The American Spiritual Ensemble will be performing at Holy Trinity, 502 S. Morris St. in Oxford, on Thursday, February 2, 2012, at 7 p.m.
Tenor Dr. Everett McCorvey founded the group in 1995, and many of its 24 members have performed in such venues as the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Boston Opera and the Atlanta Civic Opera. They have also performed abroad in England, Germany, Italy, Japan, Scotland, and Spain.
McCorvey has close ties to the civil rights movement; he actually grew up around the corner from Dr. Martin Luther King in Montgomery, Ala., during the time that King was pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, McCorvey’s father was the deacon at First Baptist Church where Ralph Abernathy was a minister. Spirituals and hymns were part of his upbringing, and he describes the Negro spirituals as, “…America’s first native music after the country was formed and the immigrants came over. I call it the ‘mother music,’ because it started the tradition, and it went from spirituals to blues to jazz to gospel to popular music. They’re the songs of the cotton fields — songs of anguish and pain and hope, and it helped form our American society.” McCorvery additionally states that the spirituals were, “…front and center during the Civil Rights Movement. You heard the lyrics and the text from spirituals in many of Martin Luther King’s speeches.”
The repertoire of the ensemble ranges from spirituals to classical to dance and to Broadway, highlighting the Black experience.
A free will offering will be accepted at the door. For more information, please call 410-226-5134.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Holy Trinity
502 S. Morris St.
Oxford, MD
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