedral, which has a perfect pairing of instrument and acoustic that makes it one of the premier venues for organ music in the Southwest. The St. Paul’s Chamber Music Series brought incredibly talented artists to our hall and allowed audiences to experience some of the next generation of the classical world in an intimate space. The Opus 68 Series of Post-Evensong Organ Recitals celebrated the tenth anniversary of the restoration of the Quimby organ with five concerts demonstrating the full range of our instrument. Our Friday afternoon organ series has built up a considerable online following and is one of the most-viewed videos from the Cathedral each week. Every one of these performances is an opportunity for evangelism, as members of the larger community can experience our spaces in a non-liturgical context. Music at the Cathedral helps us center ourselves in this neighborhood and bring people through our doors.

The consistency of an institution is only possible when each generation to inherit it works enthusiastically to maintain it for the next. As you know, there will soon be a capital campaign to raise funds for a new music center. In the coming months, you will hear many of the details about why this is vital to the successful functioning of the music program. For now, please consider that helping with the construction of the music center is part of our duty as custodians of this place. Any institution is made up of two halves, there are those who curate it – the music staff, the choral singers, the artists who perform here and call this place home – and there are those who watch over it and support it. We are all part of that larger group. Consider the ways in which you can actively be a keeper of the Cathedral’s musical legacy. One of the most important things you can do is simply be present and partake in the programming throughout the year. I would leave you with this challenge: next year, how many of the cathedral’s musical offerings can you come to? Bring a friend to one of our many special liturgies like Lessons and Carols or St. George’s Day. Perhaps a colleague would be interested in a secular concert in our Great Hall. How can you help bring people to musical events at St. Paul’s and welcome them to the Cathedral community?

It has been a pleasure to serve you and worship God alongside you, I am filled with infinite gratitude for the opportunity to have done so.

Sincerely,

Nicholas Halbert