Utica Jubilee Singers to entertain at Raymond Fall Pilgrimage

10/08/07 — The Hinds Community College Utica Jubilee Singers will perform for the Raymond Fall Pilgrimage Saturday, Oct. 13, 11 a.m., in historic St. Mark's Church in Raymond. The performance is included in both the morning and afternoon Pilgrimage tour ticket. The Jubilee Singers have participated in the Pilgrimage every year since it began nine years ago. For ticket information, please go to www.friendsofraymond.org. All funds benefit the preservation of Raymond's historic sites.

The Utica Jubilee Singers was formed in 1921 by Dr. William H. Holtzclaw, founder of Utica Normal and Industrial Institute (which later became Utica Junior College and is now the Utica Campus of Hinds Community College). The group traveled throughout the United States and Europe helping to raise funds to support the school. After several tours in Europe, a regular Sunday prime-time radio program on NBC's New York station WJZ and admittance to United Artists, the group was firmly established as an Ambassador of Good Will at home and abroad.

Disbanded in the early 1940s, the group was revived in 1972 when Dr. Bobby Cooper became music and choir director at Utica. Although no longer needed as a fund raising instrument for the college, the Utica Jubilee Singers continue into the millennium as a recruitment asset. The group is treasured in the HCC community, throughout America and across the sea for its mellow and spirited renditions of many musical styles, but especially of the historical plantation songs, which have been its hallmark for nearly 90 years. For 10 years from the mid-1970s, the Singers were part of Opera South, which at that time was the only black opera in the world.

Dr. Cooper, now chairman of the HCC Utica Campus humanities department, has led the singers on numerous concert tours throughout America and Europe for the past 35 years. A notable European tour was the 1999 American Celebration of Music in Italy, where they performed to appreciative audiences in Rome, Venice, Florence and Milan at the invitation of Music Celebration International.

His many awards include his 2005 induction into the Tougaloo College Hall of Fame; his 2004 Southern Region Faculty Member Award from the Association of Community College Trustees, and his 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award with an endowed scholarship in his name given by the Utica Campus Centennial committee. Also in 2003, he received peer recognition with the 2003 HCC Life Star Award and in 2000 he received the college's highest faculty honor, the 3-E (Emphasis on Excellence and Enrichment) Award.