THE INCREDIBLE STORY OF THE FISK JUBILEE SINGERS

Harvey Brough director
The University of Southampton Voices

Emily Dankworth
Alec Dankworth

Melanie Marshall (West End regular and star of Jane Eyre)

Wills Morgan (star of Jerry Springer the Opera)

Michael Henry (performer, composer and arranger of the Flying Pickets)

Tori Freestone
Liam Dunachie
2 rising stars from the British jazz scene

Nic France (Loose Tubes, David Gilmore, Mose Allison)

The Year of Jubilee devised and written by Justin Butcher with all music written or arranged by Harvey Brough

The Fisk Jubilee singers were a choir of emancipated slaves who set out in the 1860s to raise money for their university in Nashville, Tennessee, which was the only American university to admit black students at that time. They astounded audiences across America and Europe with the plantation spirituals and ‘songs of sorrow’ that had never been heard before on a public stage. They came to London where they performed before Queen Victoria, Prime Minister Gladstone and the great and good of the land to universal acclaim, but they also came to Southampton on March 26th 1874, and performed at the Hartley Institute (forerunner of the University of Southampton).

An opportunity to hear many of the greatest spirituals – Go Down, Moses, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and many others, while paying tribute to the choir who brought them to the attention of the world.

Vox Holloway – Swing Low, Sweet Chariot from Harvey Brough on Vimeo.