The power of music turns living room into a choir loft

An Italian tenor opened the French doors to the balcony of his 10-story apartment complex and began belting out arias to the incredibly captive audience watching from the “balcony” seats above and below.
    

Unlike those old “Memorex” commercials – “Is it live or is it Memorex?” – the opera star didn’t shatter any glass, but residents cooped up for days inside their cages gratefully pried open their windows to soak in the beauty of ageless arias well sung, reveling in a free concert that for a moment helped them expand the four walls of their corona bubble into the outdoor amphitheater of the Roman Arena in Verona.
    

The concert-goers didn’t even have to pay a Ticketmaster surcharge.
    

As days of self-quarantine have melted into weeks and now into nearly a month, Paul Wattigny, the music director and organist at Immaculate Conception (Jesuit) Church on Baronne Street, had an epiphany one day: Why not use the expansive music/living room of his Gretna home, set up with a stirring Allen organ, a grand piano and a harpsichord, to play music, both sacred and popular, to entertain a Facebook Live audience weary of the infection case numbers crawling on the CNN and FOX News screens?
    

“My wife (Jacqueline) and I have been hanging out in the music room, just trying to find stuff to occupy our time,” said Wattigny, a 1999 graduate of Holy Cross School. “It was St. Patrick’s Day, and it was like, ‘You can’t have St. Patrick’s Day without “Danny Boy”’ – so that’s what I did. I got a ton of feedback, and that was so cool. People were asking me, ‘What are you going to do next?’”
    

Then, Wattigny began playing some of his favorite songs almost every night. There was a lot of Sinatra, some Broadway tunes, especially Andrew Lloyd Webber, and then, for the organ, he latched on to sacred hymns that have been his standbys since he first began playing the organ professionally.
    

Wattigny, 38, got his professional start playing in the Missouri Synod Lutheran churches around town at the age of 12.
    

“They enjoyed having a little kid who could play, and they took liturgy and music pretty seriously,” Wattigny said. 
    

Wattigny’s first Catholic church job was at St. Rose of Lima Parish on Bayou Road in New Orleans, which had an impressive, new organ, and he later served as the assistant organist at St. Patrick Church on Camp Street from 2004 to 2012 before coming to the Jesuit Church, where he plays for all Masses and for more than 100 weddings a year.
    

But for the last four weeks, instead of climbing the 62 steps to the organ loft at Immaculate Conception, Wattigny has walked about five steps to unleash one of his three keyboards. His music has been therapy for himself, and he hopes it has helped others as well.
    

“I think it’s a great relief to people who have been cooped up and it helps them keep their sanity,” Wattigny said. “This is not performance based. You have to remember that these videos are really just very dry, iPhone videos, which are not the best acoustics for sound. But it’s a great avenue for us to occupy our time and put a smile on other people’s faces.”
    

Sound travels. Even the neighbors have chimed in that they love it.
    

“The neighbors tell me they look forward to what I play and they want to come over, but I tell them we’ve just got to wait until this thing comes to an end,” Wattigny said, laughing.
    

Apparently, the only unimpressed listener is Wattigny’s 23-pound house cat, who takes up residence on the rug near the organ and doesn’t deign to show any emotion. Pumpkin – “because he’s so fat” – is above all of that. 
    

Even at the end of Wattigny’s rendition of “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” on Easter Sunday, Pumpkin barely twitched  a muscle when the organ maestro reached back for some extra reverberation.
    

“It didn’t really faze him,” Wattigny said. “He was like, ‘Whatever.’ My wife said the only thing that excites him is when she puts food in his bowl.”
    

Go to Facebook and search for Paul Wattigny.

 

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].