Paul Vasile

Guest Artist

Sponsored by Nancy Dickerson

Biography

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, offering consulting services and creative resources to congregations in seasons of discernment, challenge, and transformation. His skills make him a unique resource to congregations experiencing anxiety or conflict. As the Executive Director of Music that Makes Community, Paul is equally passionate about modeling and sharing leadership practices that sustain the musical and spiritual life of communities. He mentors and supports an ecumenical network of leaders across North America who incorporate oral tradition (“paperless”) singing into their work as church musicians, clergy, educators, and activists.

Paul is an inspiring teacher and has been a guest lecturer and worship leader at Baylor University, The Candler School of Theology, General Theological Seminary (NYC), the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Princeton Theological Seminary, Union Theological Seminary (NYC), and Vanderbilt Divinity School. From 2016 to 2021, he served as the Director of Music at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he invited the community to pray and play through song, collaborating with faculty, staff, and students to shape worship experiences where embodied learning and spiritual formation were prioritized. He has also curated notable concert series, arts events, and educational programs exploring the intersection of music and spirituality. He led a Hymn Festival for The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada in 2018, and a workshop for the Christian Congregational Song Conference in Oxford, England in 2021.

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, All Creation Sings, and Voices Together, as well as 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.