Print Issue: October 31, 2002

Abbot Inaugurates Aquinas Center Music Series

Dom Francis Kline, OCSO

By Dewey Weiss Kramer, Special To The Bulletin

ATLANTA - Trappist monk. World class performing artist. Those who find these two terms mutually exclusive will have to think again in the case of Dom Francis Kline, OCSO, who will perform an organ concert of works by Bach, Alain,Vierne and Dupré at the Cathedral of Christ the King on Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 8 p.m.

Abbot Kline will launch the new Sacred Music Series for the Aquinas Center of Catholic Studies at Emory University. He is also abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Mepkin near Charleston, S.C.

The series, part of the Aquinas Center's ongoing program of educational and cultural outreach for Emory University, the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the greater Atlanta community, aims at raising public awareness of the church's centuries-long patronage of the arts. It is especially fitting that Abbot Kline inaugurate this Atlanta series. Under his abbacy and due to his initiative, Mepkin Abbey has in the last decade become an important player in the cultural scene of the Charleston area. The abbey regularly hosts at least two concerts of the annual Spoleto Festival, and offers several additional concerts performed under its own auspices each year. In addition, the abbey's new library building and extensive holdings in theology and philosophy have been made accessible to clergy and scholars of all faiths, and is known in South Carolina as a library "for the city of Charleston."

Abbot Kline's first vocation was that of artist. He played his first organ recital in Philadelphia at the age of 15. He went on to study privately with Alexander McCurdy of the Curtis Institute before entering the Juilliard School of Music as a student of Vernon deTar. During his final year at Juilliard, he performed the complete organ works of J. S. Bach in fourteen recitals in New York City, then was invited to repeat that series the next year in Philadelphia. Recordings of these performances are still heard on radio.

His professional musical career came to an abrupt halt in 1972 when he entered the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani in Kentucky. His superiors at Gethsemani encouraged him, however, to return to his music and to integrate it into his monastic life. Since then he has played a limited number of recitals, both within the United States and in Europe, and has also composed works himself for the organ. In 1984 he was the featured recitalist at the stage des jeunes organists at the Cathedral of Lucon, France, the home of the great Cavaille-Coll organ of l852. He returned there in 1990 and 1993. He performs an annual recital in Charleston. His Piccolo Spoleto Festival engagements have featured all-Bach performances, a special concert featuring Marcel Dupré's monumental Le chemin de la croix (1997), Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1998) with the Russian St. Petersburg String Quartet, and the Charleston premier of his own four Therese of Lisieux concert arias (1998).

The Aquinas Center Sacred Music concert, co-sponsored by the Cathedral of Christ the King with additional support by the American Guild of Organists, Atlanta Chapter, will take place at 8 p.m. in the Cathedral of Christ the King, 2699 Peachtree Road. It is free and open to the public, and a reception will follow at which the audience may meet the artist. Several CDs of performances by Abbot Kline will also be available for sale after the concert. For further information, contact Jan Seebacher at the Aquinas Center: (404) 272-8860 or e-mail: jsebach@emory.edu.