Resurrexi Reviews

Reviews

The Cranbury Press
Wednesday April 3, 1996

For centuries, Catholics have struggled to read the Liturgy of the Word by candlelight during the Easter Vigil.

This Easter, Tim Keyes, music director at St. James the Less Roman Catholic Church in Jamesburg, NJ will present his solution to this age-old problem.

Mr. Keyes, a resident of Plainfield, composed an oratorio-an unstaged opera-based on the Mass that will be presented at 8 pm Saturday at the church.

The Mass is the holiest of the Easter season, Mr. Keyes said.

All of the texts that are usually read during the liturgy have been set to music. "Instead of being read, everything is sung," the 34-year-old musician said. "It makes the text come alive."

Mr. Keyes' composition, "Resurrexi is the first new large-scale musical treatment of the Easter Vigil scriptural text since the Middle Ages. He said he wrote the oratorio "because it's never been done before.

Mr. Keyes, who has been working for St. James for five years, said that the service is long, and it is difficult to sit through. And because the room is dark, the congregation sometimes has a hard time following the service.

"The Mass has to be listened to and enjoyed," he said. "The whole point is for people to listen to it."

"Resurrexi," which took Mr. Keyes about three years to write, contains a 14-piece orchestra including string, wind, brass and percussion instruments. Vocal selections are written in four-part harmony and include solo pieces. They will be performed by a 22-member choir that has been rehearsing since the day after Christmas.

"There are a huge amount of people involved," he said.

Mr. Keyes, who said he plays "virtually every instrument," described the music as "tonal" and "very melodic." Harmonically, he compared it to French music.

"The text dictated the music, " he said.

Because this has never been done before, Mr. Keyes isn't sure what to expect or how the congregation will react. "it could be a plus because no one expects anything," he said.

However, he is a bit nervous about how the performance will come together-and his parents are flying up from Houston just for the service.

Mr. Keyes' experiene in music began at age 5 with piano lessons. Within a year, he had completed four grades of piano music, and studied with symphonies in Houston.

He received a degree in composition and theory from the University of Notre Dame, and more recently completed two recordings of popular music.

His CD "On the Radio," include such songs as "All I Need is You," "I Can't Let You Go", and "Jack and Jill," as well as the title song, The songs are a combination of secular jazz and pop pieces.

Mr. Keyes wrote, mixed, sang, and produced most of the songs, as well as played the piano.

He has toured the United States, performing in such popular New York clubs as The Tradewinds and at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank. Between 1985 and 1987, he did about 630 shows.

He prefers his church work to touring, however. "It's fun at first," he said of performing, "but you can't do much else."

He said he believes this Mass will be a trailblazing effort. The oratorio will be recorded by Soundwriter Studios in Newark, and will soon be available on compact disc and cassette. The recording will be manufactured, marketed, and distributed by API Recordswhich he and his wife, Meg, own.

"Soon every large publisher of Catholic music will be doing this. Within a year, every Catholic church will have something," he said. "But I'm the first.

-Lisa Tarriff