A composer brings music, joy and trans visibility to her church
There are congregations that would brand her a sinner. But here at St. Cecilia’s Roman Catholic Church in Boston, Rachel Burckardt gives voice to the angels.
She’s 71, transgender, a civil engineer by day, and a composer of spiritual music by nights and weekends.
While religion has been used for decades to ostracize many transgender people, Burckardt has found that faith drives acceptance in her community. It has been the bedrock on which she has formed her closest friendships, found moral clarity in challenging times and built radically inclusive communities in greater Boston.
Burckardt’s music is not unlike her life. She aims to produce something bright and whole, but what makes it good, she thinks, is an element, maybe a minor chord or note, that hits the ear differently, that gives it depth or sadness.
“It’s kind of like what goes along with some gender ambiguity,” she said. “It starts out off in unison and breaks into these not too difficult, but just unexpected chords.”
A place in the church
Burckardt transitioned in September 2010 at the age of 57 while a member of St. Cecilia’s, a parish she had been attending for five years.
The Catholic Church does not have an official policy on transgender people but has long been regarded as generally anti-trans due to teachings that men and women are created in the image of God and that gender is unchangeable. Pope Leo XIV has signaled that this stance is not likely to change under his tenure but has also expressed a welcoming attitude toward LGBTQ+ Catholics since his selection last year.
When Burckardt told her pastor she was transitioning, he responded that she should just make sure she knew what she was doing. When she told other friends in the church, they affirmed her and encouraged her to listen to God.
Burckardt’s friend of 20 years, Mary Casiello, notes that in the early aughts many Boston parishes closed due to sex abuse scandals. Some of them were absorbed by St. Cecilia’s, where Burckardt attends church. Among them was a Jesuit urban center in the South End neighborhood, a gay enclave in Boston, and many LGBTQ+ people came from the center and joined St. Cecilia’s
Still, Burckardt was hesitant about telling her fellow parishioners she was trans, Casiello said.
“I know Rachel was very scared when she came out about losing her position,” she said. “The whole music ministry program was like, this is who you are, and you’re such a huge part of this community.”
Her church community wanted her to be herself.
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To Burckardt, this is how religion should work. God is not about arbitrary rules. Faith is about loving other people as they are.
“Jesus went out to the people on the fringes, and we really feel that, if he were around today, he’d be looking at the LGBT folks, looking at the immigrants and other people who are called horrible names,” Burckardt said. “Those are the people he’d be hanging out with.”
A composer of faith and community
And those are the people who Burckardt most wanted to embrace in her music. Burckardt writes sacred and liturgical music for worship, songs for orchestras and choirs that reflect the joys, struggles and gratitudes of a life of faith.
In 2022, she and conductor Elijah Langille formed the Tutti Music Collective, a nonprofit committed to showcasing the work of diverse artists, LGBTQ+ composers like Burckardt and performers of color. It is not directly affiliated with the church.
More than that, Burckardt and Langille sought to remove gender from the process of sorting musicians, especially when it came to voices.
“What if we just let them, you tell me what’s comfortable for your voice, and you just go sit where you want to sing?” asked Langille.
The concept proved tremendously relieving to the choir’s LGBTQ+ members, but also to its cisgender and straight members who had been previously boxed in by the gender constraints that often go along with alto, tenor, soprano and bass roles.
Langille said that above all things, members of Tutti have fun because they get to be themselves.
“What if we had high musical standards, but we also supported people, believed what they said?” he asked. “We put them in places that they were comfortable, and we just made music.”
The same can be said of how Burckardt has lived.
She has asked God for guidance on many things, including transition.
Early life
Burckardt was born in New York City and moved around New York state as a small child. Eventually, her mother, who was separated from her father, bought a house in the suburbs with Burckardt’s aunt, where she and her cousins were raised.
Burckardt had an inkling she might be a woman, but growing up in the 1970s, it wasn’t safe to talk about.
“Probably somewhere around my teenage years, the thought came to me of what it was,” she said. “It was a strange thing being, on the one hand, attracted to girls, and then on the other hand wanting to be one.”
Eager to get back to a city, Burckardt chose to attend college at Northeastern University in Boston, where in 1972 she began a five-year civil engineering program.
During those college years, Burckardt started to study composition.
“I really got fascinated by music,” she said.
Burckardt had grown up in the progressive rock era of the ’60s and ’70s and was captivated by how musicians would pull elements of classical and jazz music together. She found she was better at improvising than at reading the music. Within a year, she was composing. It gave her a new way of expressing herself.
“Being an introvert, it’s a voice that I can use to speak that’s not verbal,” she said. “And my goodness, is that a wonderful relief of not having to be verbal.”
She graduated college in 1977, still living as a man. She began work and continued studies, eventually pursuing a master’s.
Finding love
Burckardt also continued with composing and performing music. One night in December of 1980 at a Christmas concert, she met a friend of a friend who made her heart “flutter.”
Rosie Delacruz was born in Lima, Peru, and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for a family with a piano, which gave her access to classical lessons. She had originally moved to Boston to attend nursing school at Simmons College, but found the science classes difficult and switched to sociology. She was in the audience at the concert that night when Burckardt performed one of her original songs.
“I was mesmerized by her Christmas piece that she played,” said Delacruz. “Somehow I got a recording of it, and I played over and over again.”
Delacruz and Burckardt became friends at first. And then one spring day, sitting in a car, their hands met. They shared a love of music, a desire to travel and a deep sense of faith. It was meant to be.
The two attended church and created hymnals together. They had their first son in 1989 and their second in 1992. They traded child care responsibilities so that one could play music in the day at church and the other could do so at night.
At the same time, Burckardt had built a successful career as a civil engineer, designing parks and subway stations. She still wasn’t out as transgender.
Transition
Burckardt had raised the issue of her gender identity with Delacruz about 25 years into their marriage, when their sons were teenagers.
“At that point, you develop a relationship and a collaboration,” Delacruz said.
“You can’t easily walk away from it.”
When Burckardt became serious about transition, though, Delacruz’s commitment was tested. But leaving didn’t seem like an option.
“Once you know something like that, it’s kind of hard to untangle the tentacles of different parts of your lives from one another without causing harm,” said Delacruz. “I think we both admire each other mutually.”
Transition seemed like the exact wrong time to leave the person she loved.
Burckardt’s sons were also supportive, encouraging her to talk to someone about the way she felt.
Some trans women had lost their families when they came out and warned her not to go through with it. Others had strict ideas about how Burckardt should dress or carry herself. She wasn’t interested in hearing either.
“If I can be frank about it, it’s like, ‘Well, fuck you, If I’m going to do the most self-liberating thing that a person can possibly do, can’t I make all the fucking decisions that I want, that fit me as I see things?’” she said.
Burckardt didn’t want fashion tips. She was going to wear what she wanted.
“It doesn’t matter, you know, the little things that I’m doing in terms of transitioning,” she said. “What matters is your relationships with people, and how you treat people, and how you are in the world. That’s, that’s the important part.”
This seems to be the secret of Burckardt’s own success. On March 3, her own work premiered at Merkin Hall in New York City. Perhaps most significantly, the concert drew friends, family and colleagues from all phases of her life, a testament to the fact love supersedes gender identity, and even in today’s political climate, some trans people are finding radical acceptance.
New York Concert Review wrote: “Given her decades of experience as a church musician, her deep understanding of sacred music was evident throughout. The work powerfully conveyed the devotional spirit of the texts.”
The reviewer noted that Burckardt’s music was more traditional than might be expected at such a concert, but that it was full of an authentic and personal voice. Burckardt admits that when she was younger, she pictured herself growing up to be in a rock band.
“It’s never quite exactly what I envisioned myself writing, you know, when I first got interested in music,” she said with a laugh. But just as faith informed her life and then her music, as minor notes added complexity to her songs, she has found joy in the unexpected.
“You know, when you’re trans, you don’t have to have one identity,” she said. “You can have an identity that’s all over the place in terms of the elements that are there.”
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