A cappella jubilee
The Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers.
Singers keep a vibrant musical tradition alive
By Tim Ryan
Star-BulletinThe Albert McNeil Jubilee Singers have a bit in common with Jerry Lewis. No, they don't have nasal voices or irritating temperaments. The internationally renowned Los Angeles-based choral group was first accepted by European audiences.
"Our first season (1968) we performed in nine countries and that's when it all happened for us," said the group's founder, Albert McNeil. "Essentially it was just 14 friends of mine who sang spirituals and performed in tuxedos and gowns. The (European) audiences went ape."
It wasn't until seven years later, when the Jubilee Singers performed at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in L.A., that the big break came: Herbert Fox, vice president of of Columbia Concerts, asked the group to perform for his organization, a deal that continued through 1982.
"We had to leave to come home, in a sense," McNeil said.
The Jubilee Singers will perform excerpts from "Porgy and Bess" with the Honolulu Symphony on Sunday and Tuesday. The concert, part of the Halekulani Classical MasterWorks series, features Samuel Wong conducting a "Gershwin Jubilee!" Pianist Lorin Hollander will perform George Gershwin's "Piano Concerto in F Major."
The Jubilee Singers perform in the a cappella concert style made famous in the late 1800s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers - a small group of former slaves attending Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. This small group carried songs to Queen Victoria at the Court of St. James in 1869 (coincidentally, also in the audience were King Kalakaua and Princess Lili'uokalani).
With this concert the world first learned of Negro spirituals. The music expanded to include gospel and the black musical theater of the '20s and '30s.
And that's where McNeil comes in. He wanted to uphold a tradition of excellence in presenting America's classic spiritual music.
The Jubilee Singers is "one of the rare professional groups that is predominantly African American," said McNeil, 65, who is of Spanish and African-American descent. The group's music incorporates a range of African and African-American vocal music, African folk songs, traditional and contemporary spirituals, concert music by predominantly African-American composers, gospel, black music theater and Caribbean sounds.
"I was adopted into an African-American family in Los Angeles when I was about 5 months old and traveled around the world with them when they performed in vaudeville," McNeil said.
His parents told him he would become a professional - doctor, attorney, accountant or teacher - not a performer. So McNeil taught school for several years, then became director of choral studies at the University of California at Davis, where he spent 21 years.
Then came his turning point - a year on scholarship at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He returned with the desire to start a professional choral group.
McNeil found work at a black church in Los Angeles, where he organized a choir with "a real reason for being and not just a 'Blah-Blah Choral Group'."
"The secret to the group's success is its energy, excitement, honesty, integrity and sincerity of performance," McNeil says without hesitation. "Our music is emotionally connected to everyone who hears it."
Albert McNeilJubilee Singers
In concert with the Honolulu Symphony:When: 4 p.m. Sunday, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
