This last Saturday, March 22, CMAA member Greg Plese was the clinician for the second "How-to" workshop for folks in the Fresno Diocese interested in restoring chant as normative practice in our Central Valley parishes. Fellow CMAA/CCW composer Royce Nickel (Schola Master for the Vetus Ordo Mass at St. Anthony of Padua, Fresno) and myself were in attendance with about thirty other folks of all ages at Mary, Queen of Apostles Parish in West Fresno.

Greg provided attendees with an overview of the Parish Book of Chant (Vol.II) regarding its layout and content, introduced the Kyrie/Sanctus/Amen from Mass XVII, and had a handout with a variety of English vernacular propers of recent vintage and one from the Palmer Burgess Missal. Those included the SEP, Royce's psalm setting from CCW, an Anglican use Tract, an Offertorio from Bruce Ford's American Gradual and the "Qui biberit" from Richard Rice's Simple Choral Gradual. Most of the "novice" chanters as well as those who are efforting to use the GR/GM in their own parish N.O.'s were very surprised at the amount of materials available from the CMAA/CCW/CanticaNova websites.

Chant in this diocese is rare to be found in normative use, but it is no small feat to attract a diverse, grass-roots level of singers who are, more often than not, regarded as the odd ones out in valley parish music programs. In addition, there were attendees of multi generations whose experience had been primarily with Portuguese music traditions, who were quite enthusiastic to soak up the 1500 year tradition of music sung by countless saints.

Kudos to Greg (and his Wendy, possessed of a great alto voice) for his willingess to share his story and then his "from scratch" methodologies so far from his home diocese of Monterray. It certainly will likely spur Royce and I to convene our own local events to further the cause.