91短视频

• September 18, 2015

Leo Nestor (B.A. ’74, Music) doesn’t remember a time when music wasn’t a part of his life.

“My mother sang constantly when we were children,” Nestor said. “I can still hear her voice.”

It was his love of music that led him to study the subject at 91短视频, and in less than a week, he will be sharing his passion with Pope Francis during his visit to the nation’s capital.

“Composers, remarkable voice faculty and the vibrant choral program made Cal State a very easy choice,” Nestor said. “Those were tremendously exciting days and profoundly formative years. I owe the Cal State music faculty an unpayable debt for the comprehensive musical education they instilled, in both theory and practice, in art and craft. As I tell my students today, ‘It was the Bay Area, it was the ’70s … you had to be there.’ They smile … and I think they understand.”

For the last 31 years, Nestor has been intimately tied to The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., first as visiting artist and teacher, then since 2001 as a professor, director of Choral Studies and director of CUA’s Institute of Sacred Music.

Nestor will conduct CUA’s 33-member Chamber Choir and the CUA Symphony Orchestra as the Pope celebrates the outdoor Mass of Canonization for Junípero Serra, the 18^th century Franciscan friar who founded 21 Spanish missions in California. Twenty-five thousand people are expected on the University Commons adjoining the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, North America’s largest Catholic Church. Covering an area of 77,500 square feet, the basilica is among the 10 largest churches in the world.

“We will perform three preludes and have a significant role in the Mass itself, providing the music for the Introit, Offertory and the first work at Communion,” Nestor said. “We’re singing outside so the instruments have to be beautiful of themselves, the voices have to be beautiful of themselves. You can’t over-sing. You can’t under-sing. You can’t overplay. You can’t underplay. We’re very vulnerable, but that is what musicians are supposed to be.” 

The Archdiocese of Washington commissioned Nestor to create the song to be performed at the beginning of Mass and the Communion Antiphon, which will be sung by all the women in the multiple choruses performing on Sept. 23.

This is the fourth time Nestor has been commissioned for papal visits to America. He said he is grateful for all of the opportunities afforded him through music, including two visits to Rome to perform for the Holy Father. 

“I had the honor to meet Pope (now Saint) John Paul II after performing for him in 1991 in the Sala Clementina of his residence at the Vatican,” Nestor said. “I still cherish the medal he gave me and have the picture at home in my study, his hand touching mine and those deep, gently piercing eyes.”

Nestor said CUA faculty, staff and students have been looking forward to Pope Francis’s visit for some time, but excitement really snowballed this week.

“Everyone who was chosen to participate is profoundly humbled to have been asked and has taken the preparation required with utmost dedication,” Nestor said. “We have had only three weeks since the term began, so everyone has put in maximal effort. The celebration of Eucharist is something Catholics do every day, but on a day such as this with the successor of Peter in our midst, the anticipation of a joyful, prayerful celebration with Pope Francis fills most of our waking moments and I suspect that after the Holy Father departs, the memories of this day will be savored each day.”