Current gigs

St Giles Family Mass Community

Mostly playing bass, although occasionally I’ve done drums and piano.

Past gigs

St Monica’s

Just a one-time thing where I sang for Holy Thursday Mass. It ended up being a not especially welcoming musical environment.

St Mary Magdalene

One Sunday I showed up at Mass and there was no keyboard player. During communion, I asked the woman who was leading the songs a cappella if she’d like me to play and she gratefully said yes. I improvised accompaniments from the music issue and afterwards ended up becoming the music director for that Mass for about a year until my wife and I moved out of the parish.

Holy Name Cathedral

Gallery Singers

This was easily the highest prestige role I filled. I sang in the baritone section & we did a lot of really nice 20th C. classical stuff (Dominick Argento, Pablo Casals, Francis Poulenc, John Rutter). The standard of musicality is top drawer (and we’re the second-tier choir). My key goals here were to develop my abilities as a singer and to learn as much about choral directing as possible by working under Matt Walsh. In the short time that I’ve been with the group, I advanced remarkably on both fronts.

Holy Name Singers

As close to a folk choir as Holy Name gets. With this group I played guitar and sang tenor or bass depending on who’s there on a Sunday.

St Teresa of Avila

Occasional Sundays playing bass. The only church gig where I’ve been asked to turn up the bass.

FOCUS choir

This had been an unnamed group until it acquired the appelation above courtesy of Mary Prete when she directed us at the Corpus Christi mass at Soldier Field (June 2000). The quality (and size) of the group varies from occasion to occasion, but we frequently are graced with notables like Mark Fechner on sax and Bill (Plu) Harmon on drums. The group sings 2-4 times a year including the Focus conference and Theology on Tap closing mass. On a couple occasions, I led the group for special performances at area parishes

Sub work

I’ve filled in for absent choir directors/organists on a few occasions, not as much as I’d like (although the Gallery Singers commitment has also reduced the time I have available for such things as well). Past churches have included St Pius X (Stickney) and St Benedict (Irving Park in Chicago). I am not an organist although I hope one day to remedy that.

St Clement’s – Chapel Choir

I played bass and sang, eventually leaving after being recruited into the Holy Name Cathedral choir

St Michael’s

I played at St Michael’s for about a year and a half before leaving with some frustration over the musical direction. We tended to play only songs from the 70s and the director was not only loathe to stretch the musical boundaries of the members of the music ministry, but seemed incapable of detecting the members’ strengths and weaknesses (or even vocal ranges). During my time at St Michael’s I played guitar, bass, keyboard, percussion and sang tenor or bass as needed.

Old St Pat’s

I was at Old St Pat’s for a year playing bass. Musically it was great, but I never really cared for OSP as a parish and Bill Fraher, the director, while excellent musically was interpersonally a disaster. When I moved and getting there on Sundays became difficult, I decided to move on.