Conversation: Fr Arthur Bridge, patron of the arts - Parish priest who likes to face the music

The
Catholic Weekly
Online

Sydney
8 February 2004

First day fun? It’s all smiles at All Hallows

Needy hit by Christmas credit card crisis

Rice to feed needy

Tick for Govt ‘report card’

Rome youth forum

‘Holy lawyers’

Young help elderly priests

Pregnant pause: Ready-made friends waiting for our baby

Orchestra performs at violinist funeral Mass

HSC at St Edmund’s

Stamps can help missions

Editorial: Suffer the children

Letters: HSC results

Conversation: Fr Arthur Bridge, patron of the arts - Parish priest who likes to face the music

Fathers and sandcastles

Tribute to ‘the Chief’

Parish Profile: A gifted beginning ...

Life in a seminary

Law challenged in many ways: bishop

Kicking goals with kids

Conversation: Fr Arthur Bridge, patron of the arts - Parish priest who likes to face the music

INSPIRING: Every new work as exciting as the first one for Fr Arthur Bridge

By Marilyn Rodrigues

Encouraging the potential in young people has been a hallmark of Fr Arthur Bridge’s priesthood, and has earned him two Australia Day honours.

“Anyone who knows a young person who is musically talented and who wants financial support towards study should contact me, I’m keen to hear from them,” says the parish priest of St Patrick’s, Blacktown.

“Also ballet dancers, people in musical theatre, people into drama; anyone right across the board of the creative arts.

“I get letters from all over Australia asking for support, just through word of mouth. And while I can’t help everyone, I try to work on the basis of a little bit, here and there, can go a long way.”

Fr Arthur has been integral in the creation of more than 50 musical works; more than any other individual in Australia. But he says that has only been possible through the ongoing support and backing of others.

He is a member of the music board of the Australia Council, the Federal Government’s main arts funding and advisory body, and has recently been appointed to the International Cultural Council of Foreign Affairs, which funds Australian artistic contributions around the world.

He is also a champion of the arts in many other ways, including as artistic patron and former committee member of the Sydney Youth Orchestra and as patron of the International Conservatorium of Music.

Newcastle born, he lived for a time in England and was originally ordained for the Anglican diocese of Birmingham.

Fr Arthur served in the Newcastle (NSW) Anglican diocese.

When he converted to Catholicism he studied at the former Catholic Theological Union, Hunters Hill.

He received a Medal of the Order of Australia, in 1989 for service to young people with drug and alcohol dependencies as co-ordinator of the Newcastle branch of Life Education Centres. This year he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to musically talented young Australians and the wider community.

When the new St Patrick’s Cathedral in Parramatta was dedicated last November, it was Fr Arthur who commissioned a new Mass setting and other pieces for the occasion.

This year he celebrates 25 years in priestly ministry, 13 of them as a Catholic priest.

He plans to celebrate his silver jubilee with an orchestral Mass, which he hopes will include performances from the Sydney Youth Orchestra and the parish choir. And he will commission something new for the occasion.

He made his first commission, a harp concerto by Ann Carr-Boyd, about 10 years ago.

“I went to the Music Centre at the Rocks and they gave me some ideas of where to go,” says Fr Arthur.

“It was tremendously inspiring. But for every single work I’m just as excited as I was for that first one.

“I’m always thinking to myself, ‘I’m the first person to ever hear this piece of music’. It’s an opportunity in a million.

“I always think of what would it might have been like to be the first person to sit and listen to Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms.”

Fr Arthur’s favourite commissions are Matthew Hindson’s first violin concerto and first symphony and A Lament for Jerusalem by Sir John Tavener.

Soon after his first commission, Fr Arthur set up a charitable foundation for talented young artists, Ars Musica Australis.

He says it required some serious fundraising to get up and running.

“But I had a whole lot of support, mainly from people from Kings School, Parramatta, but also members of the Catholic community in western Sydney,” he adds.

“It just came together; it was meant to be.”

Fr Arthur says that the foundation helped about 100 young people last year.

“It’s wonderful when you see young people doing really well, going on to the Juilliard School of Music in New York and the Royal Academy in London,” he says.

Fr Arthur’s interest in music stems from his school days at Kings where he learnt to play the violin and was “well trained in music”.

Today, he tries to encourage a love of music in his “wonderful and enthusiastic” parishioners, who regularly attend concerts he supports. For that reason he tries to make sure many of them are held in western Sydney.

This year Fr Arthur is looking forward to projects with the Sydney Youth Orchestra, including a new cello concerto, a reworking of Australian composer Ross Edward’s first piano concerto and a new operatic aria by John Haddock.

And of course, he is also keeping an eye on the musically talented students in the parish, at St Patrick’s Primary and Patrician Brothers’ College.

Fr Arthur himself was given guidance as a young Newcastle boy by Mons Casey, then parish priest at St Theresa’s, New Lambton, which had an effect on his future vocation. Although baptised and raised in the Anglican Church, he remembers being attracted to the Catholic faith from a young age.

“As a young boy I would often go alone to St Theresa’s, where Mons Casey was the parish priest, for benediction and novenas on a Saturday night,” he says.

“Mons Casey would talk to me about the Catholic faith and that sowed the seeds in my mind.

“As I grew I had to think more seriously about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an intellectual affinity with the Catholic faith, but socially it was a big step. I knew my family would be shocked and disappointed in my crossing the Tiber.

“But Bishop Bede Heather, who was an extremely kind and generous man, placed me, as a student, at Our Lady of Lourdes at Baulkham Hills South.

“I had told the parishioners about (my family’s reaction) and when I received my candidature for deaconate of priest hood, my parents came and they talked to and supported my parents right the way through. They were wonderfully supportive and it was a lot easier from then on.”

Today, Fr Arthur is also grateful for the support of his current bishop, Bishop Kevin Manning, who “has allowed my work to prosper and has been immensely supportive; his kindness and generosity to me has inspired me”.

Contact:
Fr Arthur Bridge, parish priest
St Patrick’s Parish
51-59 Allawah St,
Blacktown NSW 2148
Tel: (02) 9622 1125