|
Northridge: On Friday, December 8, at 8 p.m., the Plaza del Sol Performance Hall, (formerly The Performing Arts Center) at California State University, Northridge celebrates the season with The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, who have focused worldwide attention on the vast body of folk music termed “African-American.” Tickets are priced from $20-$45.
Since their first European tour in 1968, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers have earned international acclaim for their vast repertoire of African-American folk music. Their primary focus has been the rich genre known as Negro Spirituals as well as gospel, secular folk, calypso and other African-Caribbean and African vocal forms. Today their repertory also consists of concert works by distinguished African-American composers and arrangers along with classical opera, sacred music and musical theater—and for this holiday season, many special traditional favorites.
An LA-born native Californian, Director Albert McNeil earned Bachelors and Masters degrees at UCLA and did his doctorate studies at USC, the Westminster Choir College of Princeton and the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He currently directs the choir of the Congregational Church of Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles. He is in demand as an adjudicator and choral clinician and is often invited to conduct "honor choirs." McNeil has been conducting gospel groups and church choirs for most of his adult life, and has dedicated himself to upholding a tradition of choral excellence.
Gospel music can easily be described as the Black religious music of the twentieth century, and although based on the spiritual, gospel’s unique texts, rhythms, melodies and the use of instruments clearly separate it from earlier spirituals, which is always sung a cappella.
The arranged spiritual became known in the winter of 1870 when an intrepid group of 11 singers – seven women and four men – representing the newly-established Fisk University in Nashville appeared at the Court of St. James in London. Queen Victoria's immediate acceptance helped garner worldwide attention to this four-part a cappella singing style.
Traditional and contemporary spirituals represent a departure from the earliest settings when, in the early 19th century, spirituals were sung by slaves. These works can trace their origins to a period surrounding the great conversion of slaves, but as folk songs their original forms are impossible to establish.
Concert spirituals were made famous in the 1860s and 70s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, then a group of recently freed slaves studying at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, who brought the traditional spiritual to the concert stage. Contemporary arrangers such as Moses Hogan, Albert McNeil and Howard Roberts are continuing to breathe new life into this form with new versions of the beloved African-American classics.
|
