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March
18, 2002
Lincoln
University Hosts Musical Demonstration and Lecture
on March 20 by Noted Gospel Music Scholar Dr. Horace
C. Boyer
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LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA - Noted music scholar Dr. Horace
C. Boyer, professor emeritus of Music Theory and African-American
Music at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will
speak at Lincoln University on Wednesday, March 20 in
the Mary Dod Brown Memorial Chapel at 4 p.m. Sponsored
by the Amos Lecture Series Committee, this event is free
and open to the public. For further details, contact Lincoln
music professor Dr. Alvin E. Amos at 610-932-8300, ext.
3554.
Dr. Boyer's presentation will encompass musical demonstrations
of the various forms of gospel music from the spirituals
and "field hollers," to the hymns of traditional composers,
to the works of contemporary artists. The Lincoln University
Gospel Ensemble will accompany Dr. Boyer.
Dr. Amos, a member of the Amos Lecture Series Committee,
and Lincoln freshman Aaron Owens '05, are also scheduled
to perform. Dr. Amos plays clarinet. Owens, who plays
guitar, is the first recipient of the Alvin E. and Carol
B. Amos Scholarship Award in Music, which Dr. Amos and
his wife endowed in November 2000.
In his prolific career, Dr. Boyer has spent decades presenting
the sound and history of gospel music to audiences, students
and scholars alike and earning renown as both a scholar
and a performer. As part of the duo, the Boyer Brothers
(with his brother, retired Kansas State University education
professor, James), he has appeared with three of the greatest
gospel singers, Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward and James
Cleveland. During his 26-year tenure with the University
of Massachusetts, he traveled repeatedly to Europe as
part of the faculty jazz ensemble, Trade Winds. He also
directed the Voices of New Africa House Workshop Choir,
a 50-member ensemble comprised of singers from a variety
of colleges. From 1978 to 1999, Dr. Boyer directed the
University of Massachusetts' Vocal Jazz and African American
Music Ensemble. From 1986 to 1987, he directed 35 performances
of the internationally renowned Fisk Jubilee Singers of
Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn. In addition to making
solo appearances, he has also served as musical director
for the stage productions of three plays, "Purlie," "Do
Lord, Remember Me," and "Blues for Mr. Charlie."
Dr. Boyer is the author of "How Sweet the Sound - the
Golden Age of Gospel" (Elliott & Clark Publishing, Montgomery,
Ala., 1995). His expertise has been sought for several
documentaries including the British Broadcasting Company's
"The Story of Gospel" and two Public Broadcasting Company
productions, "Mahalia Jackson: The Power and The Glory"
and "Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Fisk
Jubilee Singers." The publishers of the "New Grove Dictionary
of American Music" recruited him to write 45 biographical
summaries as well as act as a gospel music advisor. He
has edited an African-American hymnal for the Episcopal
Church and arranged two hymns for the Catholic Church's
African-American hymnal. He is the author of 40 scholarly
articles, which have appeared in the Music Educators Journal,
the Black Perspective in Music Journal and the Black Music
Research Journal.
Dr. Boyer is a recipient of a Ford Foundation Fellowship,
which supported him as he earned his doctorate in music
theory from the University of Rochester's Eastman School
of Music in Rochester, N.Y. From 1985 to 1987, he was
the curator of musical instruments at the Smithsonian
Institutions' National Museum of American History. In
1988, he was the University of Michigan's Cesar Chavez-Rosa
Parks-Martin Luther King Professor. In 1990, the University
of Massachusetts named him a Chancellor's University Lecturer
and gave him the Chancellor's Medallion. He has also been
a senior research scholar and visiting professor at Brooklyn
College (1992) and held professorship residencies at Ithaca
College (1993) and the University of Buffalo (1994). Upon
retiring from the University of Massachusetts in 1999,
the university's Department of Music and Dance created
the Horace Clarence Boyer Gospel Music Fund.
The Amos Scholar's Annual Lecture Series was founded
by descendents of Reverend Thomas Hunter Amos, founder
and first president of Harbison College in Abbeville,
S.C. His father, Thomas Henry Amos, was a member of Lincoln
University's first graduating class in 1859; Thomas Henry
Amos died as a missionary in Liberia, Africa. According
to historical information provided by the Amos Lecture
Series Committee, Rev. Thomas Hunter Amos' descendents
established the lecture series to "stimulate the minds
of the Lincoln family in pursuit of a liberal arts education,
with emphasis on the theological, philosophical, classical,
historical and scientific disciplines."
Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is a premier, Historically
Black University that combines the best elements of a
liberal arts and sciences-based undergraduate core curriculum
and selected graduate programs to meet the needs of students
living in a highly technological and global society.
Lincoln University is ranked first in Pennsylvania and
second in the nation in graduating African Americans with
baccalaureate degrees in the physical sciences. Lincoln
is also the only university in the Commonwealth and one
of but 20 universities nationwide where 40 percent or
more of its physics graduates are women
