One of the world’s premiere choral ensembles specializing in African-American music, The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, will perform on June 24, 2012, at Pasadena Presbyterian Church in the Playhouse Arts District of downtown Pasadena. The program will focus on traditional and contemporary spirituals and gospels and works by contemporary African-American composers.
Founded in 1968, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers is based in Los Angeles and focuses, in part, on the genre often called Negro Spirituals. Founder-Director Albert McNeil is Professor Emeritus of Music, the University of California at Davis, where he was Director of choral activities for 21 years and headed the Music Education program. He taught courses in ethnomusicology at the University of Southern California for 12 years.
According to the choir,
The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers is NOT a gospel Choir. Our mission is primarily to preserve, and perform the Spiritual, and other works, and compositions by African-American composers and arrangers. While our repertory is primarily Spirituals, we do include some contemporary Gospel Selections, but that is not our forte. We do include music from the Black Theatre, however, including major works such as “Porgy and Bess” (Gershwin), “Carmen Jones” (Hammerstein), “Ragtime”, “Show Boat”.
Shortly after its founding, the Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers undertook its first European tour and have performed 18 sold-out European tours, 12 tours of the United States and Canada, and tours of the Middle and Far East, Africa and South America. They were selected three times to serve the U.S. State Department and USIS Cultural Exchange Program in areas of the world known in those days as “behind the Iron Curtain,” including East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. They have also appeared in Iran, India, North and West Africa, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates. So go see ’em in Pasadena!
Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers | Pasadena Presbyterian Church | Colorado Blvd. at Madison Ave.| Sunday, June 24, 4 pm | donation