Queens College Choral Society Will Perform Duke Ellington’s The Best of the Sacred Concerts

The Queens College Choral Society (QCCS) will present Duke Ellington’s The Best of the Sacred Concerts for its 85th annual Winter Concert on Saturday, December 14, at 4 pm in Colden Auditorium in the Kupferberg Center for the Arts. Ellington wrote three Sacred Concerts in the last decade of his life, drawing on spirituals, jazz, blues, and other genres to create moving, nondenominational music. He conducted the premiere of each work. As the title implies, The Best of the Sacred Concerts is a compilation published and performed separately.

Over 100 members of the Choral Society will perform 17 selections accompanied by a jazz orchestra led by Bruce Harris, artistic director of programs at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, a designated national historic landmark administered by the college. The orchestra’s rhythm section will comprise students from the college’s Aaron Copland School of Music.

The concert, conducted by QC music professor James John, will feature tap dancer Marshall Davis Jr., a member of the QC faculty who has appeared on and off Broadway; narrator Randall Keith Horton, a QC alumnus who served as Ellington’s conducting and composing assistant; and vocal soloists Maya Raisha, Briana Swann, and C. Anthony Bryant.