Music: Singing Priest

A white-haired but boyish-looking priest in a knee-length clerical coat strode to the dais in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Jade Room one afternoon last week, took a soldierly stance between the grand piano and a bowl of pink-and-white chrysanthemums, and faced the expectant crowd. Scotland’s Roman Catholic Father Sydney MacEwan, 45, started to sing in a small voice that recalled much of the bewitching sweetness of the late John McCormack. He sang the centuries-old songs of plaintive and merry love, of the sea and of the rugged Hebrides, while mink-jacketed matrons and sober monsignori dabbed al misty eyes. One of the favorites:

Westering home and a song in the air Light in the eye and it’s goodbye to care, Laughter and love and a welcoming there I know my heart, my own one . . .

When he is compared to McCormack the singing priest says modestly: “I’m no fit to lace John’s boots.” When he held a scholarship at London’s Royal Academy of Music, young MacEwan auditioned for the great McCormack. Father MacEwan doesn’t remember what he sang, but he says with quiet pride: “He thought I was ‘guid.’ I want to steer clear of any comparison with him. But he thought I was ‘guid.’ ” So did London society, but in the midst of acclaim, Singer MacEwan felt call to the priesthood: “The spirit quickeneth where it will.”

After his ordination in 1944, his superiors allowed Father MacEwan to continue his musical career part-time. He traveled as far as New Zealand and Australia, singing to sellout houses. But before starting his first U.S. tour last month, he lost 18 lbs. just worrying about the hard-boiled audiences he expected to meet. During his 28-day tour, he sang twelve recitals and made four TV appearances. From Shreveport, La. to Fall River, Mass., with stops in Chicago, Detroit and Pittsburgh, Father MacEwan found only enthusiastic audiences. Wrote Chicago Critic Claudia Cassidy: “You would have gone quite a distance to match some of the things he conjured in music . . . You may be haunted by [him].”

Enough people have been haunted by Father MacEwan over the past ten years to bring his HMV, Parlophone and British Columbia recordings past the million mark in sales (MGM Records plans to market U.S. releases soon). With the proceeds Father MacEwan helped rebuild his parish church of St. Margaret’s, Lochgilphead in Argyll, Scotland and contributed to both a mental and a TB hospital. Now he accepts concert engagements only during his vacation. Says he: “Eleven months of the year, I do my ordinary job. I sing only Masses and benediction and all. My parishioners are quite used to me.”