UTC alumni singers present a program of spirituals

Roland Carter will conduct and accompany a chamber choir of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga alumni on Saturday night in a concert of spirituals, many of them his own arrangements. / File Photo

Five decades of music alumni from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will form a chamber choir to perform a concert of arrangements of African-American spirituals on Saturday night, June 1, in the historic chapel of Olivet Baptist Church.

The alumni singers will be conducted and accompanied by Roland Carter, UTC professor emeritus, former Music Department Head and an acknowledged authority on spirituals in American music.

Carter's own arrangements as well as selections arranged by Harry T. Burleigh, Wendell Whalum, Betty Jackson King, Lloyd Larson and William Grant Still will be featured.

Harv Wileman, who studied under Carter at UTC and then continued to sing with him as a chorister and soloist for many years, conceived this project.

"Roland's knowledge is so vast and his passion so clear and communicable for this genre of music that it has gotten into the DNA of most of us who studied and worked under him. I didn't realize until years later all the ways in which this music informed my college experience and how Roland's genius in communicating its history, style, relevance and performance traditions had broadened my understanding of not just the art form, but the African-American experience in general," says Wileman.

Although retired, Carter is still in constant demand as a conductor, composer, performer and musical authority.

The morning after this concert, he will fly to New York City for "Masters of the Spiritual" at Lincoln Center, a concert in which international soloists will perform his compositions along with those of living legends Lena McLin and Jacqueline Hairston.

"This is the happiest time of my life," he says, "I am truly content."

He says his mission is to teach and perform the music of African-Americans as a continuing creative pleasure and a responsibility.

"I am standing of the shoulders of so many others," Carter says. "It's important that we live our lives in such a way that the ones after us can then stand on our shoulders. I did not start out with that vision, but I am hoping that is what I have done. I find now that it is difficult for me to look at Facebook and read the comments of my former students without weeping."

This concert is sponsored by Olivet Baptist Church and the Performing Arts Department of UTC.

"Roland has given so much to the students of UTC and to the community at large," says current Department Head Dr. Stuart Benkert. "We are happy to take any opportunity to celebrate his work, especially in the context of his transformative work with our own alumni."

Featured soloists will be sopranos Vanessa Niblack-Kimbrough, Nel Reid and Kristen Wiram; mezzo-soprano Zephanie Flippin; tenors Jeron Burney and Harv Wileman; and bass LaFrederick Thirkill.

This concert is free, however a freewill offering will be collected for the Roland Carter Scholarship.