The Bluffton University Gospel Choir, fresh off a late October performance in Hesston, Kan., will present its first campus concert of the 2013-14 academic year at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 16, in Yoder Recital Hall. The concert is free and open to the public; an offering will be taken for music scholarships.
Among the choir’s numbers will be two by Dr. Raymond Wise, a gospel composer, arranger and historian from Columbus, Ohio. Wise, who visited Bluffton in November 2011, was in Hesston Oct. 25-27 for “A Celebration of Gospel: Music and Worship in the African-American Tradition,” where the Bluffton choir performed with choral groups from Hesston College.
The Nov. 16 concert will also feature solos by senior Marquis Brown from Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Julia Thomas, a junior from Springfield, Ohio; piano accompaniment by Dameer Relford, a first-year student from Elida, Ohio; and, on drums, Wesley Sellers from Columbus. Sellers is the brother of Dr. Crystal Sellers Battle, an assistant professor of music at Bluffton and director of the Gospel Choir, which includes community, as well as student, members.
