|
|
ABBOT, 62,
CARVES OUT SIDELINE AS ROCK GUITARIST |
The head of more than 25,000 Benedictine
nuns and monks worldwide has an unlikely sideline - as a rock
guitarist. Notker Wolf, 62, is not only the Abbot Primate
of all Benedictines but also guitarist for hard rock band
Feedback whose first album Rock my Soul comes out this
week. The album includes their own songs as well as covers
of tracks by Jethro Tull, ZZ Top, Van Halen and Deep
Purple. Brother Notker, who was appointed Abbot Primate two
years ago, said making music was the perfect balance for his
otherwise stressful job. But he says living in Rome, while
the band is based in Germany, and his duties of visiting all
341 Benedictine monasteries across the globe, leaves him
little time to practice. He said: "I nearly always take my
guitar with me when I am traveling. I've even practiced on
planes." Bavarian-born Notker Wolf, who has been a monk for
42 years, said the Catholic Church did not oppose his leisure
activities, adding: "Most believe what I do is really
great." His five fellow musicians admitted it was unusual
to have a man of God in their band but added they had known
each since they met at school near Munich as
children.
|
GOD UPSTAGED
SINGER'S CAREER |
Priest's boffo voice praises God not the
Phantom By RENATO GANDIA -WCR Writer
(Edmonton) -Imagine an opera
singer presiding at the celebration of the Mass. And
instead of performing arias, he is singing in his baritone
voice "Through him, with him and in him, in the unity of the
Holy Spirit. All glory and honor are yours Almighty Father,
forever and ever." Parishioners at St. Alphonsus in
Ontario, Canada, hear this whenever Father Paul Massel
presides in their liturgies. But step back about 40 years
to a time when Massel was 10 years old, and a reporter asked
him what he would be when he grows up. His answer was clear: a
priest and a director. In the end, he became an opera
actor, spiritual caregiver and later, a priest. "I knew
when I was 10 years old that I was going to be a priest
someday. I didn't know how I was going to get there. The
journey was not direct," Massel, who was in Edmonton
adjudicating at the Kiwanis Music Festival, told the
WCR. "Put it in God's hands and you will see where you need
to be." "At some point, I was going in all directions but I
knew someday I would get there. I never doubted that it was
going to happen," said the priest. As a young boy he saw
the priests in Toronto's St. Michael's Cathedral and he said,
"I wanted to be a priest like them. I wanted to be a musician
like them." "It's the idea that everything happens for a
reason," his mother would always say to him as a child. "I
have the music, the art, so I didn't see the road. I always
felt that God has given me music." This made him believe that
his calling was to be an artist. "Put it in God's hands and
you will see where you need to be." At the age of 10,
Massel began performing on stage. Following high school he
earned a bachelor of music and later a master's degree from
University of Western Ontario. He attended Toronto Opera
School and graduated with a diploma in opera performance. He
then won a grant from Canada's Council for the Arts and
studied in New York and worked with vocal coaches at the
Metropolitan Opera. Massel has been widely acclaimed in the
United States and Canada for his outstanding performances in
opera, music theatre and the concert stage. His career reached
international prominence with principal roles in the Stratford
Festival productions of The Mikado, The Gondoliers, Iolanthe
and the Mirvish production of H.M.S. Pinafore. These
productions were broadcast on CBC-TV and toured England,
Canada and the U.S. with the Tony award-winning Mikado being
Massel's debut on Broadway. "I had a career all over the
world as a singer. The last gig I did was Mozart's Requiem all
throughout Eastern Europe. I had a terrific career. Who would
have thought that in 1994, I would have gone in the direction
I did. I can't describe it." While still involved in
theatre, he cared for sick people in the early '90s when the
AIDS epidemic was at its height. While performing in Phantom
of the Opera many of his colleagues were on care teams working
with other colleagues who fell ill. "It was a very powerful
experience for me." After five years of doing Phantom, he
decided he needed a break from doing eight shows a week and
just one week off a year. Given his involvement in caring for
sick people, he thought the program in palliative care at
Seneca College would be a breath of fresh air. During his
first year of study there, he found thoughts of the priesthood
flowing through his mind. And at the same time, there was a
Called by Name program in the Archdiocese of Toronto in which
people identified parishioners who might have a
vocation. The deacon in Massel's parish came up to him and
asked, "Do you ever think of becoming a priest?" He
replied, "Of course I thought about it many
times." Priesthood was always at the back of his mind. "But
I thought God gave me this talent for music, so I better do
one thing right, that was my sort of thinking." His music
in hand, Massel took philosophy courses at the University of
Toronto to prepare himself for studying theology. When he
finished, he enrolled in the theology program of St. Augustine
Seminary as an external student. His plans were to be a lay
chaplain. With that in mind he studied clinical pastoral
education and completed a year of residency at St. Michael's
Hospital. While doing that, he was faced with realities
that made him strongly believe in the Catholic Church while at
the same time discouraging him from considering the
priesthood. "The wonderful people that I served at the
hospital, the families of the dying, took these big piles of
sand between me and the priesthood." Certain of his choice
this time, he contacted Bishop James Leonard Doyle and said,
"You know I've heard of this seminary in Boston, Pope John
XXIII, a seminary for men on their second career." Since he
already had one year at St. Augustine, Doyle agreed to send
him there. And, as they say, the rest is history. Ordained
in 2000, Massel also serves as the liturgist of the
diocese. As a priest-liturgist, he sees the interconnection
between his art and his faith. "Faith and art are
inseparable." When he felt the call to the priesthood and
decided to leave the theatre, people in theatre arts said,
"Priesthood? Isn't this the wildest thing you've ever heard in
your life?" And the theologians thought, "Actor?" They both
couldn't see the connection. But Massel tells the people, "My
career hasn't changed at all. The arts have always been a
tremendous spiritual experience for me and I believe for all
artists, whether they are traditional churchgoers or mainline
churchgoers or anything, the arts is a very spiritual
place." Indeed, when adjudicating in music festivals he
tells the students, "When you go on stage, you call on God, in
the spirit, to achieve a role, to play a character that you
can find within. It's not acting in the sense that you're
doing a phony thing. It's more real. "In fact when you
engage in the stage you have the opportunity of discovering a
reality that is far more true than the one we live
in." Massel believes that's what we do in our
liturgies. "We attempt to achieve what the apostle John was
saying, "seeing through the eyes of faith," said the
priest. All his homilies during the Holy Week dealt with
chronos and kairos, the sense of being in human time and the
sense of being in eternal time. "The stage is an eternal
time. The altar is an eternal place. It's scandalous to the
theologians when I say that about the stage. The actors don't
understand when I say that "when we celebrate the Mass, we
celebrate the same thing." Blending faith and arts
sometimes does not work for others. "That's the difficulty
for me - it's my experience in the arts that allows me to
access this so well. Because entering the stage for 25 years,
the stage has always been a place where your imagination
works, where truth came alive. If someone hasn't had that
experience, they can't experience as much on the altar. I
believe that our ability to pray is very much connected to our
imagination." He concludes his thoughts with the caution
that he believes most people's imaginations are atrophied
because today's secular society leaves nothing to the
imagination. "If they atrophy, so does our ability to pray.
It's the same thing."
.... Western Catholic
Reporter |
|
More
News:
NO POP SONGS IN IRISH
WEDDINGS
DENIS GRADY FINDS HAITI
CHILDREN'S JOY DESPITE POVERTY
INTERVIEW: FR. EDWARD
RICHARD
|
Send us your concert tour information- news@catholicmusicnetwork.com
|
|
|
|
Copyright ©
2003 CatholicMusicNetwork.com - All Rights
Reserved Webmaster | |
|
|
|