Events

Upcoming Events

Building Organ Repertoire for Sunday Parish Use

Avoiding Church Musician Burnout

2025 CISM Graduate Student Continuing Education Seminar

Working for the Church can be hard, but Our Lord needs laborers who remain close to Him, with a loving heart and resilient spirit. We’ll discuss some of the challenges of serving God through a life devoted to sacred music, and talk about ways to avoid getting burned out. 

For current CISM students only. Live via Zoom, with no archival access available

Lecture, Abbot Benedict Nivakoff, O.S.B. (Abbey of San Benedetto in Monte, Norcia, Italy)

2024–2025 Public Lecture and Concert Series

Et ut Musica in Convivio Vini (Eccl. 49:2): Music and Wine for Monks, Musicians, and Men of Good Will

This talk will bring to light the epistle text from the July 11th feast of St. Benedict and ask and answer some important questions: How did the saint who encourages abstinence from wine and a life without laughter come to be described with a text that talks of music and wine? How can St Benedict help the musician work with priests who seem not to understand music? How can St Benedict help priests and seminarians to work with musicians?

Sancta Maria Hall (In-person only), St. Patrick’s Seminary, Reception following the In-Person Event

Ward Method Check-up

2025 CISM Graduate Student Continuing Education Seminar

For students trained in the Ward Method level 1 through the “Teaching Gregorian Chant to Children” course, we’ll check in on how your teaching is going, discuss how to address challenges, and fine tune our pedagogical techniques in demonstration activities.

For current CISM students only. Live via Zoom, with no archival access available

Making Great Liturgical Aids

2025 CISM Graduate Student Continuing Education Seminar

Need some fresh ideas or typesetting help? Join typesetter extraordinaire Matthew Fong and Dr. Donelson-Nowicka for a deep dive on software, typefaces, music notation, translation sources, and more.

For current CISM students only. Live via Zoom, with no archival access available

Musicam Sacram (1967) – Directed Reading Group

Topic #1 of Spring 2025 Workshop Series

Mondays, February 10 & 17, March 3 – 5:30 – 6:30 p.m., PST

Join Drs. William Mahrt and Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka as we read the 1967 Instruction from the Sacred Congregation of Rites on the implementation of Sacrosanctum Concilium in the realm of sacred music. In addition to the content of the document, we’ll discuss the background for the document, its current legislative status, and its implications for the practice and understanding of sacred music today. 

Instructors: Drs. William Mahrt and Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka | Live via Zoom

Planning a Local Sacred Music Workshop

2025 CISM Graduate Student Continuing Education Seminar

Want to plan an event to help people in your area better know and love the Church’s treasury of sacred music and Her teachings about it? Join the CMAA’s Janet Gorbitz and Dr. Donelson-Nowicka as we get you started on planning your own workshop by discussing lead time, facilities, schedule, personnel, catering and hospitality, supplies, and programming music for the event. 

For current CISM students only. Live via Zoom, with no archival access available

Clara Gerdes Bartz – Organ Recital

2024–2025 Public Lecture and Concert Series

Tota Pulchra Es: Chant-based Organ Music Honoring the Mother of God

Complete program forthcoming.

Clara Gerdes Bartz holds degrees from the Curtis Institute of Music and Yale School of Music. She has served as organist and music director at a variety of churches around the New York City area including St Bartholomew’s Church, Park Avenue and The Church of Most Holy Redeemer-Nativity. She has served as instructor of organ at Westminster Choir College and is frequently featured as solo recitalist in venues around the country.

Main Chapel (In-person only), St. Patrick’s Seminary, Reception following the In-Person Event

Vocal Technique for Aging Voices

Topic #2 of Spring 2025 Workshop Series

Mondays, March 10, 24, and 31 – 5:30 – 6:30 p.m., PDT

Do you have older choir members in your parish music program who need assistance in tackling vocal technique challenges that arise later in life? 

Are you an older singer looking for technical advice to develop or maintain your sound? 

In this 3-part workshop, singer, voice teacher, and Feldenkrais instructor, Karen R. Clark presents lessons to both older singers and teachers of older singers on how aging voices can improve consistency and stamina in their singing of chant and the choral repertory. In each session, Karen will present brief awareness lessons and offer vocal exercises to bring greater ease to enhance the joy we experience in singing. 

Session 1 – How to organize “dynamic posture” for singing, exercises for sustainable and balanced muscular engagement

Session 2 – Breath awareness and pure tone singing

Session 3 – The speech articulators: jaw, tongue, teeth, and palate, and how these interrelate to shape sounds for optimal tone production

Instructor: Karen R. Clark | Live via Zoom

Catholic Missionaries, Gregorian Chant, and Local Music in German East Africa, 1891–1961
Lecture, Anna Maria Busse Berger (UC, Davis)

O2024–2025 Public Lecture and Concert Series

The most important German missionaries in German East Africa arrived from the Benedictine monastery St. Ottilien in 1891. They argued early on that African music was similar to medieval music, and thus introduced Gregorian chant with great success in all of their mission stations. One of their missionaries, P. Meinulf Küsters, a trained anthropologist and curator at the Munich Anthropology Museum, was in close contact with the comparative musicologists Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Marius Schneider and made recordings for the Berlin Phonogramm Archiv. When Schneider published his Geschichte der Mehrstimmigkeit (History of Polyphony) in 1934 he sent it to Küsters in Tanganyika. A few years later, another priest, Jean Baptist Wolf, found the book in the library, compared Schneider’s transcriptions to the Graduale Romanum, noticed the similar tonal language, and introduced the chants which were most similar to Ngoni songs into the church service. In short, we have a conscious effort by a missionary to imitate local music from a study of transcriptions of this very same local music made a few years earlier by a comparative musicologist in Berlin (who had never been to the area) of the very same music he is surrounded with.

Sancta Maria Hall, St. Patrick’s Seminary, In-person & Online via Livestream, Reception following the In-person Event

Clergy Chants of Holy Week: Spanish

Topic #3 of Spring 2025 Workshop Series

Monday, March 31 – 3:00 – 5:00 p.m., PDT

Are you ready for Holy Week? Are you a priest, deacon, or musician who trains clergy and who would benefit from understanding the chants of the clergy? Join us for this timely session to head into Holy Week well prepared to sing the sacred liturgies of this most holy time of the year. The chants covered will be in Spanish, according to the settings in the 2018 Misal Romano (USCCB) and the Passion narrative settings by José Ballón according to the traditional chant tone, including the concluding planctus tone. Workshop instruction will be given in English, while the chants will be in Spanish.

The chants included in the workshop are:

• The gospels of Palm Sunday (before the procession), Holy Thursday, and Easter Sunday
• A short review of the “solemn tone” for presidential prayers
• The prefaces of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday (Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper), and
• Preface I of Easter
• Good Friday petitions
• The Exsultet
• Easter Vigil blessing of water
• Easter dismissal
• Passion narratives, according to St. Luke and St. John

Instructors: Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka & José Ballón | Live via Zoom

Clergy Chants of Holy Week: English

Topic #4 of Spring 2025 Workshop Series

Monday, April 7 – 4:30 – 6:30 p.m., PDT

Are you ready for Holy Week? Are you a priest, deacon, or musician who trains clergy and who would benefit from understanding the chants of the clergy? Join us for this timely session to head into Holy Week well prepared to sing the sacred liturgies of this most holy time of the year. The chants covered will be in English, according to the settings in the 2011 Roman Missal (ICEL) and the Passion narrative settings in English by Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka according to the traditional chant tone, including the concluding planctus tone.

The chants included in the workshop are:

• The gospels of Palm Sunday (before the procession), Holy Thursday, and Easter Sunday
• A short review of the “solemn tone” for presidential prayers
• The prefaces of Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday (Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper), and
• Preface I of Easter
• Good Friday petitions
• The Exsultet
• Easter Vigil blessing of water
• Easter dismissal
• Passion narratives, according to St. Luke and St. John

Instructor: Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka | Live via Zoom

Tenebrae: The Church’s “Office of the Dead” for Christ Crucified
Lecture, James Monti (Dunwoodie, New York)

2024–2025 Public Lecture and Concert Series

From at least as far back as the sixth century, the Church has begun her daily worship on the
three days of the Easter Triduum with a unique solemnization of the Divine Office known as
Tenebrae, a sung liturgy hewn from the Scriptural prophecies of the Passion to form a veritable
“Office of the Dead” in which the Church mourns the death of Christ. The sacred texts of this
office inspired a priceless treasury of plainchant and later a vast corpus of polyphonic settings,
particularly for the Scriptural centerpiece of Tenebrae, the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Our
purpose will be to explore the history, the meaning, the music and the striking ritual actions of
this profoundly moving office, which in recent years has undergone an amazing resurgence,
fostered by the magnetic appeal of its compelling sights and soundscape.

Live via Zoom

2nd Annual Sacred Music Study Day

Details and registration forthcoming.

St. Patrick’s Seminary, Menlo Park, California

Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit

The Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit gathers together Catholics who love Christ, the Church, and the Church’s sacred liturgical tradition for: 

• the solemn celebration of the Mass and Vespers;  
• insightful talks on the sacred liturgy, liturgical formation, and the sacred liturgical arts; 
• and fellowship to build fraternal bonds through which the clergy, religious, and lay faithful can support the Church and one another in their promotion of the sacred liturgy. 

Music at the Fons et Culmen Sacred Liturgy Summit will be provided by a 16-voice professional choir of the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music, under the direction of Prof. Christopher Berry and Dr. Jennifer Donelson-Nowicka, joined by organist Dr. Aaron James.