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Duke Arts Presents

John P. Kee & The New Life Community Choir

Friday, September 14, 2012 | 8:00 pm


A splendid shouter forged in the country-and-urban crucible of Durham County, Charlotte-based pastor John P. Kee ushered gospel music into the mainstream during the 1990s, earning lifetime honors from both the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and the Stellar Gospel Music Awards. At the top of his game, Pastor Kee comes home to shake the stained glass windows and church pews of the Hayti Heritage Center, leading his astounding New Life Community Choir.

A prodigious songwriter, singer, and pianist, Kee brings a streetwise background in funk and soul to his seasoned blend of traditional and contemporary gospel. The music bursts with strutting basses, rippling keyboards, celebratory horns, and, of course, glorious vocals. As Kee grapples with hard-won life lessons, his spine-rattling singing vies with more than a dozen other sanctified voices. Witness as “the Prince of Gospel” and his choir electrify Durham’s most hallowed space. John P. Kee & The New Life Community Choir is a co-presentation of Duke Performances and the Hayti Heritage Center.