Spotlight On: BreakingBread@6
The worship service begins, and the assembled ensemble – piano, bass, drums, trombone and tenor saxophone – launches into a tune that would sound at home in a Manhattan jazz club on the other Broadway.
The interim rector seated near the altar bobs to the rhythm and smiles, as do many congregants.
This is Jazz Mass, two words that nearly rhyme but might seem incompatible. The musicians are the Hymntett, members of the Ted Wilson Quintet who can also be found in other configurations on stages at City Winery, 3rd and Lindsley, and Rudy’s Jazz Room. The Hymntett plays the last Sunday of each month during Breaking Bread@6, the weekly Sunday evening eucharistic service at Christ Church Cathedral.
Led by the Rev. Richard Wineland, the service provides an evening option for worship and is more casual and contemporary than Sunday morning gatherings. Attendees will hear a sermon, receive communion, and sing, but there may also be sax, drum, or banjo solos.
“The services are really meant to be a portal for people who have little or no experience with liturgical sacramental spiritual tradition,” Wineland says.
“The ideal person for me is somebody who is searching and on the pilgrim path. When that person walks in the door, my primary interest is to make them feel welcome and find ways to make the Episcopal liturgy more accessible. We need to preserve the integrity of our worship and the beauty of our liturgy, and at the same time make it easy to be a part of.”
Wineland is a lifelong musician who has performed at the Grand Ole Opry and sings with the Nashville Symphony Chorus. He keeps two guitars in his church office and will cheerfully punctuate a conversation with a few bars of “Classical Gas.”
A Mennonite pastor early in his career, Wineland at first found liturgical sacramental worship appealing but confusing.
“I was lost,” he says. “I didn’t grow up in this tradition. I didn’t know why they were doing the things they were doing.”
That experience contributes to his empathy for visitors to the Cathedral. Its downtown location amid a large, diverse population provides enormous opportunities for growth, but walking into a new church requires courage, Wineland says. He wants to reduce the anxiety of newcomers as much as possible.
“The truth is the Episcopal Church has lost a lot of worshippers since the late ’60s,” he says. “At some point, unless we reverse that decline, we’re going to be statistically insignificant. It’s incumbent on us to find ways to make this ancient, beautiful tradition more accessible. We have to be more hospitable and welcoming.”
Maura Black Sullivan found the atmosphere at Breaking Break@6 embracing when she first moved to Nashville. She now chairs the church’s evangelism commission.
“The Sunday night service was a great entrée for me,” she says. “I loved the music. I loved the people who came to the service. I loved the atmosphere, the feeling of camaraderie and sense of purpose and joy. And it’s fun.”
Attire is casual – congregants might come directly from a football game wearing Titans gear. The bulletin includes annotations that explain rituals, such as why the sign of the cross is made at a particular moment, or why parishioners stand for a reading of the Gospel.
And the celebrant is often holding a guitar.
“I’ve got the greatest job,” Wineland says. “I get to talk to professional musicians every week and play with them. One of the perks is that I can insinuate myself into the ensemble.”
Wineland began leading BB@6 in 2020, and when the pandemic lockdown ended, he started hiring union musicians. Featured artists have included Jerry Kimbrough, a guitarist for the Grand Ole Opry house band, and Teri Reid, who has played keyboards with Ronnie Milsap.
Wineland sometimes performs with his wife, Lee Armstrong Wineland, a longtime professional musician in Nashville.
“Having Richard and his wife play duets on the piano and guitar is just lovely,” Sullivan says. “You feel like you’re part of the family.”
A wide variety of music from different cultures plays a defining role in Breaking Bread@6. A recent Celtic eucharist included an Irish fiddle and mandolin, and other services featured music from South America, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Wineland added a Taizé service inspired by an ecumenical monastic community in France that writes its own worship music.
“The songs are chantlike and easily learned,” Wineland says, “and the music has a lot of space for silence and prayer.”
Jazz joined the playlist in 2021 when Wineland recruited Wilson, a pianist, arranger and music director for both the Nashville Jazz Orchestra and Christ Lutheran Church.
Wilson has a library of about 150 hymns with jazz arrangements. Because the pieces are instrumental, congregants experience hymns by swinging rather than singing. “For All the Saints” becomes an Afro-Cuban piece, and “Let Us Break Bread Together” is rendered in the style of Count Basie.
“We try to offer a different perspective, and shed a new light on the text and the experience,” Wilson says. “Improvisation is a big part of it. The jazz musicians share their souls through the improvisation.”
Taizé services are held three or four times a year. A bluegrass mass (which does rhyme) is planned for May.
“For me, the ideal service would be some Gregorian chant, and then a jazz take on some New Orleans spiritual, and then something from Appalachia,” he says with a smile. “The divine is everywhere, and music speaks to everybody.”
By Steve Wine