What Wondrous Love Is This
An old American hymn enters almost alone. The first shared breath begins.
Evening prayer / improvised music / collective voice
Vespers for the Feast of theTransfiguration
Composed and arranged by J.J. WrightPiano trio / cantors / assembly
Album artwork: Maddie Sturm
VFT / 2017J.J. WrightJazz / chant / collective voice
The mountain is not scenery.
It happens between bodies.
A Vespers for the instant inherited form catches fire.
Evening prayer arrives carrying memory: psalm tones, Scripture, the Magnificat, a room that already knows how to answer. J.J. Wright places that memory inside the volatile intelligence of a jazz trio. Cantors call. The assembly answers. Improvisation opens the seam between what has been handed down and what can only happen now.
This is not a concert draped in sacred language. No one is placed safely outside the work. Breath, silence, refrain, and risk pass from body to body until the room itself becomes an instrument.
RitualComplete Vespers
BodyPiano / bass / drums
VoicesTwo cantors + assembly
TraceLive at Saint Peter’s, NYC
02 / THE RECORDED WORK
The whole passage, uncut.
The album does not extract the luminous moments. It keeps the entire crossing intact: hymn, chant, psalm, Scripture, improvised meditation, Magnificat, prayer, and the final song shared by the room.
J.J. Wright, piano · Ike Sturm, bass · Nate Wood, drums · Sharon Harms and Ashley Daneman, cantors.
Enter the full recording
VFT / 2017J.J. WrightJazz / chant / collective voice
03 / LISTEN
Listen with
the whole body.
Three apertures—not highlights, but changes of temperature. Hear inherited form become unstable, social, and alive.
Antiphon III / Revelation 19
Cantor, trio, and assembly lock into one pulse: proclamation becoming physical.
Transfiguration Hymn
After ascent and rupture, the room sings itself back into relation.
Album artwork: Maddie Sturm
04 / THREE THRESHOLDS
A room becomes a mountain.
The work moves through three actions—gather, witness, respond. The sequence remains; the people inside it change what each passage can become.
Gather
A hymn enters. Chant gives the air a contour. Separate breaths begin to find one another.
Witness
Psalm, Scripture, and improvisation carry the room toward the mountain—not as scenery, but as an event.
Respond
Magnificat, prayer, and a final hymn send the light back through the gathered body.
05 / FILM
Watch attention become physical.
The film follows the questions beneath the score. When does tradition stop behaving like an archive and become living material? What changes when listeners are allowed to alter what they hear?
External screeningWatch on YouTube
“Lively, prayerful and inspiring.”
James Martin, SJ
“The physicality of this music enables you to bring the listener … into the experience.”
J.J. Wright / Rome Reports
VFT / 2017J.J. WrightJazz / chant / collective voice
06 / THE WORK IN SPACE
One score. More than one body.
Its spine is fixed: complete Vespers, trio, cantors, assembly. Around that spine, the people and duration can change. Each realization begins with the acoustics, history, and living voices of the room.
Piano trio / two cantors / assembly
The essential body
J.J. Wright at the piano, with bass, drums, and two cantors, leads the complete Vespers. The musicians may travel together or the trio may be formed with local players.
↘Cantors / choir / readers from the host community
The local body enters
The trio meets prepared local cantors, choir, or readers. Rehearsal becomes the first act of the work: learning how this particular room breathes and answers.
↘Vespers / conversation / workshop / class
The work extends through time
A conversation, workshop, or class in improvisation, sacred music, composition, and full-bodied participation opens a longer passage toward the culminating Vespers.
↘PRODUCTION NOTES
Conditions for
attention.
- Core forces
- Piano, acoustic bass, drums, two cantors, assembly
- Instrument
- Tuned concert grand or excellent acoustic piano
- Room
- A church, chapel, hall, or flexible space that supports focus and shared song
- Preparation
- Personnel, scores, schedule, rehearsal, and technical needs shaped for each invitation
Possible roomsChurches, chapels, halls, universities, seminaries, jazz and performing arts series, retreats, festivals—each alters the work by the way it gathers people.
07 / J.J. WRIGHT
Tradition is not an archive.
Pianist, composer, conductor, and Director of the University of Notre Dame Folk Choir.
J.J. Wright works at the point where inherited sound becomes unstable. Chant, hymnody, choral practice, and jazz improvisation are not styles to be blended; they are forces placed in live contact, each capable of changing the others. Through his work with the Afro Bop Alliance, he is a Latin GRAMMY–winning and GRAMMY-nominated artist.
Full biography
08 / AN INVITATION
Name the room.
Begin the crossing.
Send the place, season, and people you are gathering. Describe its acoustics, history, and appetite for participation; the work will begin taking its shape there.
Direct / jjw863@gmail.com
Album artwork: Maddie Sturm