Concert unites renowned Stillman College Choir with Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra

The Stillman College Choir continues its "beautiful friendship" with the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra on Monday night, as two of the area's oldest, most-renowned groups of artists unite again for an evening of classical, Broadway, gospel and more.

Shortly after Adam Flatt, the TSO's music director, connected with Jocqueline Richardson, the historically Black college's director of choral activities, they felt the collaboration clicked. Preparations for a full dual concert began "... before that music had even finished resonating in the Moody," Flatt said.

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Following that 2022 "cameo" performance, Stillman re-joined the TSO for a full evening in January 2023, a concert that'll be mirrored Monday night, in range and scope.

"God they are good," Flatt said, and as a bonus, just across town, on the campus at Stillman Boulevard. Locally they may be best known for decades of standing-room only Christmas concerts, but Stillman choirs have traveled from Carnegie Hall to Nashville to Washington, D.C., to Schorndorf, Germany — one of Tuscaloosa's sister cities — on to state and national festivals and elsewhere.

Stillman choirs — as a group comprising college students, they're often in revolution and evolution, though alumni do return for certain performances — have recorded mixes of spiritual and secular music, blending jazz, rhythm and blues and more, a versatility the TSO concert hopes to reflect, with "... everything from Haydn's 'Creation,' through contemporary composers, traditional spirituals, and everything in between," Flatt said.

Monday's concert repertory will include William Grant Still's "Symphony No. 1 'Afro-American'"; George Walker's "Lyric for Strings"; Joseph Haydn's "Achieved is the Glorious Work" from "The Creation"; Tom Fettke's "Majesty and Glory of Your Name"; Mack Wilberg's "Shenandoah"; Peter Wilhousky's "Battle Hymn of the Republic"; Mark Hayes' arrangements of "Over the Rainbow" and 'You'll Never Walk Alone"; Moses Hogan's "Elijah Rock"; Roy Belfield's "I Know I Been Changed"; and Richard Smallwood's "Anthem of Praise."

"This is a beautiful friendship that's developed between the Stillman Choir and the TSO," Flatt said.

Though still in the hiring process for the executive director job when the choir began this link with the symphony, Nastassia Perrine had known Richardson years before. One of UA grad Perrine's first jobs in Tuscaloosa, a little more than a decade back, was stepping up to Richardson's "very big shoes" as choral director for the Tuscaloosa City Schools system, a post Richardson held for 30-plus years before moving over to Stillman.

"She is a true teacher, an educator who has nurtured generations of families and musicians in our community," Perrine said. "Such a gem."

So while the executive director felt last year's Stillman-featured concert would be a success, she couldn't have guessed how the sometimes-disparate energies of classical and spiritual would fuel each other.

"The energy in the hall was just absolutely electric," Perrine said. "I heard for months, after last year's concert, just how much people enjoyed it.

"So the night of, at the afterparty, we were getting out our calendars to plan for 2024."

Like the TSO's Fourth of July pops concerts at the Mercedes-Benz Amphitheater, this performance is one "made for the masses," Perrine said, regardless of whether patrons would ordinarily feel at home in a concert hall.

"Not only is it a true community collaboration," she said, "but it would be a wonderful introduction to the orchestra and choral repertoire, with everything from Haydn to 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow,' " the Harold Arlen-Yip Harburg standard written for the 1939 movie classic "The Wizard of Oz."

The players will be spotlighted on the Still symphony, and the choir will perform some pieces a cappella, but much of the evening will feature all gathered on the Moody stage.

"Of course there will be some of Stillman's staple spiritual and gospel pieces, which stretch the orchestra in what they're used to playing, even with Adam," a frequent collaborator with choral and other artistic groups. "Adam definitely programs a gamut of music."

Working with Stillman's choir, there's more "feel" involved, she said.

"As classical musicians, you're trained to hold a note exactly as written. One millisecond too long, and you've ruined the whole thing," she said, laughing.

"In classical, we're taught 'Don't feel it; read it!' "

These collaborations are a chance for the orchestra, many of them long-time professional artists and educators, to become students again, Perrine said.

"There's a myth that classical music is the highest form, but fusing western classical music with rhythm, 12-bar blues, spirituals, can open their eyes to a whole other beautiful, equally valuable and exciting way of producing music," she said. "And let's face it: American music IS Black music. It's such an important piece in our shared history."

An hour before the concert starts, Richardson will speak at the pre-show "Cheers 'n' Chat" reception, 6 p.m. in the Moody building's Choral Opera Room, with soloists performing. Tickets for the pre-show are $15, with all proceeds going to the March 4 TSO children's concerts.

The concert proper will begin at 7 p.m. in the Moody Concert Hall. Tickets range from $33 to $43, including fees; students are admitted free. For more, call 205-752-5515, or see www.tsoonline.org.

Reach Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Stillman College Choir unites with Tuscaloosa Symphony in concert