Praising the Lord in Song – Julie Kinscheck

Episode 35.
Julie Kinscheck, singer-songwriter, teacher, and group leader extraordinaire, is a woman of many musical talents. Whether singing sacred or secular music – hymns, Christmas carols, jazz, or folk music – she brings passion and a desire to share her God-given abilities with the audience. After years of performing and teaching, the Covid lock-down created time to produce a book, Vocal Training for Praise Singers. Intended mainly for Christian praise singers, it is a robust teaching tool replete with exercises, explanations of physiology, tips for worship team leaders and devotionals. Julie’s passion for the Lord and singing, combined with her life-time of experience singing and teaching, come through in this conversation.   

Coming Soon!
Julie Kinscheck and students present the  “Berklee Worships” concert
Wednesday, March 29th, 7pm. 
Berklee College of Music, 1140 Boylston St, Boston (Recital Hall 1A, Alma Berk Hall). The concert is  free and open to the public. 

Highlights:
·       Julie was baptized in her 20s after much wandering and disillusionment with Christianity.

·       Performing and writing songs since her teens, she has produced four albums across several musical genres.

·       Teaching at the renowned Berklee College of Music in Boston, she guides a wide range of students.

·       The musical selection at the various Boston Church of Christ congregations cater to the social make-up of their communities – Hispanic, Vietnamese and Blacks. 

·       It’s important to strike a balance between familiar hymns and newer material.  

·       Vocal Training for Praise Singers provides lessons on vocal technique with a Christian perspective, mainly for worship leaders, as well as seminary libraries and vocal programs. 

Social Media links for Julie:
Website – www.julieksings.com
Facebook Artist – https://m.facebook.com/QueenOfSCAT/
Instagram – Queen Of SCAT
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/3TSoU90T6tZPgvVxaxWzW9
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/julieksings

Social Media links for Méli:
Talking with God Project –  https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisolomon/

Transcript:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1851013/episodes/12494540-35-julie-kinscheck-praising-the-lord-in-song/edit

Follow the podcast!
The Living Our Beliefs podcast offers a place to learn about other religions and faith practices. When you hear about how observant Christians, Jews and Muslims live their faith, new ideas and questions arise:  Is your way similar or different?  Is there an idea or practice that you want to explore?  Understanding how other people live opens your mind and heart to new people you meet. 

Comments?  Questions?  Email  Méli -
         info@talkingwithgodproject.org

The Living Our Beliefs podcast is part of the Talking with God Project.

Transcript

Julie Kinscheck transcript
Praising the Lord in Song

[Music]

INTRODUCTION:

Méli:  Hello and welcome to Living Our Beliefs, a home for open conversations with fellow Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Through personal stories and reflection, we will explore how our religious traditions show up in daily life – at work, at home, in the community, in good times and in bad.  There is no one-size-fits-all ‘right’ answer, just a way to move forward for you, for here, for now.  I am your host Méli Solomon.  So glad you could join us.  

[Music]

Méli:  This is episode thirty-five and my guest today is Julie Kinscheck. Julie is an Assistant Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music in Boston, a singer-songwriter, guitarist, recording artist, author, worship leader, and member of the United Church of Christ.  She has released four albums and recently published her first vocal training book, Vocal Training for Praise Singers. A worship leader in her local church, Julie was a singer first before discovering her passion for teaching. Julie has spent many years singing professionally as both a solo artist and leader of jazz and rock groups, country bands, a cappella groups, and worship teams. She has received significant acclaim nationally and internationally, even sharing the stage with Bobby McFerrin among others. All of this experience pours into her students. In addition to her Bachelor of Music degree from Berklee, she completed classical music studies at Oberlin Conservatory and studied vocal pedagogy at the New England Conservatory, among others.  Her master's degree in Vocal Pedagogy is from Westminster Choir College, Rider University. She will be leading the “Berklee Worships” concert on Wednesday, March 29th at 7pm. The concert will be at Berklee College of Music, which is located at 1140 Boylston St. Boston. It is free and open to the public. Julie lives north of Boston with her family. A link to Julie’s social media handles are listed in the show notes. 

Méli:  Welcome to my living our beliefs podcast. I'm so pleased to have you on today. 

Julie:  Oh, thank you so much, Méli. I'm very happy to be here. 

Méli:  I'd like to begin with my usual first question. What is your religious and cultural identity? 

IDENTITY & FAITH PATH:

Julie:  I'm American, I'm white, have European, mostly German ancestry, and I go to the Boston Church of Christ, which is non-denominational Christian Church. 

Méli:  Have you always been a member of the Church of Christ? Were you raised within that church? 

Julie:  No, actually not at all. My father was a congregational minister, so I started there. But we left that denomination when I was about 7 or 8 and floated around in the malaise of the 60s without a real church home for the rest of my childhood, occasionally popping into a Unitarian church on. Special holiday and then once I left home, I wanted nothing to do with Christianity. I had really gotten bit jaded and it wasn't until my late 20s that I met people from this church that made me stop and think about. You know what I really believed and what was really important and what was really true. The culmination of that was my decision to get baptized and give my life to Christ. And now I've been here for over 30 years. 

Méli:  Well, you sound like you've certainly found a home that you're comfortable in. 

Julie:  Yeah, I I love it. I love it. It's definitely my spiritual home. 

Méli:  What do you love about it? 

Julie:  Well, one big thing is that people are trying really hard to practice what they preach and to really love each other in a way that that Jesus has taught us to do. I had seen a lot of hypocrisy in the world of Christianity throughout my lifetime and that. Broke my trust with just the whole concept. And when I came across it was actually some musicians who were really good musicians that also professed to be Christians. And sometimes they wouldn't play on a certain song or, you know, they wanted to change the lyrics of something that we were doing when I was a student at Berkeley. And I didn't understand it, thought it was pretty weird, but because they were so talented and good at what they did and they were nice people, you know, I continued to work with them as a musician and and build friendships, but years later when I got vocal nodes and my life was falling apart, most of my worldly friends. Were taking a hike because I didn't have a gig for them. It was friends from this church that still seemed to care about who I was beyond my ability to get them a gig because I was always a bandleader and and all that. And then I said, OK, you know, what's this really about? In fact, there's a little other piece of that my. My ex fiance at the time, who was of Jewish descent accident, actually had started to study the Bible with somebody from this church. And I was like, well, what are you doing? You're Jewish. I didn't get it and he he started apologizing to me. He said Julie, Jesus died for me and. I can't treat you like this anymore and I was so blown away. I had been in a relationship with him for over two years. At one point you know we have been engaged and it's like what happened to him. And so I went to this fella gym. Shout out to Jim Peterson if you hear this. And I I said what are you teaching my ex and I ended up sitting down to study the Bible with his girlfriend at the time and really look at the word and grapple with what I believed was really true. Once I did that, the mirror of of the word came up to me and I had to make some decisions about my life and what I believed. And I did come out on the side of, you know, I believe that Jesus is Lord and I wanna follow him. I couldn't have done that if I hadn't seen people around me actually following him. And in a very real and practical way, they were still musicians. They were still living their lives, but they were doing it in a way that. Was beautiful before Jesus. They were caring about each other. They were not sinning in the ways. I mean, yeah, we all sin. We're all, you know, human. But trying not to and using the word as their standard. And I found that really powerful. And I still do 30 years later. You know, it's a community that's really trying to to practice what they preach and love each other and the good and the bad times. 

Méli:  Well, Amen to that. Have you connected with musicians who are in a religious tradition that are not Christ followers? 

MUSIC & MUSICIANS:

Julie:  For sure. 

Méli:  Does that feel different? 

Julie:  Yes, it's a pretty fundamental connection if, you know, we're both following Jesus. I think that's the same in in any relationship. I mean, like my my marriage, I had met my husband long before either of us were Christian, and we didn't have anything in common. We're both musicians. We did have that in common, but he sort of ran. With the druggie rockers and I ran with the stuck up jazzers and you know the two didn't meet years later. Once I had become a Christian my would-be husband started coming around to some open mic nights we were having and once he made a decision for Christ and we started to get to know each other the the depth of our relationship. Was just so much more because we have that in common. And I think that's true in any way. I mean, when you have something really deeply important to you in common with someone else, then there's a connection there. That doesn't mean that I can't have a great musical connection with musicians who aren't. You know, following Jesus. But that level may not be there. I have musicians of all types. Interestingly enough, I lead an acapella group that does a lot of Christmas carols. It's called the harmony jewels. It started with musicians from my church and we were all friends. It was saying in the worship team. Like I got these gigs and then we pulled them in and blah blah blah. Well over time I've needed to reach out a little bit further as my group has become more professional and sometimes I don't have friends that are available that are at that professional level within my church circles and I have since hired a number of – actually, bass singers, I don't know why that happens – but who, you know, are not Christians but still enjoy Christmas carols. And they've been great members of our group. Some of them have even commented to me that, wow, you guys have something really special going on here. And I might say, well, you know, it has to do with Jesus and whether they grab. Not to that or not, that's totally up to them, but we've had a great relationship and have made some great music together. 

Méli:  What I'm hearing, Julie, is that that connection beyond the Christian sphere when it comes to music is around secular music. Well, Christmas carols, I don't know, I guess, I suppose that's not secular music. 

Julie:  It's on the border. 

Méli:  That's on the border, OK. 

Julie:  But jazz, certainly. I've done a lot of work with other jazz musicians who don't follow this and rock and pop and been in a lot of different bands over the years. 

Méli:  Right, but I was thinking within the sacred sphere, are you crossing religions in that sphere? 

Julie:  I'm gonna answer this in a sideways way. I'm leaving a concert at Berklee College of Music called Berklee worships and. I opened the auditions at the student concert that I'm directing. I opened it up to anyone who worships, you know, to audition. I even sent a special e-mail to the Jewish fellowship at Berklee, and I put posters all over the place. But the only people who did audition were. Of Christian orientation. But I I was open to that. But like I said, that's not who came to the to the table to play, so to speak. Both Jewish and a lot of Arabic melodies, Middle Eastern melodies are very beautiful. I do feel as a Christian that Judaism is you know part of partly my heritage, although many Jews might not feel that. That's fair, but I do. I guess, you know the whole lineage of of Abraham is is also the the history of my faith. There are so many beautiful renditions of psalms and especially, like I said, a lot of traditional Israeli music. I think it's gorgeous and I have incorporated some of that into some of my music here and there, but I haven't always done it with people who are of authentic Jewish faith. It's just, I've borrowed from their tradition. I'm not, I'm not adverse to that idea. It just hasn't sort of happened. 

Méli:  Two things. One is that Jews absolutely understand that we are the foundational religion, as it were, and that Christianity grew out of Judaism. So just a small corrective there. The other thing is, the reason that I ask you is because I have a very long time family friend in my mind who is Eastern Orthodox. She's a singer, professional singer all her life. She's also been a a voice teacher and she has worked with cantors, and she has sung at synagogues. And so I was just thinking of of her example and was wondering if you had had any of that sort of experience. But you know, you run in very different circles than than she does. 

Julie:  Like her, I am a voice teacher, obviously, and we're going to talk about my book. So I have taught students of many, many different backgrounds. So in that way I have interface. Musically I've I've had a lot of students from India. Lot of students from India, I sort of found myself in that community by some recommendations from some previous students and have even helped them with some songs that are in tumble and different Indian dialects. And I have a student from, I think he's from Iraq that I teach online and. You know, he's not of a Christian orientation, but I haven't worked on any of his native music, so it hasn't necessarily been a spiritual connection as much as a just vocal teaching, helping him to be the singer he wants to be. And I have a lot of Chinese students and Japanese, Korean through Berklee, so I'm working with a lot of students who have different religious beliefs in my voice teaching. 

VOCAL TRAINING FOR PRAISE SINGERS:

Méli:  So you mentioned your book. Let's get into that Vocal Training for Praise Singers. It was published in 2021. What was the inspiration for writing that book? 

Julie:  I've been teaching voice alongside being a singer. I've done a lot of musical things over the years, and I've done a lot along the way that didn't always make enough to pay the bills. Even though I was doing it and I was very serious about it and I still do do it. I started teaching on the side. Originally it was just a few students here and there after my other commitments. And then I decided, you know, I don't want to waste 8 hours a day doing something that does not matter to me at all. So instead of working in sales, I got a job as a teacher, an artist in the schools, in elementary schools. I started to learn how to teach music in the classroom, and that expanded into me getting a teacher license and teaching middle school a full time as a music teacher and continuing to teach some private students. And then I got pregnant with twins. That was wonderful. It is wonderful. But during that time I really wanted to be home to raise them. I really didn't want to put them in daycare. And I hopped out of the public schools and started to really increase my home teaching business. And my private studio grew over the years until eventually it was my main income alongside some gigs. Along the way I got invited to do some workshops to. Help some choirs and some praise teams. I started to develop a class curriculum for training worship teams. And of course throughout all of these years I'm also singing on the worship team and helping the singers in my own worship team to be their best. Then finally after the last workshop that I did, which was in Berlin. I said, you know, I really need a curriculum that can go with my workshops. I started to create a curriculum and I said this should be a book. So the germ had been planted. And then COVID came along. One of the the silver linings, I think many of us found during the lockdown was that we had a little more time. Then we had maybe previously to do some things we hadn't been able to do. It was then that I started actually trying to put it together for real, and it was also when I started my masters program at at Westminster Choir College in vocal pedagogy. So it was very interesting. Those two things started happening at the same time I took my experience. Of many years of teaching and doing workshops and leading praise teams, and then added to it my new education that was really deepening my understanding of the vocal mechanism and how everything really works and atomically putting those two things together at the same time during the pandemic and I wrote the book. I'm super proud of it and excited to get it out there to people who really want to deepen their their worship through song and be able to be the best singers they can be and understand how to do that. But it it it goes way beyond that. 

Méli:  Obviously your audience is singers. Singers who were singing in churches. Do you see that as singing in any kind of church, any denomination? Or is it quite focused on Church of Christ Singers? 

Julie:  Oh no, certainly not. It has a Christian orientation for anyone who follows Jesus and wants to worship Jesus and song worship God in song. But. I make that little distinction, worship God and song the material, though it does include many scriptures, some which are New Testament and some which are Old Testament. The material in the book is really applicable to anyone who wants to worship, and anyone who wants to be a better singer? Um, I do actually use the the book as curriculum at Berklee College of Music with secular students now, I don't use certain chapters. For instance, there's a chapter on leading a worship team, picking the repertoire and organizing that. That wouldn't be a chapter I would be sharing. In in my vocal pedagogy classes at Berklee, however, the chapters about respiration and breath management, which is the power source of any singer or registration, learning how to navigate from your lower or your chest voice to your head voice cleanly, and exercise to help you do that. Or learning about resonance and how to have a beautiful tone regardless of what you're singing. I mean, there's even a primer in here on reading music and following a chart, you know? So there's a lot of very practical information in here for just learning how to sing well, there's 85 voice exercises. There's a whole lot of information there. But. In the appendices, there's also Bible studies, devotionals for praise, singers, you know, and that's very, you know, Christian oriented, you know, and every chapter starts with a scripture and a thought, you know, prayer thought. The introduction, of course, is also deals with things that we face as a Christian trying to use our voices. Well, we're struggling with insecurity or pride or jealousy, the interpersonal challenges you might have within a worship team. So there's things that are very specific to our Christian walk and other things that are very much just about being a good singer. This in the classroom.

Méli:  Do you also see this as something that a singer or a praise singer could use in a self-directed manner? 

Julie:  Oh, I do, most definitely. That's part of why there's so many voice exercises in there that people can use. And very shortly there will be the accompanying complete CD of all of the voice exercises in the book that's going to be available to anyone who gets the book. You can read it, you can listen to it, you can practice with it. I I have had a lot of people. You know, pick up the book and use it on their own. I've also had some other people say that if they don't have any vocal training at all, that it might be a little bit of a steep grade without a little bit of guidance, but I think it kind of depends on the person. I use it as a companion with private students as well. Just so that I can say, alright, well, let's look at this. OK, now let's do it and I'll take it further. I mean that's the beauty of private lessons, certainly that you know, the teacher is going to take it the next step. 

Méli:  Yeah, absolutely. And can tailor the exercises to your particular needs and situation. 

Julie:  Yeah, for sure, yeah. But I am super excited to use it as curriculum for workshops and conferences. 

Méli:  So you're clearly very passionate about helping singers, and it sounds like you're equally excited to help singers in a sacred or a secular setting. Is that a fair representation? 

Julie:  That is true. I mean, I do love mentoring singers of all sorts. I do have a particular passion for teaching worship singers because that is so near and dear to my heart, worshipping God, praising the Lord, and helping others to come to the throne using that gift. Because singing in itself is a very spiritual thing. I believe that regardless, even people who are not professing a faith, I think can experience that spiritual connection with others through song. And that's what makes music so powerful. I feel like being able to share it. In a faith context, it makes it doubly powerful because we're recognizing our love for the Lord and our community within those songs, and it's just extremely powerful. It transcends. What you know, you can just describe and I can help people do that better. You can have a fabulous heart, but then if you sing in your off pitch it can be very distracting. Or on the flip side, some people sound really good, but because of their technique they end up causing fatigue or even vocal damage. Other people may be moved by them and so they keep doing it and then they keep hurting themselves and it cuts their career short or eliminate it altogether. So I have the opportunity through, by mentoring, to help singers to get those basic skills so that what they do is is well accepted, but then also to protect themselves so that they have a long career doing it. 

SACRED & SECULAR:

Méli:  Yeah, absolutely. And it's really valuable. Let's talk about your experience singing in a sacred and secular setting. You’ve done a lot of both, and I understand the passion in the sacred, but I'm curious to hear from you about your experience. How were those experiences different? How is it different to singing at church in a service versus in a jazz club or other secular setting. 

Julie:  Hmm. Well, they are different animals. You know, it was a little challenging for me when I first became a Christian because I had already been a professional singer. I mean, I was 27 when I was baptized. I had been going after getting a record contract and and writing songs and singing in clubs since I was a teenager. The orientation is different because when you sing at a jazz club, you're strutting your stuff. You're saying you know, like you didn't do it. Look at what I can do, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of fun in that. I enjoy that. I do. You know, I'm a performer and it's something that floats my boat. I get excited by it. It thrills me. When I sing in a church setting, it's not about drawing people's attention to me, and that was a really hard adjustment to me when I first started singing in a church context. Because obviously, as a singer for the Lord, you, you want to be excellent. You want people to enjoy what you're doing and to be moved by it. But the ultimate goal is not to draw them to me, is to draw them to God. It involves a lot of work with the heart, I think, and it's something that. I can't say I've been perfect with over the years, but it's something I've grown in a huge amount. I mean, I have been now in in the faith for over 30 years. I've had lots of opportunity to work on that and it really is my desire and I think that's where it comes what it comes down to is what is your goal when you get out on that stage. Where they come together, where they're similar, is that I feel now that everything I do is to share my gift and I know where it comes from. You know the gift is from God, and whether I'm sharing it to help lead people to God, or whether I'm sharing it just to move people's hearts and have them enjoy what I'm producing in a secular context, that part is the same. I want to share what God has given me now when I'm singing in a jazz club. Or when I'm singing in a pop context or something like that, I'm still shining my light which God has given me, even if I'm not singing words specifically about him. 

CHURCH SINGING:

Méli:  When you're in a church service. How do you see your role as a singer? 

Julie:  Well, again, I believe that my role is to help direct people to God's music can do some things that. The preacher can't always do it softens people's hearts. It connects to to them emotionally. Science will tell us that music within community, when we participate, releases serotonin. It does a lot of things to increase our feeling of connection with one another. Believes anxiety. We set the stage to open hearts to hear the word. And we also, we're actually, we preaching the word too, as we're singing often things that are scriptural and spiritual. Lead people to that emotional connection. 

Méli:  I ask because. I'm a conservative Jew, and in some synagogues I've been a member of, there's been a Cantor. There's not always a Cantor and a conservative service. I have found that some cantors are quite performative. And others are helping the congregation to deepen their prayer experience. And so I was wondering if that was also present in the church setting. 

Julie:  Yeah. And and I think it can actually be OK within the church setting because that cantor that you mentioned that helps them to deepen their prayer. There may be a time in during your service where that is especially important. I'm not familiar with your services, but you know, in our services. Right before communion or right after communion is a very important time to help people to reflect and whatever is done musically at that time needs to aid in that. Whereas maybe a song that would be right before the sermon might be something to get them excited about whatever the topic of that sermon is maybe that maybe you're singing something that's thematically connected. I recently wrote a song called ‘Follow the Lord’ [singing]: Follow the Lord leave your nets and come. [end] We did that song with the praise band this Sunday. And right after it, the preacher came on and started talking about, in Matthew, how Jesus asked the fisherman to leave their nets and follow Him, and He would make them fishers of men. So it was part of leading into what he wanted to preach about, even though ‘Follow the Lord’ was very much participatory. As a song and call and response, it could be more performance-related than maybe what we sang right before the communion when we really wanted everyone to be in that space of introspection and reflection. But I have to say, there's another context here and and that's when you get someone who comes out and what they do draws so much attention to them that it becomes entertainment instead of worship. I have heard people complain about many of the mega-churches doing contemporary Christian worship that is maybe so excellent musically that it becomes just a rock concert instead of a worship service. And I think that's a crazy line that we try to walk because I really appreciate contemporary Christian music and I also appreciate old acapella hymns, you know. So I really like it all though as an artist, II tend toward more contemporary. I do perform older material all the time. I love singing how great thou art, etcetera. But we have to be careful when we're doing something that could become entertainment, that we encourage those listening to be a part of it as opposed to be spectators. 

Méli:  It can be kind of a fine distinction. So on a side note to this, I attended the local Church of Christ here in Arlington. It was super interesting. It was wildly different than my synagogue experience. And I bring it up because the music part of it was part of what was so different. I mean, there was a full on band. And the first 15 minutes or so of the service was all singing with a lot of congregational engagement. The words were on a big video screen above the stage. So everybody was reading. I imagine they all knew the words anyway, but I found myself wondering about whether people were feeling more spiritual because of the music. Was it getting them ready for the sermon? Was it raising their energy on a Sunday morning? I don't know. Lots of questions came up. 

Julie:  Well, first of all, thank you for for doing that, for going to to see that and understanding sort of where I'm coming from. As far as a Sunday morning, that is one of our sister congregations. So it's not the exact same experience but probably pretty close. We don't always use the full band in my region of the church. But we do it it probably once or twice a month and then the other Sundays we may have just a combination of acapella and accompanied by just guitar and a jembe or something like that. So it's not always the full band experience, however what you said about preparing them. For the sermon connecting us all as we're singing together, of course that would be true whether we were singing with the band or acapella. I liked what you said about getting our energy up on a Sunday morning because I hadn't ever really thought about that, but I would say that it does that too. I I also appreciated that you mentioned that there was a lot of audience engagement, because that is super important. And I'm not going to say that everybody knew every word that was going on there, depending on which songs they chose to do that morning. Some are more familiar than others. So that's why the words are up there, to help everybody to be able to be more engaged. That's super important, that they're all engaged, the style of music. You know, we try to give somewhat of a cross-section. In my particular region of the church, we have a lot of people who have been with the church since the beginning. This this church started in 1979, so it's pretty young still. But we have people who have been there a long time and who are older, as well as our teens and our campus ministries. So we need a good cross section of songs that are going to meet the heart needs of the different people that are there. 

Méli:  I appreciate that tender balance between doing things that are familiar so that people say: ‘OK, I know what's going on, I can follow, I can relax, I can deepen my prayer experience’. But also to mix it up to reach different parts of the congregation the young people the the older folks may be different cultural backgrounds who like different kinds of music. It was one of the things I I read in your book about understanding your congregation that I really took to heart – that depending on the nation of origin or the cultural background of people in the congregation, they're going to be comfortable with different kinds of songs, different kinds of hymns. So yeah, it's a lot to balance. 

Julie:  That's a very, a very important point. Thank you for bringing it up that I mentioned it in my book and it is an important part of choosing the songs, which is, you know, part of the, the job of at least the lead worship leader within any group. We have, for instance, a fair number of people who are Spanish speaking and so, you know, we often will add in some Spanish music, or some at least Spanish verses to other songs that are familiar to our congregation. We have a quite a few Cambodian members of our church so we'd like to add a little that in now and then probably should do it more than we do. There's a lot of ways to try to reach that heart level. And and we have a a region that's in the South which has attracted a lot of people from you know from Mattapan and Hyde Park and stuff and so there's, for People of Color in that region, as a result they have a gospel choir because that meets the heart needs of folks that are in that region. Not that we don't do some gospel in our region, but you know, we're gonna maybe lean more one way or another, depending on who you've got there. 

Méli:  Yeah, the gospel choir. That would be fun to hear. But one of the things that you noted in your book about this topic is you can't please everybody. That that's also true, right? 

Julie:  The apostle Paul actually says to try to be all things to all people so you can save some. That's a tall order. Because you really can't be all things to all people. You do your best. You think you're best. 

Méli:  Interesting. That's certainly not what marketers say. 

Julie:  No, that's also an interesting line, being a Christian singer and yet also working in the world as a musician is marketing. For instance, my first album, my ‘Grace with Jazz on Top’ album, I mentioned that it's coming from the orientation of being a Christian, but it's not all sort of like praise and worship material, but there are some songs in here which like like ‘Get in the Water’, which is a sort of a song about my conversion, but it's done in in a rock-a-billy up-tempo, fun kind of style with the scats that scat solo in the middle. So I definitely crossover a lot, even genre wise. I'm a bit of a schizophrenic. Doing a bunch of different things relatively well, sometimes it’s hard to decide: OK, where do I'm going to, where am I going to stay? Where am I going to plant? And then you try to market that, whether it's selling CD's, or it's producing a service or a concert. I do need to think about who is my audience right now or who do I want to get this to? Who am I trying to reach? Like you said, it's a tender balance, but my book – that even though it can be used in secular context as I've mentioned, and I do actually have something that I've created called study packs, which draw out the essentials of my vocal training and sort of strip out the religious context – I do offer that when I teach classes at Berklee. I say there's three ways to get the book. You can get the book, and it's unashamedly from a Christian context. You can get it online. If you prefer it, you can get it from Amazon. And get the electronic Kindle eBook if you prefer it in that format. Or you can order the study packs, which I'll e-mail to you every week, which you know are completely secular, and just give you the material we're going to cover in the class, and you won't, by accident, trip on the scripture. No judgment. You just tell me what you want and we'll we'll proceed. And that way I've avoided having people feel uncomfortable, or having them complain to my administration that I'm trying to push religion on them, which is, at Berklee, not my mission. But in general, it's marketing the book. I first and foremost want to get it in the hands of every worship leader in every church. That's the primary audience of this, and I'd like to get it into the. The libraries of every college that has a gospel choir or any kind of worship studies, and secondarily everybody who's got voice programs and libraries.

Méli:  Right, so seminaries and and such theology programs.

Julie:  That's a good search term. 

Méli:  I I actually just realized I have no idea. Do seminaries have vocal programs? 

Julie:  Well my my father got his masters in sacred music at Yale Seminary. So I I would say that's probably pretty common that they would have something like that. I'm, you know, finishing my my Masters in Vocal Pedagogy at Westminster Choir College. I took a class in the panorama of sacred music. And so, I mean, I think that's often a component. But I hadn't thought to search on the idea of seminaries, so thank you for that little idea. 

Méli:  Not a problem. The world of religion is really, really big. The more I'm in it, the bigger it gets. And what I now realize in our conversation, Julie, is that I don't yet understand the difference between a seminary and a school of theology. So, for instance, BU School of Theology. Is that a seminary or is that something different? I don't know. That's something to look into. 

Julie:  To be honest, I don't really know myself. 

Méli:  I'm glad we still have some questions to answer this is this is a good thing. As a closing question, Julie, I'm wondering if you have a favorite sacred song. 

Julie:  Ah. Well. It would have to be Amazing Grace. You know, there are there are so many that I love and I love a lot of the current material, but Amazing Grace is, I don't know, maybe it's the foundation of everything I feel about my faith. The grace that I receive from my Savior is amazing and the ability to be able to stand on the truths that came into my life because of the death of Jesus. So as far as the meaning of the song, that's so precious to me. But I also think it's gorgeous. It's just beautiful. The melody is timeless, and I think that's probably why it has remained American, an American folk song even beyond being a hymn. Why it's so important to the African American tradition, why it's so important to the white churches, what can I say? And has been in many ways a bridge to find common ground over the centuries. It's a song that children can sing. It's a song that they love when I sing at their nursing homes and assisted living. They love that song. It's often a good way to end. Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. [singing] Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found. Was blind, but now I see. 

CLOSING:

Méli:  Thank you. 

Julie:  You're very welcome. Thank you for this time to talk and just discuss things that are important to my heart and that bring us together. 

[Music] 

Méli:  Thank you for listening.  If you’d like to get notified when new episodes are released, hit the SUBSCRIBE button. Questions and comments are welcome and can be directly sent to info@talkingwithgodproject.org. A link is in the show notes. Transcripts are available a few weeks after airing. This podcast is an outgrowth of my Talking with God Project. For more information about that research, including workshop and presentation options, go to my website – www.talkingwithgodproject.org.  Thank you so much.  Till next time.  Bye bye. 

[Music]