Make New York Post a Preferred Source A few days before Higher Word’s first concert in October 2024, co-founder Spencer McIntosh went to mass at St. Anthony of Padua in Soho where the performance would be held.
The newly formed orchestra, which plays classical music through a Catholic lens, had sold about 80 tickets for their inaugural performance. And during mass, McIntosh counted attendees to get a sense of the space —about 150 people.
“It was so sparse,” said the 39-year-old. He was “distraught. I was like, ‘this is the biggest mistake I ever made in my entire life’.”
They had to pay musicians, vendors and the restaurant for the afterparty. The way things were going, they were looking at a loss of thousands of dollars.
He and his co-founder Nick Sam sought counsel from their friend, Fr. Jonah Teller, a charismatic young priest from St. Joseph’s in Greenwich Village. Teller advised them to write in sharpie that they would “fill the church” and hang the sign on their wall.
They did as instructed. Then they prayed and marketed their tails off. At showtime, 400 people showed up.
“The whole thing was a miracle,” said McIntosh.
Only with bigger audiences, more ambitious programming and even recognition from legendary composer Bill Conti — who wrote the iconic “Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky)” among other Hollywood scores — who has tapped them, along with sax playing priest Fr. James O’Reilly, to record his new original composition.
On Friday night, they’ll be performing at St. Jean Baptiste with a program based on the Feast of the Guardian Angels (no word on whether Curtis Sliwa will be in attendance).
Such sustained growth would suggest there is far more than divine intervention at play. Perhaps a group of elite musicians led by Juilliard educated composer and conductor Jacob Beranek and Christa Dalmazio, who attended the Manhattan School of Music, is resonating because it’s an experience for the mind and soul — something resonating in our current landscape.
Dalmazio believes the chaos of our modern world, including the isolation from COVID-19, the exaltation of politics and the replacement of art with efficiency, have sent people in search of beauty.
Beranek agrees. “Our souls yearn for something bigger, something more beautiful, something higher than just the purely functional or ordinary.”
Much has been made of the Catholic Renaissance we’re seeing around the world and here in New York City, where last year some parishes reported packed masses and a large uptick in converts.
Our first American Pope has put the faith front and center, while Catholic influencers, both lay and religious fill our social media feeds. Catholicism is coursing through our cultural veins, and Higher Word is a clear expression of that.
The non-profit organization started in 2023 as a Catholic salon of sorts. A group of friends would meet to drink wine and listen to talks from their favorite priest, Fr. Brian Graebe.
The gatherings grew in popularity and numbers, moving to Sam’s 2,500 square foot Chelsea apartment. At one event, someone proposed a small musical performance, and they too, began to get more elaborate and outgrow Sam’s digs.
By last spring, their Easter concert at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral drew over 530 people, including me, who doesn’t know Haydn from my hiney. But I know a stirring experience. In addition to the music, there was a meditation from Teller and commentary from Beranek.
They closed with soul shaking rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
The audience was filled with stylish Catholics, young and old, many of whom gathered a few blocks away at Jack’s Wife Frieda for the afterparty. Higher Word claims responsibility for at least two marriages and a few Catholic conversions of musicians.
So, perhaps there is something more to McIntosh’s claim of a miracle?
He also credits his “obliviousness,” saying, “I don’t think it would have worked if I really knew the economic realities of starting an orchestra!”
To stage such elaborate and elegant evenings, Higher Word relies on ticket sales, donations and the generosity of friends. Many of the musicians play, not for the money, but “for the mission.”
They hope to become sustainable and offer a larger calendar of events, including lectures, liturgies and more concerts and eventually to be stitched into the mainstream cultural fabric of the Big Apple.
“Anything that’s Catholic shouldn’t be siloed in a corridor, where things that are beautiful are reserved for the secular world,” said McIntosh.
