The Ensemble of the Gregorian Chant Academy
Carolingia
Traditiones Custodes — Guardians of Tradition
Coming Soon ✦ Defend Us In Battle ✦ The Debut Recording of Carolingia
Who We Are
The Professional Ensemble of the GCA
CAROLINGIA is the professional ensemble of the Gregorian Chant Academy, directed by GCA founder Christopher Jasper. The ensemble is comprised of professional, independently contracted singers — each of them devout, practicing Catholics who bring not only vocal excellence but genuine faith to everything they sing. Carolingia was first conceived in January 2022. Four years of preparation and discernment preceded its formal establishment in January 2026.
Where the Academy is the learning center, Carolingia is the aural model. The ensemble exists to demonstrate what prayerful, rigorously grounded sacred music actually sounds like — not as a theory, but as a living practice. Every performance decision, every interpretive choice, is rooted in prayer, authentic musical manuscripts, medeival musical treatises and historical performance practices.
Carolingia sings for real liturgies. It records for real homes, real families, real souls seeking to orient themselves toward God. Our music is not merely for entertainment. It is a prayer, a weapon of spiritual beauty — and it is offered without apology.
The Threefold Mission
Why Carolingia Exists
While the Academy teaches, Carolingia demonstrates. The ensemble serves as a valuable reference for cantors, priests, and scholars — a living, breathing embodiment of what chant, rooted in both prayer and historical practice - sounds like. Every performance practice is rooted in authentic manuscript tradition. When we make an interpretive choice, we can account for it. Carolingia also composes new chants — among them the Sancte Michael — and at times sings the traditional repertoire in harmony: sometimes in settings drawn from the same era as the chant itself, and sometimes in new harmonies of our own, shaped by that same tradition and inspired by its beauty. A living tradition must also live.
We believe sacred music is not passive. It reclaims spaces. It drives back demons and disorder. It reorients the human soul toward the Divine. Carolingia's recordings — including Defend Us In Battle — are not designed merely for listening. They are designed to restore the domestic church, to serve as formation tools, and to place authentic chant in the hands of every Catholic household.
The Second Vatican Council, echoing Popes Pius X, XI, and XII, declared that sacred music is "a treasure of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art," and that Gregorian Chant "shall have principal place in the liturgy." Carolingia exists to hold that ground — and to be at the vanguard of the sacred music renaissance already underway in the Church.
The Name
Why Carolingia
The name CAROLINGIA refers to the Carolingian dynasty — the era of Charlemagne — when the Roman and Gallican chant traditions first merged to produce what we now call Gregorian chant, and when musical notation itself was born.
It was from this fusion that polyphony emerged, that the arts and architecture flourished, and that the intellectual culture of the West was rebuilt after centuries of fragmentation. The Carolingian era was, in the truest sense, the first Renaissance — predating that of the fourteenth century by five hundred years.
Our mission is to do the same today: to bridge the gap between historical scholarship and living liturgical practice, and to be at the forefront of a new flowering of sacred beauty in the Church.
A Legacy in Three Movements
Century
Under Charlemagne, Roman and Gallican chant traditions merge. Musical notation is invented. The first Renaissance begins.
to Present
Doms Guéranger, Pothier, Mocquereau, Cardine, Jean Claire, and Saulnier as well as friends such as Luigi Agustoni, Msgr Alberto Turco and Nino Albarossa have painstakingly worked to restore the chant tradition from its manuscripts.
Carolingia carries both inheritances — the Carolingian synthesis and the Solesmes restoration — into the present moment, for the living Church. Deeply formed by the Solesmes lineage, we hold that tradition with reverence while remaining free to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The Voices
Meet the Singers of
Defend Us In Battle
Christopher Jasper
Baritenor
Founder & Director — Gregorian Chant Academy
Trained under the late Dom Daniel Saulnier at the Abbey of Solesmes and at Le Centre d'études supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR) in Tours, France, Christopher has spent over twenty-five years studying, directing, and performing sacred chant and polyphony. He lived life as a Benedictine monk (postulant) at the Abbey of St. Benedict in Norcia, Italy (2014), founded the Gregorian Chant Academy in January 2021, and established the Carolingia ensemble in January 2026. As director of the GCA and Carolingia, he has become a professional acquaintance of Msgr. Alberto Turco and Prof. Giacomo Baroffio.
Joshua Carswell
High Tenor
Joe Daly
Bass
Former Member, Floriani Sacred Music
Robert Walsh
Baritenor
Joseph Walsh
Tenor
Patrick Walsh
Tenor
Carolingia Defend Us In Battle
A collection of Gregorian chants for the domestic church — not background music, but a sacred arsenal. Designed to reclaim your home, reorient your soul, and give glory to God.
Learn More"Sacred Music is a treasure of inestimable value, greater than that of any other art. Gregorian Chant shall have principal place in the liturgy."Second Vatican Council — Sacrosanctum Concilium
Bring the Renaissance to Your Parish
Carolingia is available for liturgical performance, sacred concerts, and parish missions. If you are interested in bringing authentic Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony to your community, we would be honored to hear from you.
Inquire About Bookings