Called a “singer’s conductor,” Christopher Berry came to be a choirmaster almost accidentally. His education and experience were initially focused on organ performance and improvisation, but, through his work as accompanist for acclaimed conductors and ensembles, he developed a passion for choral music. 

His early experiences working under Robbie Giroir at the Cathedral in Baton Rouge introduced Mr. Berry both to the organ and the beauty of Gregorian chant, but the next few years of his life were focused primarily on organ study. Berry went on to study organ performance with Jesse Eschbach at the University of North Texas, followed by graduate work with James Higdon at the University of Kansas. While at the University of Kansas, he laid the foundation for his choral career by studying conducting with Michael Bauer. At that time, he also had the opportunity to work with Simon Carrington, an experience that was formative. Meanwhile, Mr. Berry spent a summer in Paris to study with Marie-Claire Alain and Madame Duruflé. His time with all these teachers left him with a love of early music that continues to this day. 

Toward the end of his studies, Mr. Berry was awarded a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship from 2000–2001 to study in Paris. There he worked with François-Henri Houbart at the conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, where he was awarded a Premier Prix at the culmination of his studies. While his time in Paris was primarily intended for organ study, it also provided the opportunity to sing under the baton of Ned Tipton as well as with the Choeur Gregorien de Paris. He audited a course at the Paris Conservatory in Gregorian chant conducting under Louis-Marie Vigne. These experiences fed Berry’s burgeoning love of chant and choral singing, and would change the course of his career. 

Returning to the states in 2001, he was finally able to occasionally take the baton himself under the direction of Peter Latona at the National Shrine in Washington, D.C. He then moved to New York, where he was able to form a new ensemble at Holy Trinity RC on the Upper West Side that sang a full program of chant and polyphony. At the same time, Mr. Berry was gaining insight into working with choirs as an accompanist for Andrew Megill, Anton Armstrong, and Dale Warland at Westminster Choir College. He was able to glean tremendous insight into how to shape choral sound while observing these conductors at work. He was soon able to apply this knowledge in his work with seminarians.

As the Director of Music for the Pontifical North American College in Rome, Mr. Berry had the opportunity to explore the repertoire of Gregorian chant while training the seminary choir to sing at ordinations held in St. Peter’s Basilica. While in Rome, he conducted a concert in the Sistine Chapel for Patrons of the Chicago Symphony, and recorded Regina Immaculata, to celebrate the college’s 150^th anniversary. 

Upon his return to the states in 2009, he took the helm at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, where he cemented his reputation as a choral conductor. There, he led choral residencies at Canterbury Cathedral, St. George’s, Windsor, Westminster Abbey, and Litchfield Cathedral, where he received perhaps the greatest compliment a choir can receive, “You are an English cathedral choir,” from the cathedral Precentor.

Since then, Mr. Berry has developed a reputation for bringing choirs to new heights. A short time after arriving in Milwaukee and establishing a new choir at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, the group was asked by the AGO to sing a three-choirs concert, along with the choirs of the Catholic and Episcopal cathedrals. In 2015, he made a choral recording, Pax Tibi, featuring some of the beloved repertoire of that majestic church. 

Since 2019, Mr. Berry has been director of music at St. Stanislaus Oratory in Milwaukee, directing its choir and establishing new ensembles. Trained in semiology during his time in Paris, he has had to become an expert in the Classic Solesmes method for his work for the Institute of Christ the King. In his “free time,” he is enjoying delving into the scholarship behind the mensuralist approach to chant. He is a sought-after clinician, and he has most recently been on the choral conducting faculty of the Church Music Association of America Colloquium. 

Mr. Berry lives just south of Milwaukee, though his heart is ever in his native South, where he grew up playing music, soccer, and visiting Civil War battlefields. He still loves those things today, along with newfound interests—but most of all, any and all time spent with his beloved wife and six daughters. 

Sandra Raquel Bengochea, soprano, has established a remarkable reputation for her exceptional performances in the lyric coloratura repertoire. Critically acclaimed for her natural vivacity and undeniable charisma, Opera News describes her as “a performer who brings joy from the first note to the last.” With an extensive career spanning over thirty operatic roles, Sandra has captivated audiences with her remarkable portrayals of characters from headstrong Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro to the iconic title role in Manon. Her talent has graced prestigious companies including Bangkok Opera, Opera San José, Great Falls Opera, Opera Idaho, Intermountain Opera, and Tel Aviv Opera. Sandra’s versatility extends beyond the operatic stage, as she effortlessly commands both concert and recital performances. Notably, she has impressed audiences with her soprano solos in masterpieces such as Orff’s Carmina Burana, Schubert’s Mass in G, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem, and Mozart’s Requiem. These powerful performances have been hailed alongside accomplished orchestras, including The Winchester Orchestra, The Santa Clara Chorale, The San Jose Chamber Orchestra, The San José Symphony, The Sacramento Chorale Society, and The Midsummer Mozart Festival. Notably, she made last-minute appearances as a replacement for legendary vocalist Frederica Von Stade during a performance with The Midsummer Mozart orchestra at Villa Montalvo. 

Outside of her artistic pursuits, Sandra has enjoyed over a fifteen-year career as an instructor in higher education. Her expertise has been valued at esteemed institutions such as San José State University, West Valley College, Modesto Junior College School of Music, and Stanislaus State University, where she currently teaches applied lessons, Diction, Opera Theater, Art Song Repertoire, and Vocal Pedagogy.

Sandra’s creative vision extends beyond her performances, as she is also an award-winning stage director. Recognized by the National Opera Association, she has received two awards for her outstanding productions. 

Sandra notes her extensive time participating in choral singing all throughout high school and college to her success as a solo performer. Under the direction of Dr. Charlene Archibeque, Sandra was a member of the choral ensemble “Choraliers” that participated and placed first in “The Choir of the World Competition” in Tallinn, Estonia.

Sandra Bengochea received her Master’s Degree from The Manhattan School of Music. She is a devoted wife and mother of two sons and has been active as an advocate for those affected by autism.

Joseph Dyer is a scholar of medieval plainchant and liturgy, and a retired professor of the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he taught music history. His church music career began in elementary school, playing the organ for Benediction and Stations of the Cross. He has played for chanted and solemn Masses (Roman and Dominican rites), solemn pontifical Masses, as well as for sung Lauds, Vespers, and Compline. He studied Gregorian chant with Msgr. John Ronan (Toronto), a pupil of Dom André Mocquereau. He has served as organist/director of music for Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran, and Congregational churches. He holds the Associate degree of the American Guild of Organists and is a Fellow of the Royal School of Church Music. He co-edited for ten years the journal Plainsong and Medieval Music (CUP).

His dissertation (Boston University) was on the offertories of Old Roman chant. He has written more than sixty articles and book chapters, and has contributed dozens of entries on chant and liturgy to the second edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Oxford Music Online (including “Roman Catholic Church Music,” “Liturgy and Liturgical Books,” “Rome: The Middle Ages”) and to Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (“Einstimmiges Offertorium,” “Psalm, lateinisch, einstimmig”).

His published essays have encompassed the fields of liturgical chant and liturgy, monasticism, performance practice, medieval music theory, and music in medieval intellectual life. Some recent articles have treated “Reconciliation, Blessing, and Commemoration in the Holy Thursday Liturgy of Medieval Rome” (Archiv für Liturgiewissenschaft, 2014), “Palm Sunday at St. Peter’s (Rome) in the Twelfth Century” (Beiträge zur Gregorianik, 2015), “St. Peter and His Neighbors: Reflections on Roman and Italian Chant and Liturgy” (Nationes, Gentes und die Musik im Mittelalter, 2014), and “Theories of Origin and Survival of Old Roman Chant” (Études Grégoriennes, 2020). Articles on Roman topics to be published this year include essays on the dedication of the Pantheon, the rite of the fermentum in early fifth-century Rome, and Old Roman chant Masses for the Dead. He recently delivered a paper on the Bible in the liturgy at a conference in Spoleto.

Major publications include The Scientia artis musice of Hélie Salomon: Teaching Music in the Late Thirteenth Century (Routledge, 2018), an edition, translation, and commentary on a thirteenth-century chant treatise, and Readers and Hearers of the Word: The Cantillation of Scripture in the Medieval Liturgy (Brepols, 2022). He has recently finished a book on the dedication of the Roan church of Santa Prassede. A collection of essays, Chant, Liturgy, and the Inheritance of Rome: Essays in Honour of Joseph Dyer, was published in 2017 by the Henry Bradshaw Society (UK).

Frank La Rocca’s career has traced a path from the severity of an academic modernist style, through a period of sunny minimalist concert works to finding his voice in sacred choral works and music for the Roman Catholic Mass. “The net impressions are of luminous sacred introspection, transcendental effect, and breathtaking beauty,” wrote Lindsay Koob, reviewer for American Record Guide, about Frank La Rocca’s debut CD, In This Place. Of La Rocca’s “O Sacrum Convivium,” composer and organist Richard Clark wrote, “…anchored in tradition, it speaks with the authority of the ages yet with the innovation of modernity. Imbued with the Spirit, it is timeless.”

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1951, he was educated at Yale (B.A.) and the University of California at Berkeley (M.A., Ph.D.), where he earned his doctorate “with distinction,” the first time such an honor was conferred on a music composition graduate at Berkeley. His 36-year teaching career included positions at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and at the California State University, East Bay (Hayward), where he also served as Department Chair. From 1984 to 1998 La Rocca was Executive Director of the new music concert series, “Composers, Inc.” in San Francisco, and was one of its founders.

Mass of the Americas—the first Cappella Records CD of La Rocca’s music—has been hailed as “perhaps the most significant Catholic composition of our lifetimes” (Michael Olbash), and “the best liturgical composition for the Mass since Duruflé” (Michael Linton). La Rocca is the recent winner of the ORTUS international choral composition competition for his Miserere, and was awarded the 2018 American Prize for his A Rose In Winter—the life of St. Rita of Cascia,” a major work for chorus, orchestra and soloists.

La Rocca’s work has been recognized with grants, commissions and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, the Foundation for Sacred Arts, Young Women’s Chorus of San Francisco, ASCAP Foundation, USC Thornton Chamber Singers, Vanguard Voices, London Festival of Contemporary Church Music, Cois Cladaigh, the Madrigirls of Glasgow, and many others. Among the distinguished ensembles performing his work are The Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Benedict XVI Choir, London Oratory Schola, Lumen Valo, California Symphony, and Alexander String Quartet.

His discography includes Canti d’Innocenza on the SCI label, String Trio and Secret Thoughts on CRI, numerous a cappella choral works by the San Francisco Girls Chorus, Young Women’s Choral Projects, Tucson Girls Chorus, the Meistersingers, and Vanguard Voices; and his solo CD, In This Place on Enharmonic Records. He is published by Boosey and Hawkes, GIA/Walton Music, Santa Barbara Music, and Lumen Verum Music.

La Rocca is composer-in-residence for the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Catholic Scholars and Artists.

Fr. Joshua Neu was ordained a priest in 2015 and completed his licentiate in Sacred Scripture in 2017. He has served in variety of ministries, in parishes, campus ministry, vocations, and faith formation. After spending two years on the faculty at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, LA, he recently began serving at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, CA, as an Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture and the Director of Liturgy.

From childhood Dr. Pepino has been an avid student of Latin, particularly as the language of liturgical prayer and everyday communication in the Roman Catholic Church. After a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Classics (Greek and Latin), he studied at the Catholic University of America for a Ph.D. in the Fathers of the Church with a particular interest in Latin Christian literature as an innovative heir to its pagan parent.

This led him to take part in the preservation and revival of Latin in the Church; in fact he is the Academic Dean of the Veterum Sapientia Institute, whose mission is just such a preservation and revival. As a member of the Veterum Sapientia Institute, he is pleased to collaborate with the Catholic Institute of Sacred Music, since both institutes aim at fostering the Church’s tradition.

Edward Schaefer is president of The Collegium, a liberal arts college in Western Maryland. Dr. Schaefer holds four degrees in music, including the D.M.A. in Liturgical Music from The Catholic University of America. His post-doctoral studies included work with chant scholars around the world, studies at Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, and singing for six months with Le Choeur Grégorien de Paris. He is an expert in the musical notation of Carolingian chant, the oldest musical notation in the Western world, and he has a particular interest in the interpretation of chant, and its restoration to the liturgy.

Dr. Schaefer has directed choirs dedicated to the musical patrimony of the Church for his entire career. His groups have been recognized with invitations to sing in the United States at state, regional and national conventions of the American Choral Directors Association and The Music Educators Association, and in Europe at an international chant conference honoring the twenty-fifth anniversary of Le Choeur Grégorien de Paris.

Dr. Schaefer is the translator of Daniel Saulnier’s Les Modes Grégoriens and Le Chant Grégorien, both published by Solesmes. He is also the author of Catholic Music Through the Ages, published by Hillenbrand. Currently, he is completing Antiphonále Duplex, an Antiphonal for Benedictine Lauds and Vespers, in which the nuances of Carolingian notation are incorporated into the modern square-note chant notation. Dr. Schaefer is a secular oblate of the monastery of Lady of Clear Creek in Oklahoma.

He is also the founder and president of The Collegium, a college that embraces tradition in the pursuit of truth. All faculty and staff of The Collegium take the Oath Against Modernism, as well as the Oath of Fidelity.  Collegium students engage in a holistic program of academic, spiritual, physical, and social formation. More information is available at www.the-collegium.org.

Fr. Nick Schneider is a native of Bismarck, North Dakota. A priest of the Catholic Diocese of Bismarck, Father will celebrate his 14th anniversary of ordination this summer. He treasures the gift God gave him in being called to be a priest. After serving as the pastor of Christ the King Parish for five years, Father is now the Director of Worship for the Diocese of Bismarck and the pastor of the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in Crown Butte.

Father holds degrees in music (University of Mary, Bismarck), Catholic humanities (Campion College, San Francisco), philosophy (Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus), theology (Pontifical University of St. Thomas, Rome), and both a Licentiate and Doctorate in Sacred Liturgy from the Atheneo St. Anselmo in Rome, Italy. He holds the AMS 9-12 certificate from the Montessori Elementary Teacher Training Collaborative (METTC) in Boston, MA, and is currently working toward the AMI 6-12 diploma from The Montessori Institute in Denver, CO.

Fr. Schneider’s Doctoral Dissertation, titled “Application of a Methodology toward a Theological-Hermeneutical Dictionary of the Roman Missal,” elucidates and applies a wide variety of linguistic, hermeneutic, and theological principles in the interpretation of individual vocabulary of the Missal. While he loves academic work, Fr. Schneider derives tremendous joy from his daily apostolic work, teaching as a Montessori guide at Christ the King School.

Christoph Tietze began his career as church organist at age twelve in his native Germany. After his family immigrated to the United States, he received a Bachelor of Arts from San Jose State University, a Master of Music and Master of Musical Arts from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music, and a Doctor of Sacred Music from the Graduate Theological Foundation. Between his Bachelor and Master degrees, he spent one year of private study in organ and improvisation with Jean Langlais in Paris and won the Tournemire Prize in Improvisation at the St. Alban’s International Organ Competition in England. From 1984 to 1992, he was Music Director and Organist at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre, NY, and for the last thirty years, he has been Music Director/Organist at St. Mary’s Cathedral in San Francisco, and he served as chair of the Conference of Roman Catholic Cathedral Musicians from 2017 to 2019. Tietze has presented numerous organ and choir performances throughout Europe and the United States, and he frequently presents workshops on Gregorian chant, children’s choirs, and the music of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. His books on the introits are published by Liturgy Training Publications and World Library Publications.

Fr. Samuel F. Weber, O.S.B. is originally from Chicago.  He earned a B.A. and M.Div. at Saint Meinrad Seminary, St. Meinrad, IN, and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical Athenaeum and the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of San Anselmo in Rome, with studies in monastic/patristic studies and sacred liturgy, with emphasis on the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict and the Divine Office.

Fr. Samuel is a professed monk and priest of Saint Meinrad Archabbey, St. Meirnad, IN, a Benedictine monastery of the Swiss-American Congregation.

Fr. Samuel’s interests are in monastic/patristic theology, spirituality, and Greek and Latin classics, as well as ancient art and archaeology. He has served as a seminary professor for forty-three years. His primary responsibilities at the present time are with the Benedict XVI Institute for Divine Worship and Sacred Music, Archdiocese of San Francisco.

For twenty years Fr. Samuel was on the faculty of Saint Meinrad School of Theology and Saint Meinrad College.  He was a founding member of the Wake Forest University Divinity School, Winston-Salem, NC, where he taught for nine years.  In addition, he has taught in the Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, The Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, KY, and the Disciples of Christ Seminary, Lexington, KY. In addition to teaching, his ecumenical involvement has included lecturing and writing for The Upper Room (Methodist) and The Presbyterian Board of Worship.

In the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, Fr. Samuel headed the Institute of Sacred Music and was on the faculty of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary.

Fr. Samuel has served as an advisor for ICEL (The International Committee on English in the Liturgy) on the new translation of the Roman Missal. For four summers he was a teacher at The Liturgical Institute, Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, IL, and for one summer at Christendom College, Front Royal, VA, where he was also director of liturgical music.  He is an experienced retreat director in the areas of liturgy, spirituality, marriage and family living, and ecumenism.

Fr. Samuel’s publications include (Ignatius Press) The Propers of the Mass for Sundays and Solemnities, The Pew Missal, and Compline. In addition, he has composed the chants for The Propers of the Mass for Weekdays of the Temporal Cycle. He is the editor of The Hymnal for the Hours.  His most recent publications include The Saint Patrick Gradual and the The Saint Patrick Antiphonary.  At the present time he is preparing the organ accompaniments for the Liber Hymnarius, and composing the Ignatius Press Pew Missal in Spanish.  He has authored numerous articles and publications, and has been a guest speaker at the Fota Conference on the Sacred Liturgy, Cork City, Ireland.

Charles Weaver is on the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he teaches courses in performance practice, music history, historical music theory, and improvisation He has performed widely as an accompanist on lute and theorbo, with a particular interest in seventeenth-century opera. Of his conducting for New York’s Dell’Arte Opera, The Observer remarked, “It was amazing to hear what warm and varied sounds he coaxed from the ensemble.” He has also served as assistant conductor for Juilliard Opera and has accompanied operas with the Yale Baroque Opera Project, Princeton University, the University of Maryland, and the Boston Early Music Festival.

As an orchestral musician, he has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Virginia Symphony. His chamber-music engagements have included Quicksilver, Piffaro, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Folger Consort, Apollo’s Fire, Blue Heron, and Musica Pacifica. He also works with the New York Continuo Collective, an ensemble that mounts workshop productions of seventeenth-century vocal music. He has taught at the Lute Society of America Summer Workshop, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Madison Early Music Festival.

Since 2019 he has served as organist and director of music at St. Mary’s Church in Norwalk, Connecticut. He joined the St. Mary’s Schola in 2012, under the direction of David Hughes, and served from 2016 to 2019 as associate director of music. Before coming to St. Mary’s, he was director the Holy Innocents’ Schola in New York City and previously sang at St. Agnes, also in New York, where he had the life-altering experience, in 2006, of encountering plainchant as a living tradition.

He holds a Ph.D. in music theory from the City University of New York. His research interests include the history of Gregorian Chant in performance (especially the question of rhythm) and the history of the theory of harmony. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and four children.

William Mahrt was Associate Professor and Director of Early Music Singers in the music department at Stanford University, President of the Church Music Association of America, and editor of Sacred Music, the oldest continuously published journal of music in North America.

Dr. Mahrt grew up in Washington state; after attending Gonzaga University and the University of Washington, he completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1969. He taught at Case Western Reserve University and the Eastman School of Music, and then returned to Stanford in 1972, where he continues to teach early music. Since 1964 he has directed the choir of St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, which sings Mass and Vespers in Gregorian chant on all the Sundays of the year, with masses in the polyphonic music of Renaissance masters for the holy days.

His research interests included theory and performance of Medieval and Renaissance music, troubadours, Machaut, Dufay, Lasso, Dante, English Cathedrals, Gregorian chant, and Renaissance polyphony. He had published articles on the relation of music and liturgy, and music and poetry. He frequently led workshops in the singing of Gregorian chant and the sacred music of the Renaissance.

Read Dr. Mahrt’s Obituary here.