Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers

MEET THE CHORALIERS

The Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers was founded by Uzee Brown, Jr., educator, composer/arranger, performer and chair of the Morehouse College Department of Music. He contemplated that, given the size and diversity of the city of Atlanta and its African American population, an additional community-based chorus such as the UBSC would be a meaningful musical alternative in the city.

Its mission is comprised of three basic objectives: 1) to assemble, study, sing and perform for the mutual enjoyment of making music of the highest quality for all of its members and the general public; 2) to perform a wide variety of vocal music in such a way that the music of diverse cultural traditions, both sacred and secular, are heard, and the heritage of African American musical traditions are preserved and understood; 3) to advocate the concept of the Uzee Brown Society of Choraliers as a cohesive force and source of cultural enrichent in the community and throughout the nation. Membership in the UBSC is by audition. It is a Chorus in Residence at Morehouse College, comprised of professional singers, choristers who have many years of experience in church and community choirs, students and ardent lovers of music-making who just want to sing. Their ages range from the 20s to the 80s. Many of its singers have worked, studied and interacted with each other over the years. The UBSC began in the fall, 2009, assembled by Uzee Brown, Jr. for the primary purpose of completing a multi-media recording project, Tikvah (a Hebrew word meaning Hope), based on the life and writings of a surviving Jewish holocaust victim, Philip Markowicz, with music by award-winning American composer, Burton Beerman.

While the initial gathering of the Choraliers was intended to be simply for the joy of singing and exploring new repertoire, before the recording project was completed, the UBSC was invited to perform for its first public audience of more than 4000 for the opening of the International Association of Internal Auditors at the World Congress Center and the rest is history. In the fall, 2010, the Choraliers sang at Friendship Baptist Church for the opening of the Atlanta Festival of Spirituals. In March, 2011 they joined in an unprecedented and historical collaboration of five local churches, all of varying denominations, in a two-CD recording project of hymns, entitled Atlanta Sings: New Wine in Old Wineskins, with Dr. W. James Abbington, GIA Publishing Company African American Heritage Series editor, Emory University professor and Adjunct Professor of Church Music at Morehouse, and Uzee Brown as conductors. A Public performance of the CD project was presented as a commemorative concert on 9/11/2011 in the Martin Luther King, Jr., International Chapel. The Choraliers completed a 2012 recording and concert of Total Praise, selections from the Total Praise Hymnal, and prepared a demo recording project for internationally acclaimed film director, Spike Lee for his 2013 movie, Red Hook Summer. In addition to its debut concert in the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center in the fall of 2011, it has sung two annual Palm Sunday concerts at Historic Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta, and on March 1, 2015, they performed a concert at Christ Church Cathedral, Nassau, Bahamas, under the joint patronage of Her Excellency, Dame Marguerite Pindling, the Bahamian Ministry of Culture and the Highgrove Choir.  My Lord’s Getting’ Us Ready is their 4th CD project. 

OUR MEMBERS

SOPRANOS

• Nyasha Bonner-Shakir

• Janice Colbert

• Eleanor Cox

• Laura English-Robinson

• Pearl Hollis

• Cynthia Miles-Gray

• Akua McDaniel

• Barbara Thompson

• Shalewa Thrash

• Kathy Wilson

TENORS

• Phillip Holley

• Jonathan Kennon

• Bill Murphy

• Mark Norwood

• Keri Strother

• Joshua Troutman

• Justen Vanderbilt