November 20, 2024 // Diocese

Christmas Concert Continues Grace-Filled Journey for Local Band

Paula Lent

Musicians Nathaniel Hoff and Jillian Speece, the husband-and-wife duo who make up the indie-rock band the Bergamot, love Christmas. They got engaged on Christmas, their band’s first album was a Christmas album, and they both have lifetimes of memories of celebrating Christmas with extended family – memories that, for Speece, include Christmas Eve Mass at Notre Dame’s Log Chapel followed by a visit to the Grotto, where her family would light candles and sing hymns together. 

This year, they are excited to bring their annual Christmas concert, “A South Shore Christmas,” to South Bend’s historic Morris Performing Arts Center on Friday, November 29. The show marks the third time the band will play at the Morris but the first time they will hold their Christmas concert there. As natives of the South Bend area, this is particularly meaningful.

“One of the things that I think was really important in the conception of the idea of a Christmas concert in the first place was to return home for Christmas,” Speece told Today’s Catholic. “This is an audience that we love very much.”

---

A SOUTH SHORE CHRISTMAS

To learn more about the Bergamot, and to purchase tickets for their upcoming concert on Friday, November 29, at the Morris Performing Arts Center in South Bend, visit their website at thebergamot.com.

---

Since they began making music together as students at Marian High School in Mishawaka in the early 2000s, Hoff and Speece have traveled a unique journey together. Their music has led them to visit all 50 states, as featured in their award-winning 2022 documentary film, “State of the Unity,” and most recently they witnessed the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene when they began a residency in Asheville, North Carolina. Their video documentation of Helene’s aftermath went viral, surpassing 5 million views on YouTube.

As artists, Hoff and Speece are used to sharing their experiences, which Hoff humbly admits are small in comparison to some people’s struggles.

“We kept saying about the film: it’s not a panacea; it’s not a, ‘Hey, this is what everyone went through.’ It’s what two people went through, and through that, you can identify how you would go through it,” Hoff said about the video of Hurricane Helene. “We’re just providing a perspective, and I think a perspective people can relate with, and hopefully learn from. And I think there’s a lot of importance in that.” 

Their experiences in Asheville deepened their sense of gratitude to God for His protection and highlighted for them the importance of continuing to build relationships after experiencing how vital community is when faced with dire circumstances. 

Even though their work is not explicitly Christian, Hoff and Speece have found that sharing their stories so publicly, whether through video or the heavy storytelling element of their songs, has opened the door for conversations about faith with their fans. 

When their documentary premiered in Los Angeles, “We were actually confronted with the hardest question I think I’ve ever been confronted with in front of an audience, but also just in general,” Hoff told Today’s Catholic. “Somebody stood up at the end of the screening and they said, ‘Is this film proof that God exists?’” 

Speece shared, too, that fans will directly message them, or talk after shows, and, moved by the uplifting tone of the Bergamot’s music, ask if they’re Christian – conversations that sometimes lead to opportunities for fans to ask specific questions they have about God or Catholicism.

“When you are working in the kingdom of light, whether you’re explicitly talking about God or Jesus on stage, when people are listening to your music, they can feel something different, and they’re not quite sure what that is,” she said. “We want our example to lead, that we are followers of Christ.” 

Their journey as musicians has also helped to deepen their own faith.

“The reason why we even did the Unity Collective (Tour), which led into “State of the Unity,” which was an eight-year journey for us, was because God literally gave Nathaniel a divine vision, and we followed it to the end – no matter what,” Speece told Today’s Catholic. It was in that “no matter what” that they discovered just how much the Lord cared about their needs, big and small. 

“When people talk about how diamonds are made in the fire, right? … The pressure, the heat and all that stuff. We understand what that means because of living through years of poverty and going through debt and being like, ‘Why the heck did you [God] put us on this journey if it was going to be this hard?’” Speece said. “But then at these really vulnerable points for us, when we were like, ‘I think we need to quit; I think we just need to give up’… miracles would literally happen that would reset the structure of what we were doing.” 

These miracles ranged from people calling out of the blue and donating large sums of money right when the band thought they’d have to give up the project because of a lack of funds, to smaller, but no less significant, miracles such as Hoff striking up a conversation with a random stranger while on a walk and being offered their extra sandwich when he needed it. 

“We have given up our lives in pursuit of a better country, in pursuit of loving our neighbors deeper. And we’ve sacrificed things that regular people have. Houses, beds, kitchen cabinets with spices, nice cars, nice things, niceties,”Hoff said of their “State of the Unity” experience. “We don’t have these things, but we do things like the Christmas concert because we want people for a moment in time to be able to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas and come together and know that it’s a safe space for everybody. I know we’re going to have people come into the concert who are not Christians, and it’s going to be a safe space for them as well.” 

“Nobody wants to be relying on anyone else,” Hoff said. “But it is in that that we learn the power of faith, we learn the power of being poor in spirit, because you ultimately learn that you are not the center of the universe. You are not on your own island. You are not everything that social media and this world is trying to tell you that you are. Who you are is part of this unbelievable fabric of people – and God’s creation here on this earth – and we have to lean into it.” 

They hope to create an intimate, relaxed, and inviting vibe for their concert on November 29. “The Morris is obviously its own historic, amazing, incredible venue. But to me, when I look at that space that night for those two hours, it’s basically a giant living room. It’s a chance for people to sit down [and] relax.”

The band describes their music as a blend of pop, rock, and folk, which blends acoustic and synth elements.

“I would almost say it’s a nod to the late ’60s, early ’70s, that kind of culture where you’ve got storytelling woven throughout the songs and you have live instruments front and center,” Speece said. “It’s heavily, heavily influenced by storytelling – that’s a folk tradition, Americana tradition that we’re just glad to participate in,” Hoff added. 

In addition to the stories being told through their songs, the band will also tell stories in between songs, which is part of what will give the evening a “living room” vibe. Speece said they’re “dreaming big” when it comes to designing the night, which will be an “experience” for the audience, both audibly and visually. 

The set list will include original songs, such as “Mayflies,” “Young Again,” “PDR,” “Forget About Tomorrow,” and “Remember This December” – a song written as a Christmas gift from Hoff to Speece one year when they were low on funds. Other Christmas songs include “White Christmas,” “Run Run Rudolph,” “Jingle Bell Rock,” “O Holy Night,” “Carol of the Bells,” and “Ave Maria.”

Longtime fans can expect some new elements in this year’s Christmas concert, including a collaboration with the Notre Dame Children’s Choir.

“We are going to be able to weave in some really beautiful sacred songs that will be illuminated this time around because of who we’re going to be featuring and who we’re going to be collaborating with,” Speece told Today’s Catholic. 

In their 15 years as a band, Hoff and Speece have gone on a journey together that has left them feeling “massively blessed,” Hoff said. Through it, they’ve grown in their faith, learned how to rely on God, and realized the power of community. 

“This journey that we’re on, it helps us to understand that through being poor in spirit you learn to rely on the graces of God and the graces of others,” Hoff said. “Only through going through the journey that we went through of having nothing did we learn to have reliance on God.”