THE FAMILY Church on the Rock will host the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers in concert on Heroes Day, October 16, at 6 p.m. The event which is being produced by Life productions will be held at the Rock Garden Amphitheatre at the Family Church on the Rock, Cassava Piece, St. Andrew. The Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers comprise 21 voices.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers are an outgrowth of The Brooklyn Tabernacle, the dynamic inner-city ministry who's life-saving outreach and straight-ahead gospel message has changed thousands of lives and received national and international notice.
With "Songs From The Altar", their most recent release, the Grammy-nominated Singers combine the praise and worship element of church music with various styles. Under the direction of Carol Cymbala (who also writes many of the songs the Singers sing), they have produced a project designed both for at-home or in-group worship and meditation.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle, headed by Pastor Jim Cymbala (Carol's husband), has grown from a handful of people into thousands of members and has spawned seventeen additional sister/daughter churches in the United States and four foreign countries. Its music ministry led to the formation of The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, the renowned 275 voice ensemble whose live recordings have received three Grammy awards, as well as various award nominations.
"What happened," Carol says, "is that we took fifteen or sixteen of the very best singers, including the best soloists, from all of our churches in the city, and brought them together." The group allowed for a recording approach different from the live sound used by the Choir and gave the church more flexibility in meeting requests for live singing engagements as well.
"A lot of invitations the Choir gets and could never fulfil can be met by the Singers," she adds. "Even coordinating an appearance by 16 singers, all of whom are working people, is difficult, but it's a lot easier than it would be with 275.
Although they currently maintain a very limited schedule of appearances, the Singers have performed at churches from New York to California and have appeared at such large conferences as Music California and Music Minnesota.
