I had the enormous privilege and pleasure to conduct and co-direct the Mercy Centre choir and orchestra, at World Youth Day 2016 in Kraków, Poland.  We had a choir of 35 voices and an orchestra of eight instrumentalists, and we led the music for daily Mass Tuesday through Friday, July 26-29, 2016, at Tauron Arena Kraków.  The music was beautiful, and it attracted notice: 

  • Bishop James Conley (of Lincoln, Nebraska) wrote a wonderful piece on music & liturgy at the Mercy Centre.
  • Fr. David Friel (of Philadelphia) wrote a lengthy essay on the music and its impact, even suggesting that what we did should be a template for how to handle big-event liturgies in the future.
  • Chris Stefanick, noted Catholic speaker and emcee of the Mercy Centre catechesis, gave us a public shout-out on the last day.

Salt+Light Television did a wonderful job of stage production and audio/visuals.  All their footage from the Mercy Centre is available online (they didn't record the Mass of Tuesday).  For a sample of what we did, here are a handful of pieces you might enjoy:

For a full listing of music from the Mercy Centre Masses, and to see/hear any of the selections, click on the buttons below; we also held a recording session on Saturday to archive many of these beautiful pieces.