A City and Its Sunday Brunch Taste for Music

  The Georgia Mass Choir's "Tell It."

“Diversity” or “multiculturalism” is a concept with which many communities in the global village continue to struggle but in Savannah, Georgia, it is one that finds frequent expression in the city’s wide variety of musical outlets, whether the preferred groove is country, old school R&B, jazz, Latin hip hop, Bollywood disco, or classic American rock and roll. The scheduled music of choice for July 26 at the Telfair Museum Jepson Center for the Arts is gospel as performed by the Mount Zion Baptist Church “Voices of Praise” Choir during the museum’s monthly Jepson Gospel Brunch.

Since its beginning in 2008, the Jepson Gospel Brunch has been known at times to draw crowds as large as those for the openings of major exhibits. “When the Jepson Center was built, especially the atrium, it was designed to be used as a community space,” said Kristin Boyle, director or marketing and public relations for the museum.

While few at the time may have imagined this particular community space would accommodate back to back buffet tables loaded with aromatic southern cuisine while Sunday church-goers took a break from their usual routine, the brunch has become a celebrated musical entertainment and spiritual fixture. Describing one of the previous brunches, Boylston noted that approximately 200 people filled the large open space of the atrium. “We had a fifty-person choir and pretty much the whole audience was standing up, clapping and singing, and everyone left in a much better mood, so that’s a program we do once a month, reaching out to local churches and inviting their choirs to come perform. And we open it to our community. We have tourists coming to the performances and also the congregations of the churches.”

The Temple of Glory Anointed Mass Choir will perform during the Gospel Brunch August 23, and the Savannah Sankofa Male Chorale will perform the following month September 27.

To add balance to the musical equation, the museum also sponsored during the fist half of 2009 a regular program of popular music known as Jepson Live. “We [were] focusing on local music but also kind of mixing it up with a little bit of regional music as well: dance from Atlanta and Charleston and Jacksonville. But that also supports local musicians. And then so far as the music festival goes, we’ve been partnering with them for the past couple of years and just using our venues [to host performances]. Over across the square at the Telfair Academy we have the Sensations performances that they’re doing, and which are the classical music, and the rotunda is the appropriate space for that kind of music.”

The cost to attend the Jepson Gospel Brunch is $15 with “brunch available for $20.” Children under the age of six are admitted free and children six to twelve at half price. For more information on music at Jepson Center and other museum events, telephone (912) 790-8800.

By Aberjhani