A Joyful Noise! A Christmas Jazz Vespers Service

BETHEL AME CHURCH will host its first Jazz Vespers service entitled

A

Joyful Noise, to celebrate the Christmas holidays on Saturday, December

21, 2013.  The Service was originally
scheduled for December 14, but was cancelled due to the snow.  The service will be a merging of traditions; a
blend of readings and poems for the Christmas season, peppered with the unique
musical language of jazz. 

The critically acclaimed, Warren
Oree and the Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble will be the featured performers. 

Warren Oree started the Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble in 1979 and has been

touring the world and performing with the group at jazz festivals in Europe,

the Caribbean and South America ever since. He has recorded and produced nine
(9) albums, of mostly all original compositions. He has also recorded with
Hamiett Bluiette, Khan Jamal, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Gerald Veasley, Elliott Levin
and other notable jazz artists.

In 2003, Warren Oree co-founded LifeLine Music Coalition, Inc.; a

non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and promoting jazz and the arts
in Philadelphia and is best known as the music producer for the West Oak Lane Jazz & Arts Festival. 

Oree has also composed soundtracks for several films and documentaries including “Touching Base”. In 2009 Warren wrote a jazz opera, "Never Back Down", which had its world debut in Philadelphia. In addition, Warren has been commissioned by the Philadelphia Museum of Art to compose music for several of their paintings and exhibits, the most recent being the Beaufort Delaney tour in 2007.

The Jazz Vespers service is sponsored by the 2014 Women’s Day Committee

of Bethel and Assemblyman Troy Singleton. 
A part of the proceeds will go to the Bethel Food Pantry ministry, whose
mission is to provide food to hungry people while striving to end hunger
in our community. Women’s Day Committee Chairperson, Gwen Ricks-Spencer hopes
that this event is just the first of many for Bethel.  “Warren Oree and the Arpeggio Jazz Ensemble

are a well-known and well respected jazz ensemble and we are so happy to

welcome them for our first Jazz Vespers service.  Jazz, as a musical tradition, conveys the
hopes, dreams, joys, frustrations and pain of the human experience-all
articulated by a musical vocabulary that transcends the limits of the written
or spoken word.  I think our
guests are in for a treat.”