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By Leslie Criss
Daily Journal
Jessica Nelson claims to be the only introvert in a family of theatrical folks.
Parents Bud and Lynn Nelson frequently – and with great ease – take the stage at Tupelo Community Theatre. Sister Jennifer also has an impressive roster of TCT roles.
Truth be told, Jessica did appear on the TCT stage a few times before the age of 6.
“She was a teddy bear in ‘Babes in Toyland,’” Lynn Nelson said with much maternal pride. “She was supposed to freeze in place, but she kept leaning forward. She was 4 or 5 and unbearably cute.”
Even earlier as a toddler, Jessica appeared with her older sister in “Fools.”
“During the curtain call, Jessica and Jennifer came out,” Lynn Nelson said. “And when Jessica heard the applause, she stepped out and offered a huge theatrical bow.”
Since those much younger years, Jessica has left the thespian activities to the other members of her family.
Still, she has found her own stage of sorts, and when she’s performing, there is, more often than not, a certain “wow” factor.
Ask anyone who has not rushed out of All Saints’ Episcopal Church after a Sunday or special service, but has remained awestruck in the pew, listening to Jessica’s rendering of an organ postlude. They’ll likely all agree: The girl has a gift.
An early start
Piano lessons began early for Jessica. She was 11. The lessons continued through high school.
At Millsaps College, Jessica was a music major with a piano performance concentration. After college, she worked for a few years at Galloway United Methodist Church in Jackson as assistant to the director of music.
“I made a lot of copies and filed a lot of music,” she said with a grin and a slight shrug. “It was a job.”
Later, Jessica decided to pursue an advanced degree. She became a student at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago.
“It was pretty miserable,” she said. “From October to April it was cold all the time. But I loved Chicago; it was a good experience.”
She did not take the path typically taken by most musicians, she said. Jessica worked toward and received her master’s degree in Liturgy and Church Music. While at Seabury, she was chapel organist for 10 to 12 services a week.
After seminary, Jessica spent six months as organist at Trinity Episcopal Church in Florence, Alabama, and while commuting there from Tupelo, the position of organist/choirmaster became available at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Tupelo. Jessica continued to commute from Tupelo to Florence the past four years, teaching music classes at the University of North Alabama. Now, she teaches music appreciation online.
“I liked teaching; I miss it,” she said. “But not the drive every day.”
Doing church
In her position at All Saints’, Jessica wears multiple hats.
She prepares and plays the music for Sunday and special services – mostly at the organ, but sometimes at the piano. She is choirmaster to the children’s and adults’ choirs, and is director of the handbell choir.
And she’s a published writer of music.
“It’s something I did the summer the organ was rebuilt,” she said. “I was really bored, and I thought, well, this is a thing I can do.”
She sent what she’d written to a publisher on a whim. “And they took one of them, which is cool.”
Jessica’s working on a few things now: a carol for the adult choir, a setting of “Silent Night” for the kids’ choir and a couple of hymn tunes.
Yet the most satisfying part of her work, she said, is liturgical planning.
“I love figuring out how to respond musically to each week’s propers (readings),” she said. “Our job here is to respond to Christ’s initiative and to the world around us. I tend to work on this response with the church readings in one hand and a newspaper in the other.”
At the risk of sounding odd, Jessica said, she finds playing for funerals “kind of satisfying.”
“In that stage of a person’s grief, there’s nothing you can really do,” she said. “But that is something I can do.”
In her large office at All Saints’ Jessica is surrounded by all manner of things musical.
Multiple electronic keyboards are scattered about and there’s a cardboard box filled with fun hand-held percussion instruments that kids – and kids at heart – would love testing. An upright Baldwin piano is near one corner of the room. It belonged to Jessica’s grandmother, longtime Daily Journal writer/columnist Phyllis Harper.
“I remember her playing piano, but not in a learned way,” she said. “But in that way all grandmothers play.”
Beside the piano there’s a sign that once hung on the wall in her grandmother’s kitchen: “Never try to teach a pig to sing – it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
Other interests
When she’s not in her office or at the organ, Jessica enjoys cooking.
“I’m trying to learn to cook,” she said. “My goal is to learn to make my grandmother’s lasagna – it’s an all-day affair.”
Outside the kitchen, she’s big on Netflix marathons, comedies mostly, and spending time with her best four-legged friend, Buck, a black Lab mix.
She cleanses her church music palate with a lot of blue grass, rap and modern choral music, and she teaches private piano lessons to a few local students.
On occasion, the self-proclaimed introvert helps sister Jennifer host a pub quiz at The Blind Pig in Oxford. And she’s still filing music, a job she won’t trust to anyone else.
“I’m quite obsessive about it.”