Church Comes to Music Hall
Over 3,000 people had church at Music Hall Thursday night (July 12). It was the World Choir Games Gospel and Spiritual Celebration Concert and the 134-year-old building on Elm Street rocked.
There were empty seats, notably in the uppermost gallery on the sides closest to the stage (where you can hear, but the view is severely limited). But that is the way it is at 3,516 seat Music Hall. Elsewhere, it was filled with enthusiastic -- not to say ecstatic -- listeners.
The concert featured four American choirs: the Brazeal Dennard Chorale, Detroit, Michigan; Marvin L. Winans Academy of Performing Arts Choir, Detroit, Michigan; Princeton Unlimited, Sharonville, Ohio; and the Voices of Unity, Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Eighteen-voice Princeton Unlimited, directed by Lindsay Orr, Jr., introduced the program with a beautifully crafted “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?” exhibiting precise, close harmony and counterpoint over a steady beat.
The Brazeal Dennard Chorale, directed by Augustus Hill, followed with six numbers. This superb, 22-voice choir provided some of the evening’s finest moments, including “My Lord, What a Morning,” arranged by Harry Burleigh (the great African-American composer/ singer who inspired Antonin Dvorak, composer of the “New World Symphony”). Members of the choir were highlighted in most of them, as in “Every Time I Hear the Spirit” and “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord,” the latter featuring a rapturous soprano solo. “Hush! Somebody’s Calling My Name,” arranged by choir founder Brazeal Dennard (1929-2010), had a delicate, pointed aspect, with the singers extending “hush” with a soft exhalation. “Elijah Rock,” rhythmically and harmonically complex in the arrangement by Moses Hogan, was sung breathtakingly fast, and the choir swayed side to side in Hill’s arrangement of the great hymn to liberty, “Oh, Freedom,” which brought the audience to their feet in a spontaneous ovation.
Conductor Deborah Charaman and the Winans Academy Choir ratcheted up the excitement further in five selections: “Ride on King Jesus,” “Standin’ in the Need of Prayer,” “Great Things,” “I Love the Lord” and “Revelation 19,” all accompanied skillfully and very musically on the piano. The 15-voice choir sang, swayed and clapped with enormous energy and spirit, inspiring the helpless audience to clap along in the gospel song “Revelation 19” ("Hallelujah, salvation and glory, honor and power unto the Lord, our God”).
Fort Wayne’s Voices of Unity is the “defending champion” of the gospel and spiritual, having won the top prize in that category at the 2010 WCG in Shaoxing, China (the categories are separate this year). Conducted by Marshall White, the 50-some voices performed with a chamber orchestra, keyboards, guitar and drum set in the grand finale of the concert. Arrayed in sparkly tops (girls) and black vests (boys), the group did their title proud in five gospel numbers, beginning with Kurt Carr’s exhilarating “In the Sanctuary.” “My Help Cometh from the Lord” began slowly and soared, reaping one of the group’s many standing ovations. There was some potent trumpeting in the orchestra and the choir in Richard Smallwood’s “God of Promise,” which brought a gifted soprano to the front.
After introducing some of the young members of the choir (which ranges in age from 7-22), White led his own arrangement of “Genesis,” a spectacular tongue-twister that featured a bit of “staging,” with the singers leaning to opposite sides to symbolize the parting of the waters in Genesis 1:6. “Did that bless you?” White asked the audience, which had been worked up considerately by this time and began shouting out on their own. He harnessed their energy by adding some audience participation, beginning with Kirk Franklin’s feel-good “I Smile” (Franklin wrote this years’ WCG song “I Can,” premiered at the Opening Ceremony on July 4). On cue here, the men and women in the audience stood to sing words dictated by him along, with the choir.
There was an encore, of course, though it was more than that. White, the choir and the instrumentalists presented what he called a “skit,” illustrating the different styles of African-American music with the gospel hit “View That Holy City” (by Rizen). First came the blues, with a wailing saxophone solo, then “smooth jazz” (White) with White on keyboard. Choir members folded their hands and sang it straight in “sophisticated church” style, than full-bore, gospel style, which may have peeled some paint from the Music Hall ceiling.
Before the concert Nina Perlove, executive director of the Cincinnati-based American Classical Music Hall of Fame, inducted Chorus America, service organization for the choral music industry, as a new member.
Note: Winners in the gospel category of the 2012 World Choir Games will be announced at 7:30 p.m. tonight (July 13) in U.S. Bank Arena and in the spiritual category at 10 a.m. tomorrow, also in U.S. Bank Arena.