On Saturday Evening, August 1st 2026, young people of the Schola, known as Schola Americana (SM), sang Vespers on the sand in the sunset at Newport Beach, California, evening tide rolling in the background. The location is a short walk from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish whose pastor Monsignor Douglas Cook, presided and gave the blessing. Monsignor Cook is a former seminary student in Liturgical Music and lifetime friend, of Schola Founder Fr. Ted Ley. The Schola was conducted by its new Music Director and Choirmaster, Vicente Bastidas-Elizondo.
The sun was beginning to set over the Pacific view at 7:30pm when Schola Americana sang two Invitatory anthems, the Spanish Ave Maria of the California Missions, “Dios Te Salve, Maria,” by Padre Narciso Duran, OFM, last Presidente of the Missions; and Fr. Ley’s antiphonal motet, “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism.”
Monsignor Cook intoned the Invocation. The lyrics of the opening hymn were composed by Fr. Ley to be sung by or at sea by young adults, to the well-known Welsh melody usually called, “All Through the Night.” The Schola Americana had recorded this in a cruise around the Channel Islands, and is now using it seaside.
The First Psalm of the evening was Grail 104, to the Gregorian Lydian Tone, with an Antiphon by Fr. Ley: “Sing with the Sea, songs of Faith in the Lord.”
Then Psalm 83, music by Henry Bryan Hayes, OSB, his setting known as Malvern Hill, from the 1977 Benedictine Book of Song: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord, God of Hosts.”
The Third Psalm was the celebrated “Taize Laudate,” Psalm 117, by Jacques Berthier, Laudate Dominum Omnes Gentes, “Praise the Lord, All You Nations, Alleluia.” Choristers provided the soloistic verses in quodlibet as the congregation repeaed the refrain as done by young adults from around the world, at the ecumenical monastery of Taize, France.
The Scriptural Lesson, chanted by Monsignor Cook, was the passage about Sacred Music in St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians: “Chosen People, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience… with all wisdom, and with psalms, hymns, and songs of the Spirit, sing to God with all your hearts… in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
This was followed in traditional manner by a Short Responsory, taken from the Church’s night prayer, Compline, rather than Vespers, for by then had already grown dark: “Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.” Then in a psalm tune setting by Fr. Ley, the New Grail translation of Mary’s Magnificat from Luke’s Gospel, was chanted by all.
In the Preces, the Prayer of the Faithful, led by Christina van Ingen, a leader of the Schola, modern-day and current concerns of young adults were delineated, over which prayer was chanted for the night.
Father Ley, Founder of the Schola, then conducted the Schola Cantorum and the Schola Americana in Sicut Cervus Desiderat, from Psalm 42, “As the deer yearns for running streams, so my soul yearns for you, O Lord,” the polyphonic setting by Giovanni da Palestrina sung annually at St. Peter’s in Rome right before the Baptisms in the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil. Sicut Cervus is the Signature Anthem of The Schola Cantorum of the Pacific®.
Monsignor Cook chanted the closing Collect Prayer and gave the closing Blessing. Fr. Ley conducted the Marian Anthem of the season, as customary in Compline, the “Salve Regina,” the Latin Gregorian melody of St. Bernard’s, “Hail, Holy Queen.” as sung worldwide in summertime by Catholics at the end of the day.
The Schola Americana on this occasion included choristers now of college age who learned chant, polyphony and great congregational music at the Schola’s previous choir school, at Assumption Parish in the Boyle Heights district of Los Angeles. The choir school programme is now in Downtown Los Angeles as the Music Education curriculum of Immaculate Conception School, in which the entire student body has become the a cappelly and accompanied choir with harmony and polyphonly, with the concert choir of the school its precentors. This choral development in its uniqueness gives further hope for beautiful young adult prayer services such as this Vespers.
It is hoped that Vespers on the Beach will become annual, as it provided young Catholic and ecumenical participants an opportunity to sing prayer together at one of California’s most beautiful seaside settings.
Laus Deo.