Dear Newman,
It is my tremendous honor to report on the amazing happenings at Newman yesterday. We hosted the RPM Voices of Rhode Island, an established gospel choir under the direction of Frances-Elayne Johnson and Delbert Collins, in a concert honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The concert was conceived of as a way to augment the Birthday Bash held last year on MLK Weekend. Since I serve on both the Racial Equity Team and the Music Committee (ex officio), we decided to see if we could combine a Gospel concert with the birthday party. This worked out to be an overwhelming success!
To open the concert, RPM performed 7 different songs, including traditional spirituals like Jesus Is A Rock In A Weary Land, a fabulous setting of The Color Purple from the musical, a traditional South African work titled Tshotsholoza, and a tribute to the legendary African-American composer Richard Smallwood, who recently died, with a medley of his songs I Love The Lord/Total Praise. RPM brought down the house with these inspirational works!
Our Newman choir then performed three songs that were extremely well received. Becky Bass received standing ovations for her solos on City Called Heaven and Birmingham Sunday. Barbara Youmans did a fabulous job conducting our choir for the Bahamian spiritual Out on the Rolling Sea, which included the reading of the poem Crossing the Bar by Alfred, Lord Tennyson by Henry Chapin. I cannot tell you how many people from the audience and RPM raved about the Newman choir’s performance!
The final section of the program included five pieces sung by both choirs together. We had 40 (forty) singers accompanied by an amazing gospel band (bass guitar, lead guitar, drums, piano, and organ). We opened this section with Lift Every Voice and Sing, arranged by Kirk Franklin, which brought the entire audience to their feet to sing with us. Delbert conducted Great Day a cappella and it was glorious! The ballad Nia followed as directed by Becky, and the piano accompaniment was played brilliantly by Christian Black on piano. The penultimate work on the program was Allen Toussaint’s setting of Yes We Can Can, with Frances singing the solos, and extended solos by the band, and we had the whole meetinghouse dancing and moving to the groove – unprecedented at Newman! The final work on the program was Stand Up featuring Lauri Smalls as soloist, which tells the story of slaves escaping bondage to freedom. It was so inspirational! As the captivated audience gave a standing ovation, the musicians broke into an encore titled Thank You that engaged young and old. The entire audience then headed into Memorial Hall to the Birthday Bash which was prepared by our Racial Equity Team.
This concert exceeded all of my expectations, and it was so rewarding to pack the meetinghouse for it! I believe we had approx 175 people in the audience, and folks were absolutely enthralled. It was very participatory and I can guarantee that people’s lives were changed.
I am delighted to report that this concert was hugely successful financially. We were able to raise enough net profit to pay the $1,400 into last year’s (2025) music budget line item “Music Program Fundraising – Contra” which achieves our goal of paying $10,000 into our own music budget to offset the cost of section leaders. We also are able to pay our goal of $1,000 into our 2026 music budget line item “Music Program Fundraising – Contra.” This puts us in great shape to stay on budget.
Finally, I am grateful to so many people who helped make this concert possible. Members of Newman’s music committee, racial equity team, our dedicated staff, volunteers, and so many more who helped. Our combined efforts allowed us to invite the community into Newman in fellowship to honor Dr. King. It was truly one of the most amazing musical moments in my life!
Respectfully submitted,
Geoff