Listening In preview: John Patitucci

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up on The World and Everything in It: a conversation with jazz bass master John Patitucci.

Now, that’s no household name. But John Patitucci’s well known in the music world. He’s contributed to rock and pop albums over the years.

When he’s not recording or touring, he teaches music at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in New York City.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: John Patitucci is a committed Christian and recently started working with hymn writer Keith Getty. On this week’s Listening In, host Warren Smith talks to Patitucci about his faith and his career. Let’s listen now to an excerpt.

WARREN SMITH: You mentioned your older brother that got you started on the guitar and which ultimately became the bass. This same older brother ended up studying theology and becoming a pastor. You, um, are a committed Christian. When you were sort of discovering yourself as a musical being were you also following Christ during that era?

JOHN PATITUCCI: In high school, I met these gentlemen. One was a youth pastor and one was a music minister of this church in, at that time, Walnut Creek, California, which was near where we lived.  And what happened is they had been hiring me for about a year to play at their church. And I was asking them questions and they had answers that made sense to me.

So they explained the gospel to me and they took me to the Bible and I started reading. And that summer of ’77 in August about I got saved. My brother got saved around the same time through different people. It was really wild. We’ve always been close, we were like twins even though he’s three years older. So that was interesting that God took us at the same time to make sure that we wouldn’t grow apart. Then, you know, then I started studying too. I think if I hadn’t become a musician, I would have followed a similar path to my older brother. I look up to him a lot and I still read, I’ve always read a lot of theology and I’ve been a deacon and an elder in my churches along the way. So I’ve been involved even in church planting even.

And my wife is a strong Christian and a great cellist. So, you know, God took me on this road and, you know, I had no idea. I was very naive about the music thing. I really wanted to do certain things. I had heroes that I wanted to play with. You know, I didn’t know how it was all gonna work out, but God did.

(Photo/Bass Player)

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