By Hardeep Matharu EPSOM, SURREY — A choir has sung the praises of its conductor who has performed his last concert with them after 22 years. Michael Stevenson said farewell to the 35-strong Epsom Chamber Choir (ECC) on Friday, June 30. The conductor, who trained at the Trinity College of Music in London as a […]
News and Notices
World Choir Games: Singing janitor going for clean sweep
By Cliff Radel CINCINNATI — He keeps time with a short-handled broom and a long-handled dustpan. Sweep, sweep. The broom does its work. Tap, tap. The dust pan pats the restroom’s floor. The song begins. Ronald Greene, the singing janitor, slowly rolls out the words to an old gospel hymn. “There’s a leak in this old building […]
Global Village shows fun side of World Choir Games
By John Faherty CINCINNATI — Under an oppressive sun, a choir from China, the Shanghai Women Entrepeneurs Choir, was singing “The Rose,” sounding like an ethereal Bette Midler. Then singers representing the North Jersey Home School Association sang “Bonse Aba” a Zambian Christian worship song. All across Fountain Square, people chatted and smiled and ate […]
Catawba Welcomes New Director of Choral Music
CATAWBA, NC — Dr. Jim Shepherd is Catawba College's new director of choral music and assistant professor of music. He will join the faculty at the college in August for the start of the 2012-2013 academic year. Shepherd comes to Catawba from Concord University in Athens, West Virginia, where he served during the 2011-2012 academic year as […]
Andy Griffith, Youth Choir Director
By Mike Wilder BURLINGTON, NC — V and film star. Comedic story-teller. Gospel singer. Youth choir director in Burlington, N.C. Andy Griffith spent a small part of his early life here, directing church music, singing in the adult choir and giving voice lessons at First Christian Church, now First Christian United Church of Christ, while he […]
Even behind bars, Umoja chorus has impact
By Janele Gelfand LEBANON, OH — They sang the African-American spiritual “There is a Balm in Gilead” a cappella, from memory and with focused sound. They communicated with style in a gospel tune, “Glorious,” side-stepping to its Afro-pop beat. It might have been a chorus singing in any competition anywhere. Except that these were prisoners, […]