The Music Ministry at St. Joseph’s Port Moody has a long history of vibrant and diversified choirs. The mandate for our choirs is to enhance the liturgical celebrations by leading the congregation through hymns that will ensure the full, conscious, and active participation at Mass. The whole church community benefits from participating in the Eucharist through prayerful music.
Over time, our choirs have become beautiful small faith communities and we would love to have new members to share in our joy. Please prayerfully consider joining one of the choirs. St. Joseph has four Masses and a different choir at each.
Raise your voice to heaven with our 5:30pm, Saturday night choir. Is the Holy Spirit is nudging you to join this choir, this Lent??
Please reach out to us to let us know you'd like to be involved, email: [email protected]
Editor note: The new Mass time is 5:00pm starting August 20, 2022.
Love coming to our earliest Mass on a Sunday?? Have a voice to blend with our amazing 8:00am choir?? Being nudged by the Holy Spirit to partake in this glorious ministry?? ... Hmmm, yeah - I thought so.
After short period of prayer and discernment and ultimately saying "yes" to this invitation, please reach out to our parish office to connect with Nick Neuls and our intrepid 8:00am choir. C'mon aboard!!
Hey, it's the coolest Sunday afternoon Mass choir in the Archdiocese. Wanna join our 2:30pm choir?? Reluctant to join but the Holy Spirit is nudging you to join anyway?? Yeahhhhh, we thought so! Please reach out to us to let us know you'd like to be involved, email: [email protected]
Editor note: Starting August 21, 2022 the Mass time has been changed from 2:230pm, to 12:00pm.
St. Joseph’s in Port Moody has always been a musical parish. The organ for our first church was acquired even before the land was cleared and many of our pastors have either been musicians themselves or were very supportive of our choirs.
The first official St. Joseph’s choir for which anecdotal evidence can be found was established around the 60s - after Fr. Zsigmond but before Fr. Bach. This choir was composed of single organist and a half dozen parishioners, who sang at the back of the church to the right of the door.
When Fr. Michael Bach was assigned to the parish in 1967 he brought his guitar and soon after his arrival he talked eight or ten parishioners into forming a four-part choir to sing at the ten o ’clock Mass.
When Fr. Angelo Sacchi (1975-1982) arrived he brought the first Glory & Praise hymnals to the parish. During his time he established a strong core of singers for the ten o’clock Mass. The ten o’clock choir was one of his proudest achievements, when he occasionally returned to the parish after he left, he would refer to the ten o’clock choir as “my choir”.
Next came Fr. Bernard Rossi (1982-1989), perhaps the most musically knowledgeable pastor St. Joseph's has ever had (while pastor, he was also director of a secular choir for men and women, The Vancouver Italian Folk Choir). Fr. Rossi was not a fan of some of the post-Vatican II music found in the Glory and Praise (G&B) hymnals, he much preferred the esthetic values characterized by earlier sacred music, and so he acquired the Catholic Book of Worship (CBW) and started a new choir at 12pm, that sang exclusively from the CBW. During Fr. Rossi’s time as pastor, the parish offered a unique balance of contemporary and traditional liturgical music, depending on which Mass one attended.
When St. John Paul II visited the Lower Mainland, Father Rossi insisted that one of St. Joseph’s Choirs get involved in the huge choir that was to sing at the open-air Mass at Abbotsford and even hired a choir director to prepare the singers for that performance. Fr. Rossi also started Christmas caroling at various hospitals and care homes. This was open to anyone in the parish, not just current choir members and brought new people into the choir each year.
After Father Rossi, came Father Galvon who, though not especially musical, was the first priest to see the value of providing a salary for a professional choir leader. As a result the parish had a series of superb choir directors over the years: Rob Viens (several choir members attended his Master of Music degree performance in 2000). Nancy Dinshaw (who arrived with Bachelor and Master degrees), spent nine years with the choir and performed on stage in Canada; during the time she was with the parish she led the choir in a number of performances, e.g., the St. John’s Passion and Rutter’s Requiem; she left to take a position with the Opera Romana in Timisuara, Rumania. Jeff Cabralda (performer with the Laudate Singers and the Vancouver Phoenix Chamber Choir, composer and arranger, UBC Music grad, and high school music teacher). Father Galvon loved the choir; he often invited singers to the rectory for a soiree: supper and solos.
