Led by Director Gwen Moten and Music Director Dr. B. Dexter Allgood, the Count Basie Center Gospel Choir will present songs and stories of inspiration. With the goal of spreading awareness of world issues, the choir will be joined by guests of the community to spread messages, stories, and songs that inspire peace, healing, and unity. Joining the choir this evening will be accomplished Broadway performer and four-time GRAMMY nominee Chapman Roberts.
Chapman Roberts debuted in the ground breaking original Broadway cast of Hair in 1968, sharing the stage with Melba Moore, Diane Keaton and Ben Vereen. His subsequent stage appearances included featured roles on- and Off-Broadway in Salvation, (in English in the U.S., and in Dutch in the Netherlands) Love Me, Love My Children, Hello Dolly (alongside Pearl Bailey and Cab Calloway), and Jesus Christ Superstar. Roberts was the first African American to play the leading role of El Gallo in The Fantasticks, the world’s longest running musical. Roberts has recorded with jazz greats Horace Silver, Weather Report, and Blues Legend B.B. King, while his critically acclaimed vocal arrangements can be heard on eight original Broadway and West End cast albums of shows, which have garnered over 30 TONY nominations and 3 OLIVIER Awards.
Says Roberts, “Gwen Moten’s uniquely innovative concept of a musical collaboration between The Count Basie Gospel Choir and the Broadway and international entertainment communities in presenting the Concert for World Peace is artistically evocative and has limitless possibilities.”
Marel Hidalgo, a Count Basie Center conservatory student and recent recipient of the organization’s Pat DiNizio Musical Performance Scholarship, opens the show.
The Count Basie Center Gospel Choir is headed by Music Director Moten and assistant music director Dr. B Dexter Allgood, designed as a community initiative open to interested performers in New Jersey and surrounding areas. Moten, whose resume includes international presentations and appointments in Newark, the United Nations, the White House and elsewhere, believes the Basie Center Gospel Choir will be an engaging cultural and artistic offering, designed to develop a holistic and cultural ecology throughout the Basie Center community and beyond.
