Allan Appel Photo
Theodicy Jazz Collective tubist, gourd player Aleta Staton, and Rev. Alex Dyer process on Palm Sunday.
Parasols joined the traditional palm fronds along with a tuba and a tap dancer as New Haveners marked Palm Sunday with a full-throated New Orleans-style jazz parade.
Like the Rev. Alex Dyer’s Episcopal Church of St. Paul and St. James, congregations across the city marked the beginning of the week before Easter with a procession in which worshipers bear palm fronds.
In a religious first for New Haven, Dyer and his congregants augmented the traditional procession with a full-fledged “second line” New Orleans-style parade. That’s a hot brass band playing jazz followed by a second line of people bearing their decorations and dancing.
After a public reading from the Gospel of Mark, chapter eleven, on the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem— “Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields” — Dyer gave the signal. Then the Theodicy Jazz Collective, along with tap dancer Parris Mann, uncorked their Big Easy rhythms.
The result was bringing a little jazz, retroactively, to Jerusalem, in a three-block-area around Wooster Square.
Jeff and Lynn Zelem.
Bearing palm fronds in one hand and decorated parasols in the other, 75 congregants including Jeff Zelem promenaded with a pumped-up brass band. They followed the cross down the church steps at Chapel and Olive.
Zelem, who drove in from Derby for the proceedings, said, “I love it, the combo of jazz and church. Awesome. Church doesn’t have to be boring.”
The beat grew a little mellower as the parade turned onto Court Street, then heated up again as onlookers in Wooster Square Park nodded their approval. The parade returned down Academy and ascended the steps to finish the celebration inside the sanctuary.
Because St. Paul and St. James has used jazz in their regular services for several years, Dyer called the event a logical extension. Since “second line” parades are used in New Orleans to mark both weddings and funerals, he said it was appropriate for Palm Sunday: a day marking a victorious entry, but to be followed by the suffering of Jesus’ crucifixion.
“Two for one,” he said in theological shorthand.
Interior procession at St. Rose of Lima Church in Fair Haven.
Earlier in the day, at the 9 a.m mass, Father Jim Manship led a Palm Sunday procession inside St. Rose of Lima.
Father Manship: Last year’s fronds become next year’s ash.
It was the first of four masses to be held throughout the day. Father Manship said all told the services would give the opportunity to carry palms to between 700 and 800 people. After bearing them, many people take home their fronds, place them on their home crosses, and when they’ve dried out, they are burned and the ashes used for Ash Wednesday, Manship explained.
To supervise the memorial candles and also to make sure there were enough fronds, Remo Pacelli arrived early in the morning. A worshiper at St. Rose for 50 years, he arranged four boxes of 125 fronds, one box for each mass.