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Sacred and liturgical jazz

As noted above, jazz has incorporated from its inception aspects of African-American sacred music including spirituals and hymns. Secular jazz musicians often performed renditions of spirituals and hymns as part of their repertoire or isolated compositions such as "Come Sunday", part of "Black and Beige Suite" by Duke Ellington. Later many other jazz artists borrowed from black gospel music. However, it was only after World War II that a few jazz musicians began to compose and perform extended works intended for religious settings or as religious expression. Since the 1950s, sacred and liturgical music has been performed and recorded by many prominent jazz composers and musicians. The "Abyssinian Mass" by Wynton Marsalis (Blueengine Records, 2016) is a recent example.

Relatively little has been written about sacred and liturgical jazz. In a 2013 doctoral dissertation, Angelo Versace examined the development of sacred jazz in the 1950s using disciplines of musicology and history. He noted that the traditions of black gospel music and jazz were combined in the 1950s to produce a new genre, "sacred jazz". Versace maintained that the religious intent separates sacred from secular jazz. Most prominent in initiating the sacred jazz movement were pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams, known for her jazz masses in the 1950s and Duke Ellington. Prior to his death in 1974 in response to contacts from Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Duke Ellington wrote three Sacred Concerts: 1965 – A Concert of Sacred Music; 1968 – Second Sacred Concert; 1973 – Third Sacred Concert.

The most prominent form of sacred and liturgical jazz is the jazz mass. Although most often performed in a concert setting rather than church worship setting, this form has many examples. An eminent example of composers of the jazz mass was Mary Lou Williams. Williams converted to Catholicism in 1957, and proceeded to compose three masses in the jazz idiom. One was composed in 1968 to honor the recently assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. and the third was commissioned by a pontifical commission. It was performed once in 1975 in St Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. However the Catholic Church has not embraced jazz as appropriate for worship. In 1966 Joe Masters recorded "Jazz Mass" for Columbia Records. A jazz ensemble was joined by soloists and choir using the English text of the Roman Catholic Mass. Other examples include "Jazz Mass in Concert" by Lalo Schiffrin (Aleph Records, 1998, UPC 0651702632725) and "Jazz Mass" by Vince Guaraldi (Fantasy Records, 1965). In England, classical composer Will Todd recorded his "Jazz Missa Brevis" with a jazz ensemble, soloists and the St Martin's Voices on a 2018 Signum Records release, "Passion Music/Jazz Missa Brevis" also released as "Mass in Blue", and jazz organist James Taylor composed "The Rochester Mass" (Cherry Red Records, 2015). In 2013, Versace put forth bassist Ike Sturm and New York composer Deanna Witkowski as contemporary exemplars of sacred and liturgical jazz.