And all that jazz

A service of Jazz Evensong, St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Charleston SC, 5 o’clock in the afternoon, March 2, 2025

Jazz begins in New Orleans 19th century America's most cosmopolitan city where the sound of marching bands, Italian opera, Caribbean rhythms, and minstrel shows fill the streets with a richly diverse musical culture. Here in the 1890s African American musicians create a new music of these ingredients by mixing in rag time syncopations and a soulful feeling of the Blues.

Jump ahead a generation to February 1924: George Gershwin composes “Rhapsody in Blue”. In the New York Times last year, a pianist and composer named Mr Ethan Iverson wrote an article “The Worst Masterpiece: ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ at 100”. Iverson offers an intriguing take that “Rhapsody in Blue”, while having its charms, is just too square to merit being played as often as it is. He believes Rhapsody isn't truly jazzy enough, and, specifically that it only lightly dwells in African-based rhythm. In other words, “Rhapsody in blue” fails because it does not jam. “'Rhapsody in blue’”. he said, “was corny and Caucasian”, a “cheesecake” that has “clogged the arteries of American music.” But John McWhorter, an opinion writer of The Times, answered back.

“The rhapsody was programmed as a culmination of a concert titled, ‘An Experiment in Modern Music,’ which proposed that jazz, then new to the American mainstream, was serious music worthy of a venue as tony as the Aeolian Hall, with the celebrity bandleader Paul Whiteman on the podium and Gershwin himself on the piano. Gershwin intended the rhapsody to fuse the respective powers of classical music and jazz. People liked it a lot, and they still do. . . . So while the rhapsody certainly has its foot-tapping sections, it also sails, rests, jolts, and soars.”[1]

The larger culture long ago gave up the idea, to the extent that it ever really had it, that classical music is real music while the rest of music is a lesser work. Now that jazz broadly receives its due, why must ensembles with the word “philharmonic” in their names learn to “get down”. The goal of the Aeolian Hall concert was to show jazz's legitimacy by bringing it into the concert hall, to “make it a lady” so to speak. This all seems so quaint now. We moderns do accept jazz as art so even traditional Anglican choral evensong needs jazz.

So we joyously welcome the Duke (Ellington) to our ears this evening. And Alexander L’Estrange, his consummate fusion of the English choral tradition with jazz. And M Roger Holland II, a graduate of both Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he received his master of divinity degree and a master's degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music. And our own composer and arranger Wayne Helmly.

Not only does evensong need Jazz, the Church needs more jazz. The Christian tradition needs Thelonious Monk disciples adept at Jesus-jazz which is marked by three things: the willingness to go off the script and cross the lines, that's the innovation, without leaving the score, that's the tradition. Irish Theologian Herbert McCabe puts it this way:

“The whole of our faith is the belief that God loves us; I mean there isn't anything else. Anything else we say we believe is just a way of saying that God loves us. Any proposition, any article of faith, is only an expression of faith if it is a way of saying God loves us.

So the second thing we need to do is extemporize and personalize the music. We need to incarnate the song. At the Grammys last year. Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs delivered a gripping duet of “Fast Car”, her hit from 1988 that Luke covered in 2023. Part of the lyrics are these:

“So, I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights laid out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped around my shoulder
And I, I had a feeling that I belonged
I, I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone" [Google search]

The third thing is to constantly vary themes and memes by making the familiar strange so it can become fresh again. That's a Hallmark of jazz. At the Grammys this year, the album of the year was “Cowboy Carter” by Beyoncé. The album is a country music sensation. The track list features both well-known Nashville Legends like Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and South Carolina's own Linda Martell. One reviewer of the album put it this way:

“Country, gospel, soul, blues, R&B, pop, psychedelic rock, and more all find themselves as key members of Beyoncé’s country. Her country is more dimensional and multifaceted than Nashville could ever dream of . . .” [2]

Because black folks in the country had to imagine and conjure worlds that did not even exist during enslavement and sharecropping in the heavily segregated Jim Crow South.

The legendary New Orleans singer and trumpeter Lewis “Satchmo” Armstrong has been making records since 1923, the year before Gershwin. But in 1967, Armstrong released “What a Wonderful World,” which would become the biggest selling song of his long and storied career. The ballad became part of the Great American song book and it's been covered a lot. Have you heard the punk rock band The Ramones version from 1992, making the familiar strange so that it can become fresh again? Have you heard the Tony Bennett and KD Lang duet version from 2002, making the familiar strange so that it can become fresh again? Jesus-Jazz.

At this our final public worship service of the season of epiphany, Jesus was brilliantly shown transfigured this morning and pre-figuring his death from John's gospel this evening: And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will attract everyone to me and gather them around me. Part of that attracting and gathering everyone—everyone—is singing the song of God through folk ballads and punk rock, canticles and arias, piano and trumpet,

and all that jazz. Amen.

[1] John McWhorter, “No, ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ is not ‘the worst’, a defense of Gershwin’s masterpiece on the occasion of its centennial. The New York Times, February 8, 2024,

[2] Taylor Crumpton, "On 'Cowboy Carter', Beyoncé  reshapes country in her own image." The Daily Beast. 

© 2025 The Reverend William H Coyne