In addition to the typical “church basement” activities of food drives, AA meetings, and art shows, St. Paul’s Parish is also home to an annual popular musical event that combines two unlikely features: pious priesthood and jamming jazz.
On January 27th, the jazz-fusion/funk quartet, named “Vatican III,” gave an evening performance that marked their 10th anniversary as a local, occasional ensemble of Catholic clergymen. Band members included Fr. Patrick Fiorillo, the parochial vicar of St. Paul’s and the Harvard Undergraduate Catholic Chaplain, bassist Fr. Matthew Gill of Holy Family Parish in Taunton, saxophonist Fr. Matthew Laird of St. Joseph Parish in Falmouth, and guitarist Fr. Larry Valliere of Our Lady of the Assumption in Barnstable. With the latter two just recently ordained this past year, last week’s show was one of the first shows where all band members were fully serving in the priesthood. Fr. Patrick operates under the Archdiocese of Boston while the others are under the diocese of Fall River.
The ensemble formed in 2013 after meeting during their studies at St. John’s Seminary in Boston. The four all had prior musical experience and first began practicing with each other during their free time between religious studies. To explore their interests in jazz and fusion music, the group decided to combine their efforts, continuing their musical pursuits while working across Massachusetts as deacons and ordained ministers in different communities. Now, they give occasional performances at their local parishes and other church events and often enlist other musical clergy as guests for some shows.
Donning their traditional black shirt and white collar priest outfits, the group performed on a makeshift stage area with only a few amps, a simple mixer, and Fr. Valliere’s six-unit effects pedal system. The audience reached around one hundred people seated around various tables in the lower church and included Harvard students, parishioners, local residents, families with free-running children, and even a few visiting priests from other parishes. Fr. Patrick encouraged the crowd to dance along to the music, though most opted for a more sedentary experience.
The setlist was a mix of jazz standards such as Wes Montgomery’s “Four on Six” and Miles Davis’ “So What.” It also included more fusion-oriented cuts like “Red Clay/Red Baron,” pop-rock songs “Time After Time” and “Shakedown Street,” and even a few original songs composed by the group such as “If You Give a Man a Piece of Cheese.” Throughout their performance, the group maintained a mix of melodic passages that gave way into more bombastic solos and expressive changeups, with each member getting a chance to showcase his individual instrument on different songs: a typical characteristic of traditional jazz music. The wide range of songs yielded both an unpredictable yet cohesive performance that carried throughout the room, despite the simple tech setup.
Fr. Patrick was the only one who spoke during the event when announcing the band’s history and their upcoming songs. All four priests were very expressive as they played, switching between concentrated stares and exuberance as they rotated between technical and freestyles. Fr. Valliere used three different guitars throughout the show, Fr. Gill switched his bass playing from smoother countermelodies and expressive popping, Fr. Laird played his tenor sax both as a lead and as accent, and Fr. Patrick varied from a steady backbeat to more freeform solo passages.
After a brief intermission, the quartet brought on a fifth member with Luke Walker ’22, a recent graduate who, while at Harvard, frequented the Harvard Catholic Center and is currently in a Berklee College of Music master’s program. He performed on a steelpan drum, mainly providing accents through the second half of the set list while getting some solo moments of his own.
The highlight of the show was the closing jazz-funk song “The Chicken,” which gave everyone one last chance for a solo of their own to finish the night. After a loud applause and demands for an encore, the group came back for a brief replay of the more rocking “First Tube” before ending for good.
Though another set date is not announced yet, the group plans to continue performing throughout the year at other parishes and events throughout the state. Each priests’ ministerial work encompasses a lot of duties in their separate parishes now that all of them are fully ordained, but they hope to continue providing concerts throughout the dioceses of Massacuhsetts, combining their musical and spiritual expressions through their jazzy romps.
Ryan Golemme ’23 (ryangolemme@college.harvard.edu), who accidentally left his camera battery charger in the lower church for about a week after the performance, writes for The Independent.