SUNY Plattsburgh Gospel Choir Celebrates with 'Soulful Christmas 2012'

November 19, 2012

Champlain Valley Voices will join SUNY Plattsburgh’s Gospel Choir to kick off the holiday season with the seventh annual Soulful Christmas Concert in Hawkins Hall’s E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium, Sunday, Dec. 2, at 4 p.m.

Champlain Valley Voices and the SUNY Plattsburgh Choral Union, directed by Dr. Karen Becker, will perform both with the Gospel Choir and alone. The Gospel Choir’s Step Team, Praise Team and Praise Dancers will also perform. Charlie Stone, a WIRY Radio disc jockey, will emcee the show.

The concert will feature selected pieces from “Too Hot to Handel,” a jazzy and soulful adaptation of Handel’s “Messiah” and an arrangement of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” as well as other Christmas choral works.

“This is the most Christmas-driven concert that we have done,” said Dr. Dexter Criss, associate professor of chemistry and the director of the Gospel Choir. “All the songs, except for one, are Christmas songs.”

Tickets for students are $5 in advance or $8 at the door; general admission is $12 in advance or $15 at the door. Children 5 or younger are free. Tickets are available at the Angell College Center information desk; Advance Music, 75 Maple St., Burlington; the Great Adirondack Soup Company, 24 Oak St., Plattsburgh; and the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts, 23 Brinkerhoff St., Plattsburgh.

Proceeds from the concert will support the Gospel Choir’s singing tour of Saint Martin, an island in the Caribbean, this spring.

For more information, call 518-564-2704, email [email protected].