Church of the Ascension has chosen Josh Kludy as its new music director. Kludy’s first time playing for the church’s congregation was New Year’s Day Mass and is planning a number of new musical initiatives for the new year.
“As music director and liturgical coordinator, I’m right at the heart of where the liturgy and the soul of Ascension’s worship falls,” Kludy said.
At Ascension, Kludy is tasked with expanding the choir, preserving the Ascension Corral, cultivating new, younger artists for the Arts at Ascension concert series and growing the church’s repertoire.
Recruiting from the congregation at Ascension, Kludy also plans to create smaller choirs called Scholas to provide members of the parish with more opportunities to become engaged in the music ministry.
“It will be a way to support the congregation, to support the parish, in a manner that is not intimidating, but at the same time inspires them to see more and hopefully for them to be interested in pursuing something here musically,” Kludy said.
The Ascension congregation can also expect to have more diversity of music, according to Kludy, who will be pulling from the traditional saga of sacred Catholic music and older musical forms of Mass.
As a husband-and-wife team, Kludy and his wife Erin run the Grand Manner Piano Society with the goal of educating students in the Grand Manner style of pianism of past centuries.
“Nowadays, everything is kind of like a free for all. It’s more of a potluck, which is exciting,” Kludy said. “But it’s fun to be able to offer people and students a more historic approach to piano playing and for them to realize the applications of it.”
As one of the evangelistic arms of Church of the Ascension, Kludy is eager to expand the Arts at Ascension concert series as a way to bring people of different faith backgrounds to delight in the universal language of music.
“So much of what we do here in the Catholic faith is grounded in our music,” Kludy said. “If we are able to demonstrate the beauty of our music to other people, it’s a way for us to be able to partake in the same faith without it becoming too preachy and without it becoming intimidating.
“It’s a wonderful extension of what the Second Vatican Council has more or less commissioned us to do, to proclaim Christ throughout all the world, in a way that is of charity, of unity and of peace.”
Kludy studied music at Arizona State University under the direction of many mentors and teachers, including Ruth Yandell, Nelita True, Kimberly Marshall and the world-renown pianist Robert Hamilton, a student of the Russian-born American classical pianist, Vladimir Horowitz.
Prior to joining Ascension, Kludy served in various music-related roles since he was 13 years old including pianist, organist, director and assistant director of ensembles and choirs, including handbells.
“To me, music is really a divine language. It’s a special tool that allows for us to communicate the heavenly things in a way that all of us here can understand,” Kludy added. “It’s really, to me, the language of God, and to be entrusted with that here at Ascension is such a wonderful privilege.”
