Articles

Written by Ellen Wiese and interviewed with D. Maurice Charles, Dean of Rockefeller Chapel If you’re in town for the holidays, Rockefeller has a place for you to celebrate, unwind, and enjoy the songs of the season after a hectic year. The annual Lessons & Carols service draws almost 1800 people from the campus and community to a candlelit service featuring carols old and new. Rockefeller Chapel, the year-round home of spiritual life at the University of Chicago, is a diverse sanctuary. During your average week, the building hosts non-denominational Christian services, Shabbat, Jumu’ah prayers, Zen meditation, morning reflection, pagan meetups, choir concerts, yoga, carillon tours, and...

By Belen Edwards 2019 marks the 54th Bells of Summer, a weekly concert series played on Rockefeller Chapel’s carillon. Running from June 23 to August 25, the series features carillonneurs from around the world, each with their own style. “Here, we’re all about variety,” said University Carillonneur Joey Brink. This year’s program reflects that, as it showcases new, local, and international players. Carillonneurs who play at the Bells of Summer go on to play the carillon at the Chicago Botanic Garden and in Naperville, Illinois, completing what Brink called “the Chicago circuit for carillon players.” New carillonneurs playing this year are Leslie Chan and Alex Johnson, both of whom have...

CHICAGO—Simone Browne, AB’19, member of the University of Chicago Guild of Carillonneurs, passed her professional examination at Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida last week. Under the guidance of Rockefeller Chapel's Joey Brink, Simone performed at 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 in front of more than a hundred carillonneurs from around the world gathered for the 77th Congress of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA). Her program included selections by Milford Myhre, Liesbeth Janssens, Alice Gomez, and John Knox. Before receiving the invitation to perform at the Congress, a jury of six listened to recordings of her playing on the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial...

By Christopher Good AB'19 Matthew Dean, director of operations at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, has an interesting fact to share: the term a capella is Italian for “in the style of the chapel.” If you've ever set foot in Rockefeller, which sits at 59th and Woodlawn, this etymology makes perfect sense: the chapel has an awe-inspiring capacity to amplify the human voice. But in recent years, Rockefeller has ventured well beyond a capella, with acts ranging from ars antiqua to the avant-garde. In December, Rockefeller hosted a performance by the Tallis Scholars, an a capella ensemble acclaimed for its interpretations of early Renaissance music. As they performed, the acoustics were sharp and...

By Louise Lerner Data from Rockefeller Chapel, Knapp Center to help create map of air around Chicago The bell tower of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel is normally populated by tourists and the University’s carillonneur. But scientists recently scaled its 271 stone steps to the highest point on campus in order to study air quality and pollution across Chicago. At Rockefeller, researchers from UChicago and Harvard University ran a long tube down the stone tower to a humming machine, which analyzed air for methane as it blew past the tower. Across campus, another instrument atop the Knapp Center for Biomedical Discovery allowed UChicago scientists to test isotopes in water vapor. The data will be...

By the University of Chicago's News Office Divinity School alumnus ‘profoundly grateful’ to return to UChicago community The Rev. Dr. Maurice Charles has been named dean of Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago, effective July 1. Charles has deep ties to UChicago, having earned his MDiv and PhD from the Divinity School. He was most recently the dean for spiritual engagement and chaplain at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, having previously served as associate dean for religious life at Stanford University. As dean of Rockefeller Chapel, Charles, MDiv’90, PhD’13, will be the primary steward of both Rockefeller and Bond Chapel, which are centers for a...

By Jeanie Chung | The Core—Winter/19 If you’re going to play the carillon, you need to think about your shoes. The 100-ton, 72-bell instrument at the top of Rockefeller Chapel has 31 foot pedals and 71 batons, which you strike with your fists. The batons operate the smaller bells, the pedals the larger ones. “Most people don’t play music with their feet,” says Michael Petruzzelli, Class of 2019, president of the UChicago Guild of Student Carillonneurs. Getting used to it takes time. He wears slip-on canvas shoes, which he calls his “carillon shoes,” because they have thinner soles to better feel the pedals. Petruzzelli is one of 20 students—mostly undergrads, along with students from the...

Does the name Joey Brink ring a bell? While an undergraduate student majoring in mechanical engineering, Brink was not only a star carillonneur on campus, his senior project focused on modernizing the centuries-old art of bell-ringing. Today, he ranks among the top carillonneurs in the world (in 2014, he won the International Queen Fabiola Carillon Competition, considered the most prestigious honor in the field). And he continues to apply his engineering skills to the craft, expanding what carillon music can be and who can play it. He has toured the world playing the carillon, and released his first CD, “Letters from the Sky,” featuring his own compositions for the carillon. When he was a...

By Hannah Steinkopf-Frank HYDE PARK — On Thursday, University of Chicago carillonneur Joey Brink and other student musicians will climb 271 steps in the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel to perform the annual Sleigh Bells concert — offering the public a chance to hear the second largest instrument in the world. With around 600 carillons worldwide, the University of Chicago instrument at 5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. is second in size only to its sister carillon in New York. Besides a 2006-2008 restoration, in which 46 of the bells were sent back to Europe, little has changed since the large instrument was installed during the summer of 1932 in the tower that rises high over the chapel. “A lot of people...

By Peter Margasak If you've spent much time on the University of Chicago campus, you've heard the chiming bells of the Rockefeller Chapel carillon carrying across the grounds. I'd been hearing them for years before I learned how impressive the instrument actually is—the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon, installed in 1932 following a two-year casting process, includes 72 bells totaling 100 tons of bronze, controlled by an array of keys and pedals. Its low C bell is the third largest tuned bell in the world. Carillons seem suited to traditional and liturgical music, not least because they're often installed in church towers, but over their 500-year history they've also been used...