Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers to Perform at Pasadena Presbyterian Church on Sunday, June 24

The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers, one of the world’s premiere choral ensembles specializing in African-American music, will perform on Sunday, June 24, at 4 p.m. at Pasadena Presbyterian Church, Colorado Blvd. at Madison Ave. in the Playhouse Arts District of downtown Pasadena.

The concert will be free of admission charge; a freewill offering will be taken with a suggested donation of $20. 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. 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 this a cappella, four-part singing by an ensemble of students to become known worldwide as a creative religious music evoking a deep sense of personal spiritual fervor.

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.

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. He began his teaching career as a teacher of music in the elementary, junior and senior high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

McNeil is well-known to the national choral community, having been honored on four occasions with command performances before the prestigious American Choral Directors Association in 1981 in New Orleans, in 1985 at their Salt Lake City Convention, at their 1997 convention in San Diego, California, in February, 2000, at Los Angeles during the ACDA Western Division Convention held on the campus of Loyola-Marymount University.

The ensemble headlined the First Choral Festival in Jaffe (yafo), Israel, in April 1988. They have performed with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Dale Warland Singers, Chanticleer and the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

About the Pasadena Presbyterian Church

This event is one of dozens of concerts and recitals presented each year by Pasadena Presbyterian Church as a musical outreach to the community. Included in that list are free weekly “Music at Noon” recitals every Wednesday from 12:10-12:40 p.m. in the church’s sanctuary that feature a wide variety of local, national and international artists.

The church’s 2012-2013 “Friends of Music” concert series will begin on Sept. 29 at 7:30 p.m. with a performance of Benjamin Britten’s “The Company of Heaven” for choir, orchestra, soloists and narrators, all conducted by Dr. Timothy Howard, the church’s director of music and organist. The performance will come on the 75th anniversary of the work’s premiere on the BBC Radio Network.

Founded in 1875, Pasadena Presbyterian Church is the oldest church in the city and today’s congregation is a vibrant mix of English, Korean and Spanish communities. Sunday worship conducted in all three languages and the church offers a wide variety of education, mission and community service programs. For more information, log onto www.ppc.net.