Spotlight On: Cultural Arts
The hour was late, and yet in the Christ Church Cathedral Nave, the music of J.S. Bach kept coming.
There was a flute sonata, a violin sonata, a piano partita and finally, an organ fugue. As the last note faded, cathedral Cultural Arts Committee co-founder Susan Dupont rose to applaud the end of a six-hour Bach marathon.
She wasn’t alone.
“I stood up and turned around and there were all these people,” she says. “I was stunned.”
The Cultural Arts Committee knows how to draw a crowd. Its 20th anniversary season is underway, and the schedule includes baroque and organ concerts, an icon writing retreat and Bachanalia, the annual evening of immersion in the music of the great composer.
Also on the 2024-25 calendar are evensong services, a chorister festival, the annual festival of lessons and carols, and Nashville Unlimited, a holiday season concert program that supports the city’s homeless. Those events are not under the committee’s auspices but are part of the Cathedral’s Arts Series.
Supported financially by Friends of the Cathedral, the committee’s ministry extends beyond the parish. Attendance for Bachanalia can reach 800, and more than three-quarters of the audience are visitors. Committee members consider concert receptions an important part of their ministry.
“It’s our role as a cathedral to be welcoming to the whole community and to open our doors,” Dupont says. “The arts series has been very successful that way, but you have to keep working at reaching out.”
The committee is in the market for newcomers. Dupont was chair for 10 years, and Jack Hill has been chair since 2015.
“We need new blood,” Hill says.
“There is an opportunity to be involved for anyone interested in art or music or theatre,” Dupont says.
It’s a labor of love that can involve lots of labor, such as with Bachanalia, which is scheduled for Friday, March 28, from 4 to 10 p.m. The concert last April featured pieces by more than two dozen acts, from a harp quartet and bassoon ensemble to a youth choir, a chamber orchestra and organ virtuosos. Nearly 100 musicians performed, and all were volunteers.
“There’s nothing else like it in the country,” Hill says.
“It’s just a beautiful event,” committee member Sheri Sellmeyer says. “There are so many talented musicians who do it for a t-shirt and dinner and an appreciative audience.”
Sellmeyer has coordinated Bachanalia volunteers for the past decade. About 50 are needed over three shifts.
“Some come back year after year, but we’re always looking for new ones,” Sellmeyer says. “My challenge is I need to recruit younger people. If you take a two-hour shift, it goes by really quickly, and you can stay and hear wonderful music.”
Bachanalia, which began in 2009, has sponsor support and makes a profit used for other programs. They include Music City Baroque, scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 2, which features an early music ensemble.
One of the stars of the arts series is the cathedral organ, which ranks with the best in Nashville. Its installation, after many years of planning and work, was completed in 2003.
The majestic instrument features three keyboards and 3,370 pipes. Dr. Michael Velting, the cathedral’s Canon for Music, says the organ is capable of a wide range of sounds and tonal colors that makes it suitable for classical recitals as well as leading congregational singing.
“It is designed to look like it has always been here, and the way it’s built, it’s going to last centuries,” Velting says. “With its capabilities, from the softest flutes to the loudest tubas, it’s like an orchestra in a box.
“It’s fun sitting at Bachanalia and watching people’s reactions – people who have never been in here before, or are just not used to the organ. They turn around and just sort of gape at it. I love that. It’s really powerful.”
An organ recital by Katelyn Emerson is scheduled for April 6, and Velting hopes to reschedule a recital by Alcée Chriss III that was postponed.
Nashville Unlimited has been expanded to two nights and will be Monday and Tuesday, Dec. 9-10. Coordinated by bassist and producer Dave Pomeroy, last year’s concert featured Emmylou Harris and other Americana stars, as well as the Nashville Jazz Orchestra, and raised nearly $18,000 for the ministry of Room In The Inn.
The arts series is more than music, and one of the staples on the Cathedral’s cultural calendar is the icon retreat, scheduled for Monday-Friday, Feb. 24-28. With the aid of an instructor, participants follow a model to create their own icon of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, in a small-group, meditative environment, using acrylic paint and gold leaf on wood.
“I’ve been doing it since it started,” Dupont says. “You start with a blank board, and you fill in from the bottom out. As you’re working, it begins to appear and become flesh, so to speak, which is sort of a miraculous process. Everybody’s icon turns out looking amazing – it doesn’t matter the skill level.”
The Cultural Arts Committee was conceived at a church retreat, and the first season in 2004-05 featured a full concert program. One early event was a viewing of the silent movie “Phantom of the Opera” with organ accompaniment.
The committee also staged theatre productions with local directors in the Nave. The most successful was “Crowns,” a musical celebrating Black history, which ran for five performances. The most recent play was a musical about Frederick Douglass in 2015, but in recent years the church has lacked the necessary leadership expertise to stage theatre events.
The arts series thrives nonetheless, ensuring the Cathedral remains at the center of the city’s culture.
“It shows we value art and beautiful music, and we want to share that,” Sellmeyer says. “We want to be a place of peace and beauty in the middle of downtown Nashville.”
