A drum set, bass, sax and piano in front of the stately, gothic, wood-and-stone sanctuary at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest? Jazz improvisations in the middle of a thousand-year-old prayer form chanted by monks and nuns at the end of the day called Compline? Strange bedfellows.
The 50 or so people who participated in the first Evenswing service at Grace on Sept. 9 didn’t seem to think so. They participated enthusiastically in the whole service, including hymns played in the jazz style.
The idea for combining the spontaneity of jazz with the structure of liturgical worship took several years to form. Both Jonathan Oblander, director of Music and organist at Grace, and Bruce Modahl, the pastor, had experienced jazz worship at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in the Citicorp Building in New York. Members at Grace had noticed that from time to time Oblander would play little improvisational riffs during hymns sung at evening services and liked what they heard. In addition, the staff at Grace was looking for a vehicle in which they could reach out to segments of the community who weren’t attracted to traditional worship.
Oblander, having noticed the success of the Taize service at Ascension on the first Friday evening of each month, suggested that Grace hold a jazz evening service at the same time on the second Friday of the month. The decision to go ahead was made in the spring of this year. Oblander recruited musicians during the summer and Evenswing?#34;”even” for evensong and “swing,” well you get that?#34;began on the second Friday of September.
Why jazz?
“One of my goals with this service,” Oblander said, “is to share with the community how much of music, if not all of music, can be used to worship God. Jazz does fit well with worship, and, who knows, maybe it will touch somebody that maybe is unchurched, and they might find a closer relationship with Christ.
“Another thing is that there are some Christian traditions that embrace spontaneity. In an Assemblies of God church, for example, you will see people dancing in the aisles and speaking in tongues. There is a spontaneous expression of what you can give to the Lord?#34;not just what is printed in the hymnal?#34;that goes with jazz.”
Why liturgical worship?
“We are aware that there are some traditional Lutheran churches that feel they are losing members to more contemporary churches. Unfortunately, what many of those contemporary churches do is throw out all the traditions they used to have in order to replace them with something else. What they wind up with is services that have no form. Liturgy has a purpose. Liturgy is like a drama with everyone having a part to play.”
How does one combine a musical genre characterized by spontaneity with formal liturgy?
“We wanted to preserve the dynamic structure of the liturgy but also to introduce a new sound.”
The trick for Oblander was making the synthesis work, finding a way to make traditional forms swing in a way that was worshipful and that allowed people in the pews to participate.
“In the case of the two hymns we sang right out of the Lutheran Book of Worship on Sept. 9,” he explained, “the melody of the hymn wasn’t changed at all, but the undercurrent?#34;what was going on underneath?#34;is changed. I think the two can coexist.
“One of the hallmarks of Lutheran worship is congregational participation, an emphasis that every voice is important. When we design a jazz service, we want to have that aspect in there. For the basic liturgy we chose a jazz service written by a pastor in Florida named Robert Carr which has melodies that are simple and repetitive. Likewise, the four musicians understood that their purpose was not to confound the congregation with so much complexity that they could not possibly follow along. Yes, there were times when the four of us got to do our own thing, but for the majority of the time, we were accompanying the people just like I would be doing on the organ on Sunday morning.”
Oblander noted that much of popular music today is a fusion of different styles and said that is what they are trying to do with Evenswing?#34;to take a traditional prayer form like Compline and combine it with a rather new musical expression known as jazz and let each bring out the best in the other. He laughed when he remember a quote attributed to Martin Luther almost 500 years ago. When accused of pirating melodies from drinking songs for some of his hymns, Luther responded, “Why should the devil have all the good tunes.”
“I hope that the word gets out,” Oblander said. “that people come and tell others.”
For more information, call Grace Lutheran Church at 366-6900.
