Jazz Communion
September 6, 2026
If the high school football team spent time in the gym, our marching band hung out in the band room. That was the scene for my teenage crowd. We brought our lunch trays to talk and listen to music. One fateful day, nobody was talking, only listening. Listening to the large, expansive music of an orchestra. At the heart of it was the sound of an improvising trumpet, or something like a trumpet.
“Who’s that?” asked one of the kids. A trumpeter said, “It's that new guy from Rochester, Chuck Mangione.” Tony, the Italian kid, said, “That's pronounced man-go-ni. Rhymes with macaroni.” “I like this,” said one of the flute players, “because it sounds like a symphony.” Another said, “It’s jazz. Normally, I don’t like jazz. But this is surprisingly good.”
They listened for a bit, captivated by the sounds. Halfway through the LP, one of them said, “I can whistle every song.” The trumpet player stopped him. “Don't do it. Let's just listen.” We were moved by the melody, transported. The school bell rang, calling all of us away from lunch period and back the class. Somebody said, “We have to do this again.”
That was the scene in my high school. In upstate New York, that was the scene in lots of high schools. There was a buzz about this young dude with long hair and a floppy hat. He lived not far away and created songs that moved our hearts.
We did not yet know Mangione had strong credentials from the New York jazz world. When Chuck was a kid, every prominent jazz musician who passed through Rochester was invited to the Mangione home for pasta and homemade wine. When Chuck was fifteen, Dizzy Gillespie, one of those musicians, gave him one of his up-bent trumpets. Not long after that, Dizzy recommended Chuck to join Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with a young piano player named Keith Jarrett. With strong musical skills, prodigious talent, and an effervescent personality, he made a lot of friends.
So, imagine our excitement when our music teacher handed out one of Chuck’s tunes to our high school jazz band. It was called "Hill Where the Lord Hides." To a teenage Presbyterian, that almost sounded religious! I was so captivated that I borrowed the score off the conductor’s stand without his permission. I took it home, copied out the notes, and gave the tune to our basement band to play. In my musical photo album, there's a picture of me in a gray leisure suit playing that song with my friends in a high school talent show. Mangione's music has been with me for well over fifty years.
When we discovered Chuck was coming with his band to nearby Binghamton to play in the County Arena, I was euphoric. Their hit tune, "Feels So Good" was soaring on the radio waves. It was on all the AM and FM stations. I mustered the courage to ask a pretty young thing to be my date. In that era before cell phones, she sat through the concert looking at her watch. Meanwhile, when Mangione and his quintet hit the stage, they got a standing ovation before they played a single note. So, what was so exciting for everybody but her? Songs we could whistle but didn't. Tunes that lifted our spirits. Music that healed our souls. It was the magic of melody.
Ancient Israel knew all about melodies. According to the scrolls of First and Second Chronicles, the Jerusalem Temple had a multi-generational school to teach music through example and repetition.[1] In that time and place, music was taken seriously. It was an integrative art form. Like incense, music changes the room. It pulls together body, heart, mind, and spirit. Music creates community. It can be offered as the conduit for prayer.
Now, I love the Bible. For 41 years, I’ve been working with the Bible. My biggest gripe about the Bible is that somebody took out all the melodies. I now believe the culprit must have been a preacher, a preacher who considered himself superior to the choir director. “Words are what is most important,” he said, “just print the words.” It was a stupid mistake, for a life without melody is no life at all.
What is a melody, anyway? Pat Metheny, the jazz guitarist, said, “Melody is the most impossible aspect of music to nail down.”[2] A scientist can dissect a melody into notes and spaces, but for the average person that’s about as interesting as an autopsy. It’s just parts, no life. A good melody is full of life. As Metheny says, every melody has an inner wisdom. It speaks in invisible poetry. It can linger in the ear for years. It has the power to ignite imagination.
Psalm 98 celebrates the power of
melody. Sing a new song. Make a joyful noise. Blow the horn. Strum the strings.
Play a duet with creation, where seas roar, floods clap, and hills. Music surrounds
us because it is inhabited with the life of the invisible Composer, Conductor,
and Critic – a sonic Trinity if there ever was one.
As notes are shared, life is shared. We experience what it is to be alive, the sorrow and the joy, the surprise and the confirmation, the passion and the pathos and the abundance of God's gift of life.
Musicians knew this in ancient days. They know it now. There is no rational reason musicians like these would make the music that they do, unless there was something life-giving at its heart, something that brings them alive and gives them an incredible purpose. They aren't doing it for the money, or the working conditions, or the travel. (Jeff, what time did you get up this morning to drive down from Syracuse?) Here we are, re-presenting the music of Mangione. It has been a gift for us, and we want it to be a gift for you. A holy gift, a life-giving gift.
Here is how Chuck said it himself, “If you’re honest and play with love, people will sit down and listen. My music is the sum of all I have experienced.”[3] His love affair with music was characterized by “his boundless, energy, unabashed enthusiasm, and pure joy that radiated from the stage.” And he wanted to share what had been given to him with as many people as possible. The night of that Binghamton concert, he sat on the edge of the stage after the show to sign records and photos for hundreds of people for people like me. His melodies were offered as a public gift.
In fact, the offertory today was Chuck’s Mother’s Day gift for his mom. The title, “Bellavia,” was her maiden name. It means “beautiful way.” The song was nominated for a Grammy for best instrumental composition. The other nominees that year were Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind and Fire, Chick Corea, Henry Mancini, and Quincy Jones. Chuck said, “I felt like I was in the Kentucky Derby and I was riding Mister Ed.”
He didn’t think he had a chance of winning, so he took a gig in Champaign, Illinois. That night, he watched on a hotel TV as Paul Simon announced that he had won. Chuck said, “Buying Mother’s Day gifts is a hard thing, but I think I nailed that one.”[4]
You and I have the opportunity each day to offer ourselves as gifts to one another. What might you offer to make the world a more “beautiful way”? A “Bellavia”?
Today my friends and I are offering some melodies. Say what we want about jazz, I've given 35 years of my life to share the discovery that this music is internally alive, that the Creative Spirit is present in and among the musicians. When music happens, life happens. Friendships are built, rooms are changed, and people depart with residual amounts of the holy leading them out into the world.
That's the power of music, God's
gift to all who have ears to hear. And it has been a deep, deep joy to join my
friends in offering this music as a gift to you.
[1] See, for instance, chapters 15 and
25 of First Chronicles and chapters 5 and 7 of Second Chronicles. Specifically,
a school is mentioned in 1 Chronicles 25:7-8.
[2] Richard Niles, The Pat Metheny
Interviews: The Inner Workings of His Creativity Revealed (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard
Books, 2009) 137-140.
[3] Chuck Mangione, https://www.wzum.org/jazz-blog/2025/8/01/mcgjazz-r7ltk
[4] Ibid, 42:08 – 43:10.
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