The Sacred Music Concert Series at Our Lady of Grace launched with a special performance – the church’s sacred music director playing works that educated listeners on the beauty of classic compositions. (Photos by Lisa M. Geraci | Catholic News Herald) GREENSBORO — Our Lady of Grace Parish recently launched a Sacred Music Concert Series with a performance by its new sacred music director, Dr. Jarred Tafaro, who serenaded the crowd on a piano bequeathed to him by a musical legend: Dr. Charles Callahan.
On Sept. 20, Tafaro demonstrated for the crowd of 100 the beauty a pianist can attain when paired with the perfect instrument – chords that seem to fall from the heavens.
“Callahan played at such a high caliber that when you heard it, it just opened up your horizons of what the piano and organ can really do,” Tafaro said. “He knew how to breathe with the instrument.”
Callahan was a music professor at The Catholic University of America who was internationally known for his 300 compositions, organ consultations and papal commissions.
He was honored with the American Guild of Organists Distinguished Artist Award in 2014 and was an award-winning member of the American Society of Composers, Artists and Publishers.
He also happened to be a dear friend of Tafaro.
Tafaro, who has earned accolades as a composer, conductor, organist and pianist, was not expecting the sudden death of Callahan, his mentor and friend, on Christmas Day 2023.
“I spoke to him on Christmas Eve night. He was in the hospital with pneumonia complications, but we expected to have him with us for many years to come,” Tafaro recalled. “I had no idea that he was going to die. It was a very big shock for everybody.”
Dr. Jarred Tafaro inherited a handmade, Italian baby grand piano from his mentor, internationally acclaimed composer Dr. Charles Callahan.When Tafaro later learned that Callahan’s rare, $60,000 baby grand Falcone piano, handmade in Italy, was willed to him, he felt deeply touched.
“I was tremendously honored, and now I get to share it with my parish,” Tafaro said. “I was one of his star pupils, and we had a very good friendship.”
Tafaro spent seven years studying with Callahan, filling the nooks of the composer’s home with liturgical notes whispered from them to the angels by those same ebony and ivory keys.
“He had several pianos at his house, but this was the nicest, and we played this and the organ often at his house,” Tafaro recalled. “In one of the rooms he had a tremendously large organ. All the pipes were set up in the room like a church, and then in a living space he had this piano in the center of his house. He was very proud of it.”
Tafaro recently received the piano from Vermont. It waited patiently on the left side of Our Lady of Grace Church’s sanctuary, acclimating to the climate change from New England to Greensboro. Humidity warps wood, so the piano needed time to adjust.
After months of waiting, Tafaro decided the first concert in the series devoted to educating listeners on sacred music was the perfect time.
Tafaro played études and préludes composed by Frédéric Chopin and Claude Debussy during the first half of the concert.
“The études represent meditations on the art of piano playing, comprising explorations of touch, color and velocity,” said Tafaro.
The second half of the concert consisted of three longer pieces: “Ondine,” by Maurice Ravel, a piano sonata by Alexander Scriabin, and “St. Francis’ Sermon to the Birds” by Franz Liszt.
“I feel closer to him sometimes now, when I play,” Tafaro said of his late mentor.
“To have a program to honor him, to come and marry his sounds, is a really nice gift to carry out his legacy through this piano,” he said. “Hopefully, we’ll continue to make some beautiful music with it that will touch hearts and share his vision.”
Future concerts in the series will feature a variety of musical instruments and a choir.
— Lisa M. Geraci