We are happy to once again offer an online colloquium for tune writers. This year’s session will be led by Paul Vasile. The colloquium will be in two parts, with the first being more presentational on the art of text-writing and the second a chance to receive direct feedback from the clinician on your text in progress*.
*Each participant will be asked to submit ahead of time an unpublished tune, preferably with a suggestion of an appropriate existing text.
Dates: April 9 and April 16, 2026
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm ET
Price: $40 (members) or $50 (non-members). If you register for both this and the Text Writers Colloquium, the price is $75 (members) or $90 (non-members).
Paul Vasile (he/him/his) is a church musician, consultant, composer, and teacher who finds his greatest joy in collaborative and community-centered ministry.
Committed to modeling expansive, imaginative, and hospitable experiences of music making wherever he goes, Paul’s leadership builds trust, invites spaces of creativity, vulnerability, and play, and supports practices of reflection and holistic learning. Recognized as a multitalented musician and liturgist, he is helping to strengthen, energize, and liberate faith communities through the ways they worship and sing together.
Currently based in Washington, D.C., Paul serves as an interim/transitional musician and offers consulting services and creative resources to congregations in seasons of discernment, challenge, and transformation. With almost 30 years of ministry experience in ecumenical contexts, Paul’s skills make him a unique resource to congregations in transition or those experiencing anxiety or conflict.
From 2016 to 2023, Paul served as the Executive Director of Music that Makes Community, a non-profit that shares “paperless” (oral tradition) leadership practices and songs. He traveled across North America modeling distinctive approaches to communal singing and learning at retreat centers, conferences, denominational gatherings, seminaries, and in congregations of all sizes. Paul was also the Director of Music at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis from 2016 to 2022, where he invited the community to pray and play through song, collaborating with faculty, staff, and students to curate worship experiences where embodied learning and spiritual formation were prioritized.
Paul is an inspiring teacher and has been a guest lecturer and worship leader at seminaries and colleges around the United States, including Baylor University, The Candler School of Theology, General Theological Seminary (NYC), Princeton Theological Seminary, St. John’s College, Union Theological Seminary (NYC), and Vanderbilt Divinity School, and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. He has curated notable concert series, arts events, and educational programs exploring the intersection of music and spirituality. He has also led a Hymn Festival for The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, and a workshop for the Christian Congregational Song Conference in Oxford, England.
Committed to expressing and exploring faith in new ways, Paul composes sacred music that expands and enriches the church’s language of praise and prayer. His music is represented in Glory to God (PCUSA), All Creation Sings (ELCA), Voices Together (Mennonite), Then Let Us Sing (United Church of Canada), and The Hymn Society resource, Songs for the Holy Other. Through a long association with the international theater collective Compagnia de’ Colombari, he has also composed and arranged music for innovative, site-specific performances that juxtapose and blend cultures, traditions, and art forms to bring fresh interpretation to the written word. For the last decade he has collaborated with Artistic Director Karin Coonrod in the creation of Judith, a chamber opera inspired by the Old English telling of a story from the Apocrypha.
