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Roll over calendar dates for performance information.
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WPAS Education & Community
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Connections through the Arts Education Programs for All Ages
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Please Note: Auditions for the WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel Choir will be held in mid-September. More information about audition locations and dates will be posted shortly. |
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Washington Performing Arts Society's (WPAS) Men and Women of the Gospel choir, Stanley J. Thurston, Artistic Director. Since the early 1990's, WPAS Men and Women of the Gospel Choir has been performing annually at prestigious venues within the Washington Metropolitan area such as the Kennedy Center offering audiences the tradition and inspirational root of gospel music featuring works by local and national music composers in concert while sharing the stage with an array of artists such as Sweet Honey in the Rock, Ramsey Lewis, Beverly Crawford, Dottie Peoples, Dorinda Clark-Cole, Myrna Summers, Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and many other gospel greats. The 150+ voice choir has worked with an array of local choral and music directors such as Valeria Foster, the late Arphelius Paul Gatling III, Patrick Lundy, Linda Hall, Alece Morgan, Dr Diane L. White, Joyce Garrett, Evelyn Simpson-Curenton. In addition to their annual productions each year, the Choir has also been featured in various community events in recent years including guest appearances with: 2009 Helen Hayes Awards event at Warner Theater; US State Department Luncheon in January 2009, Wynton Marsalis and The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra at the Harman Center for the Arts (Washington DC), Sweet Honey in the Rock at Carnegie Hall, New York, NY as well as at Warner Theater in Washington DC; and The Ramsey Lewis Trio at the Music Centre at Strathmore.
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About the Artistic Director
Stanley J. Thurston, as Artistic Director of the Washington Performing Arts Society's Gospel Choirs who have received acclaim from music critics such as Washington Post Cecelia Porter,
as a "stellar performance" of the nearly 300-voice choir under his direction "...performed with one voice, with perfect ensemble, intonation and diction". Subsequent WPAS engagements this
season have featured Mr. Thurston as conductor with such well-known artists as Soprano, Kathleen Battle; Sweet Honey in the Rock; Canadian Brass; jazz legends Ramsey Lewis & Wynton
Marsalis, along with appearances on the NBC Today Show. He has appeared as conductor in concert venues including Carnegie Hall, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Concert Hall
and Millennium Stage, the U.S. Capitol, The Music Center at Strathmore, Carter Barron Amphitheater, DAR Constitution Hall, Arena Stage, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Washington National
Cathedral, and the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. Mr. Thurston is well known as a pianist, composer, and arranger. His orchestral arrangements have been performed by the symphony orchestras of
Baltimore, New Jersey, and the National Symphony Orchestra. A graduate of The American Academy of Conducting at Aspen, Mr. Thurston made his European opera conducting debut in Giuseppe
Verdi's La Traviata with Romania's Opera Constanta, returning in to conduct Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor the following season. He is the founding Music Director of
The Heritage Signature Chorale and currently serves as the Director of Music at Foundry United Methodist Church, Washington, DC.
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