“Sacred music is something that has such power to reach people and affect them in ways that mere words cannot,” says Bass Baritone John Cheek, a member of St. James’, Great Barrington, and the musical entertainment at this year’s annual appreciation concert and dinner for the Bishops’ Legacy Fellowship.
John was raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, and attended St. James Church, where he was confirmed. Raised in a family of educators, John learned early the importance of all aspects of education in life. “I studied piano and, later, flute as a child,” he says. “I then turned to singing after my voice changed.”
John attended the North Carolina School of the Arts where he received a bachelor’s degree in music. “I also attended summer sessions in Siena, Italy, for three years, studying at The Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Diploma di Merito),” John says. For a year before being drafted, John also studied at the Manhattan School of Music.
While in the U.S. Army, John was a member of the Army Chorus; he was a soloist at a variety of locations, including the White House.
After leaving the military in 1975, he moved back to New York City and made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1977.
John says that opera and oratorio “has a deep spiritual component.” Works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms have helped to sustain his spiritual life. “Hearing these masterpieces over and over, I always find new beauty or insight [and it helps to] deepen my own faith,” he says.
In 1995, John and Lee, his wife of 26 years, moved to Great Barrington and joined the congregation at St. James’. John sings in the choir and has performed solos and recitals at the church.
“In recent years, my career has slowed down, allowing me to participate more in church activities,” John says. “I went to General Convention in 2006 as an alternate and will attend in 2009 as a lay deputy for the Diocese. I also went to El Salvador on a mission trip in 2005 with four others from St. James’ and seven others from western Massachusetts.”
John says he was overwhelmed and grateful to be asked to solo at the annual appreciation dinner. “I was very excited to do a concert of sacred music for people in the church, knowing that their experience of it would be very different from the average audience in a concert hall,” he says.
- by Rebecca Schneider