St. John’s Cathedral offers special musical performances for Holy Week

The Cathedral of St John the Evangelist has organized a week filled with music for Holy Week.

According to a press release, “The music that spans the observance  of Holy Week from Palm Sunday through Easter is probably the richest within the Christian calendar: moving from fear and betrayal, incredible pain, grief, exhaustion, the tender gestures of trying to comprehend loss to the lightning strike of joy beyond any rationalization. Composers since the first century have used every combination of craft, skill and inspiration to frame this range of emotion that still describes our lives.”

GOOD FRIDAY: Seven Last Words in African American Spirituals – April 14, noon.

Designed as a lunch hour service, the program will  present a compilation of Jesus’ Seven Last Words expressed through African American spirituals.

TENEBRAE. 7:00pm

The Cathedral youth and Junior Choir will offer the Good Friday candlelight service of Tenebrae at 7 p.m, a participatory service of shadows rich in ritual.

SPIRITUAL CONCERT WITH DANCE: Buxtehude’s “Membra Jesu Nostri,” 8:30p.m.

The Cathedral Kantorei, Collegium Orchestra with the guest dancers, Adaptations Dance Company, will perform. Music is divided into seven sections with an instrumental introduction; then a series of concerti for instruments and voices.  The poetry is enhanced with dance faculty at Gonzaga and Whitworth Universities.

Each of the work’s sections are dedicated to a part of Jesus’s body (the feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart and head).

While this spiritual musical event is free, donations will be accepted to help underwrite the costs.

EASTER SUNDAY:  April 16,  8 and 10:30 a.m

The Cathedral Brass and Chancel Ringers will perform at both morning services, with the Junior Choir adding their voices at the 10:30am service.  Congregation and choirs together will sing Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus from “Messiah” during the final recessional.

There is free parking in the lots behind Lindaman’s Restaurant, 13^th and Grand Blvd.