Guest SpeakersArticles by guest speakers to the Trinity Forum Academy
Tue 19 Jan 2010 • Responses: 0 • by James Hall (Academy Fellow, Class of 2010)
Thanks to the generosity of a Friend of the Academy, James Hall (’10), a concert trombonist and recent jazz band leader in Vienna, had the opportunity to attend jazz legend Monty Alexander’s performance at the historic Avalon Theater in Easton, MD. Read his concert review here and check our James’s own music and album reviews at jameshallmusic.com. Join James at his Academy capstone performance in New York City on May 28. Contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.
Several months into our year at the Trinity Forum Academy, the Fellows have more or less adjusted to the rhythm of life at Osprey Point. Receiving crash courses in commercial cooking and cleaning, meeting our three faculty members, and adjusting to our household duties at Windrush, we are moving around the Point as people who know what they’re doing (or at least think they do). As we meet the challenges of a reorganized curriculum, which combines adjusted staff roles with unprecedented collaboration from visiting faculty, a guiding principle for the Fellows has been improvisation: the spur-of-the-moment integration of numerous stimuli into a meaningful whole.
To those of us hailing from the world’s cultural capitals, Osprey Point can truly seem to be, as the Germans put it, am Ende der Welt (that is, the End of the World). Though each of us will be steeped in literature and culture this year through ambitious reading assignments, opportunities to experience performing arts of an equally high caliber will be few and far between. Hence our excitement in discovering that Monty Alexander, the world-renowned Jamaican jazz pianist and professing believer, would be performing at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, just a half-hour drive from our new home. Thanks to the generosity of a Friend of the Academy, the Fellows of the class of 2010 were able to attend.
The Avalon Theatre, a one-time cinema that still bears the Art Deco facelift it received in 1934, seats only 380. Jazz music is meant for an intimacy which cannot be experienced in the cavernous halls and sprawling amphitheaters defining much of the summer music festival experience. Fortunately, The Avalon possesses the right mixture of size and acoustical warmth to keep the listening experience authentic.
I heard Alexander perform in 2006 at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess with the German HR Big Band—a barely memorable performance that tried too hard to compose around Alexander’s improvisations. Consequently, my hopes for the concert at the Avalon were modest. Given these expectations, it is no exaggeration when I say that Alexander’s trio blew me away. Alexander expressed himself in a fluent blend of stride, blues, and bebop languages, quoting themes from the jazz canon with the frequency and conviction that characterizes the most experienced giants of the idiom. The highlight of the concert, however, was not the virtuosity of any one musician, nor the group’s seamless interaction, but the overwhelming sense of shalom emanating from Alexander’s presence on stage. One couldn’t help but feel empathy for the emotion displayed on his face and the passion that he coaxed, pushed, and sometimes pounded out of the piano.
As Alexander progressed through the program of jazz standards and original compositions, I realized that this was probably the most Christian jazz concert I had ever attended. The further he got into the program, the more deeply the influence of Gospel seeped into his playing. By the end of the concert, Alexander was throwing in renditions of such songs as Duke Ellington’s Come Sunday and Julia Ward Howe’s The Battle Hymn of the Republic. The centerpiece of the event was Alexander’s original composition, Hope, a ballad of surprising harmonic crunch that makes a gradual thematic shift from despair to hope over 10 minutes of composed and improvised material.
The nature of Christian leadership in this type of music is thought provoking; by moving fluidly in and out of Gospel styles, Alexander included his trio members, who are likely not religiously inclined, in creating hymns of praise and thanksgiving. Imagine setting a Bible before an unbeliever and not only hearing him read with fluency, but with deep conviction and love for the language. This is one of the joys of the Christian jazz band leader: to set a stylistic trajectory that moves collaborator and audience member alike toward the beauty of the Gospel.
For those of us grappling with the incorporation of seemingly disparate elements of theology, philosophy, and applied disciplines, there is much to be learned from Monty Alexander. Throughout the night at the Avalon, he deftly blended jazz languages, unified the diverse voices of fellow musicians into cohesive musical statements, and displayed a palpable joy, effortlessness, and gratitude. At the end of the concert, the question on many audience members’ minds was, “How much of that was improvised?” Indeed, Alexander’s passion seemed too genuine to be premeditated, yet too excellent and structured to be improvised. This spontaneous, exuberant precision is a posture to which any Christian leader can aspire.
Fri 17 Jul 2009 • Responses: 0 • by Will Weir (Academy Class of 2008)
“Find Your Way Home as a whole is an album that can deliver some peace and calm into a noisy life. Because even when he rocks, Wendell’s thoughts are clear and his clarity is convicting.”
Free MP3 Download: The Ballad of Freida the Goose
Purchase “Find Your Way Home”
Find Your Way Home, the first release from this Southern poet exiled to DC, reveals Wendell Kimbrough to be a trustworthy and capable songwriter with an ability to be simultaneously personal and prophetic. Stylistically nestled somewhere between James Taylor and Cat Stephens (and occasionally The Temptations), Wendell Kimbrough’s melodic instrumentation and compelling composition form a fitting vehicle for his insightful lyricism.
In a musical climate often plagued by melodrama and sentimentality, Wendell adds to the acoustic singer-songwriter role just the right touch of playfulness to lighten up even the most poignant ideas. Take, for instance, the fourth track, “The Ballad of Freida the Goose.” When was the last time waterfowl brought you close to tears? Not recently? Well, Freida just might. Because between a high-strung acoustic and some tasteful piano, Wendell gets it right: Freida, all of us know how you feel /We’ve been hurt, dear, we’ve been hungry in search of a meal. And the Academy—the backdrop for much of this album—is certainly an intense setting where we have all come to those realizations and seen wounds exposed and healed, God-willing. One’s tenure of community life during Trinity Forum Academy can be a spiritual and emotional pressure cooker, and a lot of well-kept secrets can surface where you wouldn’t expect, not least the secrets you keep from yourself. The Academy’s nine months and tight quarters are enough to wear down pretenses and exhaust resources of forced kindness, and Wendell, through Freida, describes this correctly. At the end of the day, when we’ve seen each other’s dirty laundry, we have to decide whether or not we’re going to follow Christ into that mess or gloss it over and accept only the prettiest portraits of each other. In this beautiful apostrophe to the lonely goose, Wendell explores the idolatry of the ideal over the experience of the real and concludes, with the lyrics of the album’s title, Freida, find your way home / It might not be perfect, but it’s better than being alone.
While much of Wendell’s folk eloquence follows Frieda’s pursuit of a sense of home, namely in the haunting “Come Back Home,” the music itself often tells a different story. Find Your Way Home certainly has its range of genres, but whether it’s folk or rock or Wendell’s very own acoustic Motown (surely he’s a pioneer here), he moves with distinct comfort and ability. In one highlight, “Sweet Virginia,” the beautiful interplay of acoustic, piano, accordion, and violin flows smoothly behind Wendell’s straightforward vocals. My route from the friendly South to frenetic DC has not been too different from my good friend Wendell’s, and this song perfectly captures the longing for old friends and the hunger for stillness that a city like this can produce. The music itself seems to deliver the very thing the song pines for: Give me a moment to begin to see my place / I need your landscapes for my rural mind / Give me a respite, give me some time.
In fact, Find Your Way Home as a whole is an album that can deliver some peace and calm into a noisy life. Because even when he rocks, Wendell’s thoughts are clear and his clarity is convicting. Find Your Way Home shines as the first effort from this promising artist, and his further projects promise to be, like this one, filled with thoughtful, endearing songs from a truly talented songwriter. Wendell Kimbrough is one musician well worth our attention.
Thu 16 Jul 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Katie Roland (Academy Class of 2003)
“Loaning money and borrowing it is not a simple, mechanical transaction. Innate human values of trust and fairness enable the system to work, giving people the faith to make loans with the expectation that they will be paid back…The transaction is relational as well as monetary.”
We made our way out of Phnom Phen, traveling along a dusty dirt road until the chaos of the city disappeared behind us. The shoulders of the country roads outside Phnom Phen were completely covered by trash, and I noticed a dog looking for food that would not be found, its bones poking out from under a sparse blanket of fur. As we traveled farther down the road, we came upon small tin shacks, set inches apart from each other. They seemed like they would tip at the slightest breeze, and yet these shacks provided much-needed shelter for dozens of children and their families.
Thu 16 Jul 2009 • Responses: 1 • by Joseph Sherrard (Academy Class of 2004)
“The family we come home to, the spouse we wake up next to, the communities we belong to—none of these offer a panacea for the feeling of loneliness…Loneliness is in many ways a defining trait of modernity, and perhaps no one is more vulnerable to its effects than the type of leader The Trinity Forum aims to form and empower.”
There’s a lot under the surface of life, everyone knows that. A lot of malice and dread and guilt, and so much loneliness, where you wouldn’t really expect to find it, either.
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
On my third Sunday as a newly minted associate pastor in Mississippi, I stood behind the Lord’s Table, preparing to preside over the sacrament for the first time. As the congregation sang “Let Us Break Bread Together” and I fumbled through my Bible, trying to find the words of institution in 1 Corinthians, I felt one overwhelming and distinct thing: loneliness.
Fri 05 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Jamin Brophy-Warren (Academy Class of 2006) and Amy Chozick
Link to story from The Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2008
Fri 05 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Benedict Rogers (upcoming Academy Scholar in Residence)
“He had seen his father shot dead in front of him, as they worked together in their rice paddy. He waited until the Burma Army soldiers had gone, and then brought his father’s body back for burial.”
Benedict Rogers is a writer and human rights activist, working with Christian Solidarity Worldwide. He is the author of A Land Without Evil: Stopping the Genocide of Burma’s Karen People (Monarch, 2004) and co-author with Joseph D’souza of On the Side of the Angels: Justice, Human Rights, and Kingdom Mission (Authentic, 2007). He has travelled 24 times to Burma and its borderlands, and also works on Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He has lived in Hong Kong, China, East Timor and Washington, DC, and is now based in London.
He had seen his father shot dead in front of him, as they worked together in their rice paddy. He waited until the Burma Army soldiers had gone, and then brought his father’s body back for burial. A few days later, the Burma Army struck again, this time killing most of the villagers, including his mother.
Fri 05 Dec 2008 • Responses: 0 • by Amin Aminfar (Academy Class of 2003)
“The relationship between lawyer and client constructed by the rules of legal ethics does not contain, therefore, an absolute agreement that the lawyer will never betray the client, just that the lawyer is prepared to accept the wrath of the client (and subsequent wrath of the profession) should the lawyer make the choice to betray.”
Amin Aminfar is a 2003 graduate of the Trinity Forum Academy. Following the Academy, Amin completed a dual-degree program in theology and law at Duke University, and currently serves as a lawyer with the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC. The views expressed in this essay do not reflect those of the US Department of Justice or the US Federal Government.
Can an ethical lawyer be a moral person? In popular American sentiment, the suggestion that a lawyer may be moral is virtually a non sequitur. To the guild of lawyers, being ethical, that is, obeying the rules of professional conduct that guide the practice of law, is a profoundly moral task. Both of these responses elide a basic truth: the interface between legal ethics and moral responsibility is fraught with choices that threaten both.
Fri 16 Nov 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Mike Metzger
Mike Metzger, president of The Clapham Institute, works to help people and organizations advance faith-centered cultural reform. In this essay, he discusses the need to view worship, art, work, service, and ministry as part of the same “fabric.” “Albert Einstein reminded us that we cannot solve a problem in the framework that created it. This is why efforts to ‘integrate faith and work’ generally fail.”
Imagine this.
Here’s an easy way to see the disconnect between Sunday and Monday. Ask a friend to draw the first five images that come to mind when he or she hears these words: worship, work, ministry, the arts and service. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, we now have five thousand words depicting the disconnect. We also have a clearer picture as to why efforts to “integrate faith and work” generally fail.
Tue 24 Jul 2007 • Responses: 1 • by J. P. Moreland
J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy at Biola University, was a scholar in residence at Osprey Point in 2007. In this essay, he reflects on reasons the media and others seem to miss the blatant issues behind the news.
Have you ever watched the so-called experts in the news almost universally give the wrong analysis of an issue? Have you known in your heart what the real issue is and been flabbergasted at how so many prominent media leaders can’t seem to get it? I don’t know about you, but when this happens to me, I have trouble staying in my easy chair while the talking heads on the televised news can’t see the nose on their faces.
Mon 19 Mar 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Nigel Cameron
Why the Stem Cell Stakes Are so High
A resident scholar at Osprey Point looks at the stakes in the stem cell debate.
Review of Wendell Kimbrough’s Album “Find Your Way Home”
The Relational Nature of Debt and Credit
“Learning to Laugh at Obama” from The Wall Street Journal
A Mandate for Human Rights Activism
Michael Clayton, Thomas More, and the Duty of a Christian Lawyer
Exploring a Lost American Ethic
