Detroit's renowned sacred music series, which began in 1974, kicks off Oct. 20 with 'Gregoriana,' an improvisation on Gregorian chant 

DETROIT — When Donna Frentrup began singing in the Archdiocesan Chorus, and through that, the Cathedral Cultural Series at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament, she wasn’t Catholic. But she was drawn to the beauty of the Catholic faith through the music and liturgy within the glorious space of the cathedral. 

“I would just go drive and sit by the side of the cathedral because it felt like my sanctuary; it was a safe place,” said Frentrup, a longtime committee member and operations coordinator for the Archdiocesan Chorus.

And Frentrup’s eventual conversion to Catholicism was largely thanks to discovering the truths in the music, through “read[ing] what it is you are singing,” she said.

“I called it osmosis, sort of like smelling the incense,” Frentrup said. “It just started creeping into my soul.”

Stories like Frentrup’s are the exact kind the Cathedral Cultural Series has sought to cultivate since 1974. By inviting renowned local, national and international musicians, performers and conductors to the city of Detroit, the series seeks to evangelize the culture through music and song.

“The idea is that it brings the civic life and the Church life together,” said series director Joe Balistreri, who also serves as director of music for the Archdiocese of Detroit. “The reason is so much of our Western culture was born in this Church, was born out of the Church’s mission for sacred music and beauty, which is to help bring Christ into the world and bring people to Christ.”

The series is “cultural” because, while bringing together artists and musical creations from around the globe and across the centuries, it remains theocentric, Balistreri said. 

“Culture is kind of like the sediment left behind from peoples’ beliefs and value systems,” he said. “As Christians, we believe the world is ordered toward God … From that order, we have music that is beautifully ordered.”

The goal, Balistreri said, is to reconnect a society that has turned away from faith with the Church through beauty.

“There are kids in public high schools that are singing Palestrina and doing all types of what really is Church music,” he said, “but they are doing it in a completely secular environment.” 

The 2019-20 series amps up Oct. 20, when the Archdiocesan Chorus and guest instrumentalists present “Gregoriana,” a “fast-paced collage experience of Gregorian chant, music composed on Gregorian chant, and contemporary instrumental improvisations on Gregorian chant” at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament. The 4 p.m. event is free to the public, with a free-will offering suggested.

As the season gets under way, Frentrup recalled the various performers and conductors the series has brought to the inner city throughout the decades.

“It has brought so many different age groups and diverse music talent together at the cathedral,” she said.  

Those talents have included Chanticleer, the Community Chorus of Detroit, the Sistine Chapel Choir, the Tallis Scholars, the Vienna Boys’ Choir and others.

One highlight of the series and an anecdote that embodies the purpose of the series, Balistreri said, was the 2014 performance of Verdi’s Requiem by the Community Chorus of Detroit and other choirs, soloists and musicians, nearly 300 performers in all.

Jewish prisoners of the Czech concentration camp Terezin first performed this requiem — a musical composition for a funeral Mass — multiple times while at the camp, Balistreri said. One performance was commanded by the Nazis to demonstrate to the Red Cross the “positive” conditions of the camp.

“The irony of that is, they are singing a requiem Mass, which is all about ‘eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,’” he said. “They are praying, even as Jews, using Catholic culture through their trials.”

When the Cathedral Cultural Series performed the Requiem, the event was attended by Detroit Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron, Rabbi Joseph H. Krakoff of Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, and other prominent members of the civic and faith communities who were “commemorating, but also participating in the reflection … on the Requiem as part of our heritage,” Balistreri said.  

Balistreri said he looks forward to welcoming the talents of this season, including Jean-Baptiste Robin, the organist of the Palace of Versailles who will play on the cathedral’s 94-year-old organ, and the nearly 100 singers and performers of the Boars Head Festival Concert, a medieval Christmas pageant and “the Cathedral Cultural Series in a nutshell,” he said.

When Frentrup isn’t singing in the concerts, she is working the ticket desk, where she is able to witness the wonder of the diverse gathering of audience members, both young and old, secular and religious, who are awed by the cathedral experience.

Similar to her own conversion, Frentrup said she hopes “through the beauty of the cathedral, God will touch their souls.”

Similarly, Balistreri said the Catholic Church, as the defender, patron, and source of sacred music — “a treasure of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art,” as the Second Vatican Council taught — is best suited to share this treasure with the rest of the world.

“You can’t argue with beauty,” Balistreri said. “Everybody enjoys it.” 

If you go

View the Cathedral Cultural Series’ 2019-2020 season schedule here.

Listen to a sample

Olivier Latry, head organist of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, improvises on the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament's historic Casavant organ in 2017 as part of the Cathedral Cultural Series, a series of musical performances sponsored by the Archdiocese of Detroit's music ministry.