Longtime St. John's organist to move on

BY BILL DOYLE | CFP CORRESPONDENT

WORCESTER - Sean Redrow doesn’t know of another music director who has worked for a Catholic church in Worcester for as long as he has at St. John Parish.
He was hired as music director in November of 1991 when he was a junior at Holy Name Central Catholic High School and a month shy of his 17th birthday. On Nov. 1, 31 years later, he plans to step down and figure out what he wants to do next.
“I think it’s very unusual,” Father John F. Madden, St. John’s pastor, said of Mr. Redrow’s longevity. “His legacy, it’s just beyond words really, what he has built here and how he himself has grown personally and musically and in every way. It’s an extraordinary story, it’s a great story.”
Being music director meant a lot to Mr. Redrow.
“Well, it’s the only thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “It’s obviously been a tremendous opportunity in so many ways. I’ve been able to be with my friends and do music full time for a long time now.”
Mr. Redrow looks at his job as helping support the St. John’s Food for the Poor program at the Saint Francis Xavier Center next door.
“Money we take in for Mass literally goes to that,” he said. “It’s nice to make great music, which we do, but it’s also nice that we can have some real, tangible effect for people as a result.”
Father Madden wanted to talk him out of leaving, but he didn’t try after Mr. Redrow told him it was time to move on.
“I could see how true that was,” Father Madden said, “when he said it. I said, ‘I want to talk you out of it, but I know I can’t and I shouldn’t. It is time.’ And he’ll go on to do great things still, I’m sure. Hopefully, we’ll be able to carry on what he has helped to create here.”
When Mr. Redrow was a sophomore at Holy Name, St. John pastor at the time, Father Michael Foley, who would go on to become a monsignor, hired him to play the organ at Saturday Masses. About a year later, music director Marion McCann decided to leave and she recommended that Mr. Redrow replace her. So the new pastor, Father Charles F. Monroe, hired him.    
Mr. Redrow remembers being in the lobby of UMass Memorial Medical Center for a visit with his gravely ill grandmother when Father Monroe called to offer him the job.
It’s safe to say that the decision worked out well.
“It’s amazing,” Father Monroe said. “He was totally dedicated to the job. He loved St. John’s and the people at St. John’s and was totally dedicated to playing for their worship.”
Mr. Redrow, 47, was baptized at St. John, but grew up in Whitinsville and Uxbridge. He didn’t feel out of place as music director despite his young age because in addition to playing the organ on Saturdays at St. John, he played the organ for a Unitarian church in Uxbridge on Sundays.
When he took over as music director, the position was part time and he played the organ for one service each Saturday and two each Sunday morning.
He remembers that attendance was sparse at Mass when he started. Unlike today, there was no St. John food pantry next door and no Polar Park or Worcester Ice Center nearby.
“Basically, around the church there were just parking lots,” he said, “and empty, derelict factories and the old St. John’s school standing across the street boarded up.
“There was no reason at all to be down there,” he said. “There was nothing going on downtown at that point.”
Mr. Redrow said his first organ teacher, who had been music director at St. Paul Cathedral, told him that Masses at St. John began at 15 minutes past the hour so if the parking lots were full at nearby churches, people could still arrive at St. John on time.
Mr. Redrow credits the pastors for revitalizing the parish, but his music helped as well.
After he graduated from Holy Cross, Mr. Redrow started the Schola Cantorum choir which has been popular at the Sunday night Masses ever since. Mr. Redrow feels blessed to work with such talented professional singers, who also sing at Symphony Hall in Boston as well as at churches in Boston and Providence. They’ve come from varied backgrounds. One was the former vice chair of neurology at UMass Memorial Medical Center, another was a former principal at the Nativity School. Others taught music at schools.
“It’s amazing how we - over time - created a space where we could meet once a week,” he said. “Sunday night I think for all of us is our favorite time of the week.”
When Father Madden hired Mr. Redrow full time 10 years ago, he stopped playing the organ on Sundays at the First Baptist Church in Newton and formed a second choir, a parish choir, for the 12:15 p.m. Sunday Mass at St. John.
Unfortunately, participation in that choir has suffered during the pandemic. Cantors sing at each of the Masses that don’t have choirs.
He plays the organ at four of the parish’s six weekend Masses and from September through June he directs music at another of them. Lucia Clemente Falco plays the organ at the other two while moonlighting from her position as the music director at Holy Family Parish on Hamilton Street.
Early on in his career, Mr. Redrow worked an average of 61 weddings and 111 funerals a year. The pandemic drastically changed those numbers. Now, he said St. John’s averages about 13 weddings a year and during the height of the pandemic there were four funerals a week, sometimes two a day.
So why is he leaving?
“I’ve sort of done what there’s to do,” he said, “and I’ve been there forever so I just thought I’d take some time off and see what people who aren’t in church all weekend, every weekend, do.”
He’s figured out that he’s worked about 1,700 weekends.
Even on the occasional Saturday or Sunday he takes off, he still chooses the music, arranges for a substitute and handles other administrative duties.
Mr. Redrow, who is single, doesn’t have another job lined up. He just wants to take some time off, but he’ll miss the parishioners. He plans to continue to live in Worcester so if he’s needed for a funeral or a wedding, he’ll oblige. He’s played the organ at funerals and weddings at other churches over the years.
He taught yoga for a couple of years prior to the pandemic and might resume doing that.
One of Mr. Redrow’s most vivid memories as music director occurred one year during a Holy Week Mass when the fire department arrived after coals from incense set a carpet on fire. He and the choir continued to perform as the flame was extinguished.
Mr. Redrow’s mother had a piano and he began taking lessons at 5 or 6. As a fourth grader at Our Lady of the Valley School in Uxbridge, he began playing clarinet in the school band. At Holy Name, he played bass clarinet in the band. He received the full-tuition Liturgical Music and Organ scholarship at Holy Cross, studied at the Boston Conservatory and earned a doctorate in musical arts from Boston University where he received the full-tuition Presidential Scholarship. He has played with the Boston Symphony at Symphony Hall and Tanglewood, and with the Boston Philharmonic at Symphony Hall and Carnegie Hall in New York City, but he has focused on playing the organ for St. John’s since he was hired full time.
He also sings and modestly calls himself a “lazy tenor” because he doesn’t practice hitting the high notes.

– Anyone interested in becoming the music director at St. John’s should email stjohnsworcester@gmail.com.