Associate Professor of Church Music and Worship James Abbington will present an educational performance designed to share the rich heritage of Black sacred music composers on February 1 at 7:00 p.m. in Cannon Chapel sanctuary. “Lift Every Voice and Sing! An Evening with James Abbington” is free and open to the public with advance registration required. In-person and livestream options are both available. A reception will follow in Candler’s atrium.
Register to attend the event in person or via livestream.
The event will be neither a typical concert nor a standard lecture, though it holds elements of each. “It will be an ‘informance,’” Abbington says. “It’s a term that has become very popular—particularly in educational circles—to define a musical presentation that has a foundation in teaching and learning.”
The informance will be split into two parts: the first half will focus on hymns adopted, adapted, and assimilated from western European and white American hymn writers; the second portion will emphasize prayer and praise hymns of the Black religious experience from 1885 to 1925, what Abbington refers to as “second generation spirituals and first generation gospels.”
He notes that the musical selections will help the audience make new connections between pieces they are most likely already familiar with and those they may not know as well or at all.
“I think we are always looking for things that are different about us. But the purpose of this program is to see how, in many cases, we are really much alike. And I think that’s important in a place like Candler, where people are being trained to go out and serve a diverse, ecumenical community.”
Abbington will lead the music along with various instrumentalists and a choir of twelve vocalists, though he stresses that attendees should come not simply to listen, but to join in on what he hopes will be “a congregational experience.”
“We want people to participate, not just passively sit as an audience to be entertained,” he says. “An informance is not just about performing the music, but talking and teaching the music, and having the people present it as well. I hope they will come to be enlightened as well as educated—and how appropriate that is in our university setting.”
It’s a setting that Abbington finds particularly meaningful, and not just because of its educational context. As one of the nation’s most respected choir directors, musicians and authors, he travels worldwide to present and perform at universities, conferences, symposiums and churches. “I’m always delighted for the opportunity to share in my home community. I don’t get to do that often. This is the very rare occasion where I can say I’m doing what I do on the road at home.”
Along with his roles at Candler, where he has taught since 2005, Abbington is executive editor of the African American Church Music Series by GIA Publications (Chicago). In addition to writing and editing, he has produced numerous recordings under GIA. In 2015, he became the second African American to be named a Fellow of The Hymn Society in the United States and Canada. Learn more about Abbington.
Register to attend “Lift Every Voice and Sing! An Evening with James Abbington.”