Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

Renowned musician Noel Dexter may be forgiven for thinking that his church has planned a special birthday present for him this year. December 21, the day he turns 70, is the day the church choir, Voice, will be presenting its 10th anniversary concert.

While no one at The Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living is saying that the concert was consciously planned as a gift to Dexter - the church's musical director for the 27 years of its existence - the statement, "there are no coincidences", is a maxim for many members.

Dexter is one of the church's two regular voice trainers responsible for raising individual singers and the choir as a whole to their present acclaimed performance level. The other is the choir's director/conductor Professor Maria Teresa Guerra Valdez, a Cuban professor of music who has been working with the choir since January 1999.

Interviewed by The Sunday Gleaner, two choir members - Rev John Scott (baritone), a co-pastor of the church (with founding minister Dr Elma Lumsden) and Rev Dr Sonia Davidson (soprano), a staff minister and a physician - said that rehearsals indicate that the upcoming performance will be one of the choir's best.

Act of worship

"Performing in the choir," Scott noted, "is an act of worship, the effects of which carry over long after the last amen."

Audiences at next Sunday's concert could be attending an act of worship, too. The programme lends itself to that feeling. It will be a mix of Christmas carols (Jamaican and traditional), hymns and other church music - selections from Handel's Messiah, for example - and classical music.

This year's special guests will probably bring even greater variety to the programme. They are the internationally revered jazz singer Myrna Hague and her husband, Sonny Bradshaw, School of Music lecturer, performer and composer, Michael Sean Harris, and member of the world-famous reggae group Chalice, guitarist-composer-singer Steve Golding.

From church documents The Sunday Gleaner learned that 10 years ago, at Davidson's invitation, Guerra Valdez took over a group of enthusiastic, but largely untrained, music lovers and moved them from simply singing in unison to singing in harmony. Soon Voice was officially formed and the choir progressed from singing at Sunday services to giving annual Christmas and Easter concerts. Voice has also performed at Dr Winston Davidson's 'Wings of Song' concerts at The Little Theatre.

Guerra Valdez was born in Havana, Cuba, where she studied voice, choral conducting and music education, beginning serious studies in 1952 and earning a degree in music education in 1992, as well as several diplomas.

A specialist in directing children's, teenagers' and adult choirs of different types (male, female and mixed), she was a conductor of several youth choirs, the largest of which was 300-strong. In Jamaica she has directed a number of youth choirs - at Immaculate Conception High School and the Portmore Gospel Academy, for example - and, as she did in Cuba, won gold awards in various competitions.

She teaches both music and Spanish, and regards the Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living choir as a part of her "spiritual family".

Noel Dexter, famous for his leadership of the University Singers, which has brought the group a number of awards - the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence, the Prime Minister's Award, a Gold Musgrave Medal and Festival Gold - is himself an award winner. He received the Order of Distinction and a Silver Musgrave medal for his outstanding and sustained contribution to music in Jamaica.

Before working with the University Singers, Dexter formed a youth choir, The Kingston Singers, in 1962, while teaching at Ardenne Ardenne High. They went on to win several first prizes and medals, but Dexter still recalls the first public performance.

Response from audience

"I felt so excited at the level of the performance and the response of the audience," he reminisced. With the Ardenne choir he went to CARIFESTA in Cuba and toured in The Bahamas and parts of the United States. Later, he toured even more extensively with the University Singers.

He is the holder of the Licentiate of Trinity College London, and several certificates from his studies at the Royal College of Music (in summer classes), and in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Shenandoah University, Virginia, in choir conducting, training children's choirs, training boys choirs, gospel singing and about a dozen other courses.

A composer of church music and music for Little Theatre Movement pantomimes, he has had his music and songs published in Jamaica Journal (I Sing of the Island I Love), in publications by the World Council of Churches, in Let the People Sing, a collection published by Augsberg Press in Minneapolis, and in a Caribbean Conference song book, Sing a New Song. With Godfrey Taylor, he produced Mango Time (Ian Randle Publications), a collection of Jamaican folk songs, and with the University Singers he has released two CDs, See It Ya and Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Great soloist

Davidson, who is now a soloist with Voice because of the training she got from Dexter, states: "He's a Pygmalion (referring to the Greek sculptor who brought his statue to life). I adore the man. He's determined to lift you to ever higher levels. He doesn't believe there's a limit to your potential. And his classes are fun."

One of Dexter's birthday activities will be attending the Voice concert, which begins at 6 p.m. at the Temple of Light Centre for Spiritual Living.