2006

  • July 3. Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died.
  • Pat Krol arrived from the Boston Symphony Orchestra to become Executive Director of Emmanuel Music and an ex-officio member of our vestry.
  • Parish Administrator Kelly Reed hired Sid Richardson as the youngest of several event sextons.
  • Fences designed by David Polando were installed by DeAngelis Iron Work with funding from the Edward Ingersoll Brown Fund and the City of Boston.hardscapeMeditationWest253

 

1994

John Harbison; photo credit: Julian Bullitt

John Harbison dedicated to our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young his memorable setting of 1 Corinthians 11:23-5 as “Communion Words“, which we sing with his other service music in Lent.

 

 

James Primosch composed “Meditation for Candlemas”, first of several motets based on the poetry of Denise Levertov, who attended Emmanuel in the 1980s.  It was sung in our service on Feb. 1, 2015.  Here is the text of “Candlemas” from her collection Breathing the Water (NY: New Directions, 1987). Continue reading

1978

 

  • 21 April.  Gov. Michael Dukakis proclaimed it to be Johann Sebastian Bach Day in the Commonwealth as “the orchestra and chorus of Emmanuel Church in the City of Boston…after seven years [had] completed for the first time in the USA the cycle of [his]194 sacred cantatas”.
  • Constance visited us in Oct. 2017

    Constance Hammond was elected our first woman (junior) warden. After ordination in our diocese, she served as rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Parish, Portland OR (1990-98) and then as rector and priest in other churches in the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon Since 1998, she has been a practitioner and instructor in the Healing Touch Program.  See also:  1986.

1974

  • The Rev. Mark Harvey began his jazz ministry and founded the Jazz Coalition (later the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra), which sponsored concerts, liturgies, and festivals here over the next four decades.
  • March 3.  As our sponsored seminarian, Pauli Murray preached from our pulpit her inaugural sermon on a passage she had selected (Isaiah 61: 1-4), entitled ” Women Seeking Admission to Holy Orders: As Crucifers Carrying the Cross”.* Saying that Emmanuel “sent me forth as a member of your congregation with your blessings and prayers to begin my training for the Sacred Ministry”, she asked:

Why in the face of the devastating rejection at the Louisville General Convention of last October, 1973–a rejection which Bishop Paul Moore of NY has called the violation of the very core of their personhood–[have the women seeking ordination to the priesthood] only increased their determination to enter the higher levels of the clergy?

Then paraphrasing Isaiah 53:3, she prophesied:

I believe that these women are in truth the Suffering Servants of Christ, despised and rejected, women of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  They are answering to a higher authority than that of the political structures of our Church, and in the fullness of time God will sweep away those barriers and free the Church to carry forward its mission of renewal as a living force and God’s witness in our society.

* Reprinted in Daughters of Thunder:  Black women preachers and their sermons, 1850-1979, Bettye Collier-Thomas (NY: Jossey Bass, 1998),  pp. 240-44.  Please see also About Pauli Murray and our Timeline entries about her:  1951,1970, 1973, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

1971

 

Start your day with Robert J. [Lurtsema] says Priscilla Young’s T-shirt.

Robert J. Lurtsema took over Morning Pro Musica on WGBH’s FM station.  On Sunday mornings he often broadcast a Bach cantata from Emmanuel.  Our benefactor Priscilla Rawson Young supported not only our cantatas but also GBH and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

For more about PR Young, see: 19091939, 19421973, 1994 & 2000.

 

1970

  • Dec. 6. Founded by Craig Smith, Emmanuel Music offered its first Bach cantata, Süßer Trost, mein Jesus kömmt (BWV 151) with Jane Bryden, soprano; Mary Seo, mezzo-sopran; Mark Baker, baritone; Robert Stallman, flute; Steven Goble, oboe d’amore, and Craig Smith, conducting.
  • Pauli Murray attended a conference of Episcopal women at Graymoor Monastery, Garrison NY, which led to the founding of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus. She was then appointed to the Commission on Ordained and Licensed Ministries, which determined that, according to the Church’s Constitution and Canons, the General Convention could confirm women’s eligibility for ordination.  Despite the Commission’s recommendation, the Convention that year voted to only allow women’s ordination to the diaconate.  See pp. 418-19 of her Autobiography (cited on Timeline 1989) and please see our page and other Timeline entries: 1951, 1973, 1974, 1977, 1985, 1987, 2012 & 2015.

1969

EllingtonConcert_of_Sacred_Music

Thanks to Radio Corporation of America for use of this image.

  • J. Barkev Kassarjian joined our vestry.  His wife Mary Catherine Bateson gave birth to their daughter Savanne (Vanni) Margaret, who was baptized here.
  • April 20.  Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington‘s Second Concert of Sacred Music, sponsored by the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard and Radcliffe, was performed for a large audience in our Sanctuary with our ninth rector, The Rev. Al Kershaw presiding.  Please see Wikipedia for information about this and Ellington’s other sacred concerts.

See also Timeline entries about Kershaw: 1956, 19631966.

1966

Jan. 14.  The Rev. Alvin L. Kershaw served as master of ceremonies for the first  Boston Globe Jazz and Blues Festival, held at the Boston War Memorial Auditorium (now the Hynes Convention Center).

April 24.  More than 500 people attended a jazz service with Al Kershaw presiding.  Trumpeter Herb Pomeroy and his sextet played saxophonist Edgar (Ed) Summerlin‘s “Liturgy of the Holy Spirit”, with text based on the Eucharistic Prayer of Hippolytus (c. 217 CE) and adapted by the New York poet William Robert Miller.

The Rev. Al Kershaw & Dizzie Gillespie. Thanks to MetroWest Daily News for this image.

See also Timeline entries about Kershaw: 1956, 19631969.

1956

The Rev. Alvin Louis Kershaw‘s album Introduction to Jazz was released by Decca Records.  According to the guide to his papers donated by his widow Doris to the U. of Southern Mississippi’s McCain Library and Archives, the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) had invited him to speak in February 1956:

on the subject of jazz, an area in which he was considered something of an expert. In the meantime, [he had become] a contestant on the television quiz show The $64,000 Question, where his expertise in the field of jazz helped him to win $32,000. In an interview after the program, he alluded to the possibility of donating a portion of his winnings to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to aid in the battle against segregation. When word of this reached Mississippi, the Rev. Kershaw became the target of a firestorm of criticism, which eventually led to cancellation of his scheduled visit to Ole Miss.

Our archive has a copy of the record, which contains “Selected recordings of great jazz stylists, with historical data and musical analyses” and these tunes:

  • Snag it (King Oliver’s Savannah Syncopators)
  • Wild man blues (Johnny Dodds’ Black Bottom Stompers)
  • I’ve found a new baby (Chicago Rhythm Kings)
  • Tin roof blues (New Orleans Rhythm Kings)
  • Davenport blues (Adrian Rollini’s Orchestra)
  • The blues jumped a rabbit (Jimmy Noone’s New Orleans Band)
  • Five point blues (Bob Crosby’s Bob Cats)
  • Perdido Street blues (Louis Armstrong)
  • Georgia cake walk (Art Hodes and his band)
  • Impromptu ensemble no. 1 (Bobby Hackett et al.)
  • Tishomingo blues (Bunk Johnson)
  • Chimes blues (George Lewis and his Ragtime Band).

Introduction to Jazz

 

See also Timeline entries:  1963, 1966, 1969.

1936

December 13. Celebration of our 75th Year

Bishop Wm. Lawrence

The Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, D.D., Bishop of Massachusetts (1893-1927). Photo credit: WikiCommons

Our fifth rector, The Rev. Dr. Phillips Endicott Osgood, said in his sermon:  “We are stewards of an inheritance, interpreters of a tradition”.  Organist Dr. Albert Snow composed an anthem for the service.  Bishop William Lawrence praised our first four wardens:

  • Edward Sprague Rand (1st senior warden), a trustworthy, public-spirited lawyer
  • his uncle William Richards Lawrence (1st junior warden), who had bought the land for our church
  • Benjamin Tyler Reed (2nd senior warden), who founded in Cambridge the Episcopal Theological School, which became the Episcopal Divinity School
  • Enoch Reddington Mudge (2nd junior warden), who later built St. Stephen’s Church, Lynn

For more detail, see Boston Globe, Dec. 14,1936, p. 4:  “Bishop Lawrence in Tribute to Early Emmanuel Wardens. Services Celebrate 75th Birthday of Church. Dr. Osgood Views Future”.

Seated on the right at his desk in our Emmanuel Room is  Dr. Osgood with The Rev. Ivol Ira Curtis (center), who became Bishop of Olympia.