The man does not have a Wikipedia entry and should.
Pastor Gensel was born in Puerto Rico, but grew up in Pennsylvania dutch country in Pennsylvania--a Roman Catholic, he later became a Lutheran pastor.
As a teenager in the 1930's, Gansel saw the great Duke Ellington perform in Berwick, NY. In his own words, he "flipped," and fell in love with jazz.
Through a circuitous route, he wound up in New York City, took a course in jazz, and, by 1960, started hanging out in clubs. "If Jesus were making the scene, he'd have dug Zoot Sims," said Gensel.
He liked to stay late, talk with the musicians, and listen to their problems. "A jazz musician can be a lonely guy at four o'clock in the morning," Gensel told one reporter. When Thelonius Monk fell off the stage at the Village Gate, Gansel helped take Monk to the hospital.
Gensel introduced Jazz Vespers at 5:00 on Sundays at St. Peter's. The list of those who have contributed their talents to the service numbers in the high hundreds, at least, and reads like a "who's who" of the entire jazz world.
Gensel performed weddings for Herbie Mann, Bill Evans and Rashid Ali and funerals for Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Billy Strayhorn, Thelonius Monk, Erroll Garner and others. He was present when Duke Ellington died. (Ellington had written "The Shepherd (Who Watches over of the Night Flock)" just for Gensel.) "He has been our spiritual guru, our psychiatrist and the greatest booster of American music,'' the drummer Max Roach has said.
Gansel died in a fall in 1998 at the age of 80. Nat Hentoff eulogized him in JazzTimes, saying:
Religious faith is just that—the ability to possess and be possessed by faith. Rational reasons to believe in God can only follow the leap, I would tell him. John Gensel understood where I was coming from. Indeed, of all the people I have known, he had the most actual—not pretended—respect for views other than his own. He was so comfortable in himself—without being in the least self-satisfied (the two are not necessarily synonymous) that he was a true listener. Not only to jazz, which he so visibly enjoyed—but to anyone who wanted to talk to him.
Jazz Vespers still continues at St. Peter's, thanks to Pastor John Garcia Gensel, who had the best job ever in the Lutheran church. Asked if he was worried about barflies attending his services, Gensel said, ''That's the kind we want in church. The good ones can stay home. A church is a congregation of sinners, not an assembly of saints.''
Image: Chris Stam
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