Welcome Our New Music Director, Jessica Coe!

Jess is a native westsider and has been serving in the music ministry at various parishes for as long as she can remember. She began playing piano at school Masses at St. Francis Xavier when she was 12 years old and continued in liturgical music throughout her high school years at West Catholic as well as at St. Anthony of Padua parish. After high school she lived, worked, and sang in Chicago for 14 years, where she studied opera performance and piano at DePaul and Roosevelt Universities. During her stay in Chicago, she taught both voice and piano classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music for seven years before coming back home to Michigan. As vocalist, Jess has appeared in concerts and operas as soloist with ensembles throughout West Michigan and Chicagoland, while as educator she has taught students of all ages and backgrounds. She has held teaching appointments at Aquinas College, Calvin University, Kalamazoo College, and Western Michigan University and worked in the outreach programs of the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo.

Jess has always felt most at home in the church and is thrilled to be coming into the wonderful Assumption community in a way that combines love of music and faith to serve the faithful as we worship together. Jess lives just north of the church with her husband Michael and their two small children, Isaac and Isla, and she also makes Catholic art.

~ Fr. Tony Pelak

See the blueprint of the Building on a Firm Foundation Plan: