Opera, jazz go gospel

When opera singer Kathleen Battle and jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut perform spirituals and Christmas music together Nov. 26 at UNC's Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill, you can thank the black church. In Battle's case, it's the African Methodist Episcopal Church of her childhood in Portsmouth, Ohio. For Chestnut, it's Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Baltimore, where his father played the piano and his mother directed the choir.

Early exposure to and training in spirituals and gospel music can open many doors. They helped Battle toward a scholarship at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where she earned bachelor's and master's degrees in music education. After teaching in urban schools, she auditioned for the Cincinnati Symphony, debuting with the orchestra at the 1972 Spoleto Festival in Italy.

Steve Shelokhonov, a biographer at the Internet Movie Database Web site, calls Battle "arguably the only lyric soprano with the ability to bridge the gap between the European bel canto opera and the African-American tradition of vocal improvisation." Battle has won five Grammy awards during her career.

Chestnut, who studied at Peabody Institute in Baltimore as a preteen and graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston with a degree in jazz composition and arranging, speaks about the importance of the church music experience in JazzTimes magazine's 2007-2008 Jazz Education Guide.

"In a good portion of the black church, creativity is key," he tells writer Jeff Tamarkin. "When you have creativity, you have spontaneous composition, hence improvisation."

Chestnut learned how to find the key when the choir and congregation started singing and there was no written music. He also learned how to find a groove. "Cyrus Plays Elvis" (Koch), his latest album, finds him performing songs associated with Elvis Presley, another connection with gospel music.