Have Violin, Will Pray

Father Mazurchuk’s violin-playing has also put him in touch with many young people, particularly musicians and choir groups, and through festivals that draw the young.

The following story is presently found on the site of the Philadelphia Catholic Standard and Times.When he was in the third grade, Vincentian Father Michael T. Mazurchuk marched into the band room at his school in Buffalo, N.Y., thinking he’d find a trumpet to blow or a drum to beat.

He was wrong. All that was left was a violin. To say that he was dismayed would be an understatement. But he convinced himself he could give it a go.

That was 40 years ago, and the memory is still vivid.

Now he’s 48, and stationed at St. Francis of Assisi in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. And playing the violin has brought him more beautiful surprises than he could ever have imagined.

“I was excited and hopeful, but my first year, I must say, the lessons didn’t go very well,” Father Mazurchuk said with a laugh. “I also remember my parents asking me to practice in the garage to keep the noise down.”

After that first year, his violin instructor suggested to his parents that he might want to pick a different instrument for the next school year.

That was the wake-up call young Michael needed. “When I heard the teacher say that, he made we want to practice more,” Father Mazurchuk said. “I really dug in. I never wanted to quit.”

In fact, he liked the violin so much that he began taking additional lessons outside school, from a Mercy sister.

He hadn’t known much about the violin before he picked one up for the first time in that band room, and so he was in for a big surprise the first time he heard a recording of Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto in D Major.”

“I thought it was two violins playing, because it was so complicated and so rich,” he recalled. “Then I found out it was only one violinist playing all that.”

His exposure to music expanded to include the orchestra when his parents took him to concerts; the Mercy sister who instructed him also conducted concerts.

Michael played the violin at church for the first time during Holy Week, when he was 10 years old. His pastor had asked his younger brother and him to play. “I was so nervous and proud that he would ask me,” Father Mazurchuk said. “The first song I learned in the church was ‘O Sacred Head Surrounded.’”

Their violin work was so well received that the Mazurchuk brothers were invited back to play during the Christmas season.

“Little by little, on Sundays at Mass, my brother and I became regulars at our home parish,” Father Mazurchuk said.

The young musician was well on his way. “What really helped was playing in church and realizing the support of a community … and playing in the middle of orchestras and realizing how rich music was,” Father Mazurchuk said.

Soon he was invited, with his brother, their cousin and a small group of friends, to play at weddings and other special liturgies.

“That’s how I got more into the liturgical scene,” he said. He learned more about the liturgy, the role of music, and the mission of music for evangelization in 1976, when he entered the seminary in Niagara Falls. He was ordained in 1986 at the Central Shrine of the Miraculous Medal in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

He feels most comfortable playing the violin for the public in church, and he can be heard at a number of parish venues in the Philadelphia Archdiocese, including Annunciation B.V.M., St. Helena, Holy Innocents, St. Joachim, Our Lady of Hope and St. Thomas Aquinas, all in Philadelphia, where he serves on an Hispanic evangelization team.

Father Mazurchuk’s violin-playing has also put him in touch with many young people, particularly musicians and choir groups, and through festivals that draw the young.

He uses the opportunity to encourage them, as they praise the Lord with music, asking them to consider vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and to explore various ways they can use their talents to serve the Lord.

In liturgical settings, Father Mazurchuk hopes his violin performance conveys to the congregation the presence of the Holy Spirit, and that, “somehow, my violin-playing gives people a sense of wonder in realizing God blesses them more generously than they can even imagine.”

The beauty of the violin, he said, lies in “God’s surprising presence.”

“He surprises me when I play, too,” he said. “Sometimes, harmonies come together, or something becomes more beautiful. I don’t plan it, I just play it and enjoy it.

“I’ve also hit a lot of bloopers and clunkers through the years,” Father Mazurchuk said, “but I keep at it, and I notice people don’t always hear the sour notes. … They hear the best part.”

Father Mazurchuk plays the violin practically every day. Although he studied classical music, he is inspired by Latin music and has worked for years with Hispanic communities. They hold a special place in his heart.

“I love to think about the people who produced the different music. I think of the cultures they come from,” he said.

The rich and complicated rhythms of Hispanic music remind him of what immigrants have “suffered and struggled through to come to our country,” he added. “I think of their experience, and [ask myself], ‘How is that reflected in the music?”’

Then he asks himself, “What could I add … and let them know I’m there?”

Hispanic music, he said, “is usually so emotional and expressive” that it makes him wonder about the situations in life that created it: “A lot of times, there’s passion, lament, sorrow, joy or praise. Images of people’s faces come to me, or different family struggles and situations.”

He also loves playing for African American Gospel singers, and jazz and improvisation have piqued his interest as well.

“My goal is to step away from the printed music and just to feel free to be creative and express what I’d like to express musically,” Father Mazurchuk said.

His violin has played a major part in his ministry, both at home in the United States and abroad. Of his 20 years as a priest, he has spent 12 years in Panama, in the province of Chiriqui on the Pacific coast, and in the impoverished city of Colon on the Atlantic coast.

In conjunction with his work in Panama with a lay leadership group, Father Mazurchuk has provided music at the Vincentian-run retreat center there. He has also taken his music on the road to two dozen Panamanian villages.

He also frequently played his violin during the posada celebration that takes place on the nine days leading up to Christmas Eve. And because Mother’s Day is celebrated on Dec. 8 in Panama, he has participated in all-night serenades that begin on Dec. 7 — the vigil for the feast of the Immaculate Conception — traveling with a group “from village to village … serenading the mothers for Mother’s Day.”

He’s also taken his violin to Costa Rica and Guatemala, and played for the Missionaries of Charity, Blessed Teresa of Calcutta’s order, at a retreat for them that he helped lead.

Music crosses all borders, Father Mazurchuk believes.

As a priest, he said, “I love to pray, I love to preach, and music helps me to do it in a different way. …

“I’m blessed with priesthood,” he said. “I’m blessed to be a Vincentian, called to serve the poor. … One of the biggest compliments to me is not so much that my violin playing was good … but it’s more to see someone just so enthralled — so enthused — that they want to share their gifts and talents.”

Throughout the year, and especially during this season of Lent, Father Mazurchuk hopes the music from his violin helps people pray.

“My violin, my music playing, is a prayer for me. It’s my lifting up my heart to the Lord,” he said.

Outside of liturgical music, Father Mazurchuk’s secular favorites include Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G Major,” Pachabel’s “Canon in D,” and Bach’s “Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins.” The last is a personal favorite because, growing up, he and his brother regularly played that piece.

His “pride and joy” is his violin, a copy of a Stradivarius, which his parents gave him when he graduated from high school.

Wherever his violin takes him, he remembers the first lesson it taught him — persistence. And Father Mazurchuk keeps in mind a Spanish phrase he picked up in his travels: “Malos tiempos, buena cara.”

Loosely translated, he said, that means: “Difficult times, smiling face.”

There again, he thinks of the struggling immigrants who “offer the best they can to God,” he said.

“That’s what I want to do with my music, too.”

Father Mazurchuk will play the violin at a Gospel choir concert at 4 p.m. Sunday, April 22 at St. Martin of Tours Church in Philadelphia.

For more information about Father Mazurchuk and upcoming performances at Masses, contact him at (215) 842-1287 or e-mail him at mtm@niagara.edu.

CS&T Staff Writer Christie L. Chicoine can be reached at (215) 587-2468 or cchicoin@adphila.org.

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Tags: Youth