Working in any church’s music program is always a labor of love, and over the years St. Peter’s Catholic Church Music Director Ben LeBleu has striven to provide the music he loves along with the sacred music that inspires the church’s congregation.

LeBleu has worked as St. Peter’s music director since 2015. Prior to that he worked at Sacred Heart Church in Ville Platte and was originally his home parish in Chatagnier.

Although having originally studied to be an accountant, LeBleu said he always played at church, either the double bass or the organ. After working five years at a Ford dealership, he ultimately decided to do something else with his life and graduated from McNeese State University in 2010.

When he originally got to St. Peter’s, LeBleu said he was primarily concerned with moving the music program in the direction it had already been going under his predecessor.

“When I moved here part of the thing was to move the choir in the same direction that it had been gradually been moving, encompassing more of the sacred music of the Church,” LeBleu said.

Part of that was adding more classical church music like Gregorian chants and sacred polyphony to the music program’s repertoire.

“We evolved the music program prior to COVID-19 and reached our pinnacle with a semi-professional eight-voice schola,” he said. “That’s what we were moving towards, and we even attracted people from Abbeville, Jeanerette and other places because it was kind of a niche thing.”

But like many churches in the area, the downturn of the oil economy coupled with the pandemic led to St. Peter’s being forced to scale back many of its programs, including the music program.

As a music director, LeBleu said one of his goals has always been a balanced program.

“As much as I like Renaissance and baroque music, it does get hard on the ears to some people after a while,” he said. “The hallmark of a good music program is a delicate balance between what is familiar to people, what people find a heightened spiritual elevation with and then giving them something which they may not be used to.”

Now approaching his eighth year as the church’s music director, LeBleu said he sees the program slowly getting back to where it once was.

“We have not quite hit that mark yet of where we were,” he said. “I’m glad to see the majority here, their devotion and dedication to the music, they have come back in force and the more people you have the better the program.”