BRATTLEBORO-The Center for Solace, formerly Brattleboro Area Hospice, will host a concert featuring Suzanne Buell in the Gospel Connection, a six-member ensemble, on Sunday, Nov. 15, at the Latchis Theatre.
The event, billed by concert organizers as a “high-energy, joyful, soul-stirring celebration of history and harmony,” is an opportunity to contribute to the work of the Center for Solace.
Led by Harvard, Massachusetts-based vocalist Suzanne Buell, the Gospel Connection ensemble features Buell on lead vocals; David Hunte on keyboards and vocals; Phil Antoniades on drums and percussion; Mike Payette on bass and vocals; Chris Leadbetter on guitar, mandolin, and vocals; and Vicki Zelski on vocals.
Together, they plan to deliver a concert described as “a powerful historical and musical narrative” through spirituals and gospel classics that explore “roots gospel and its echoes in contemporary pop, soul, and Americana” music, as well as in the music that became anthems for the turbulent Civil Rights Movement.
The tunes will include the traditional “Sit Down Servant” and “Hold On”; “When I Go Away” by Levon Helm; “Gone at Last” by Paul Simon; “Yes We Can Can” by Allen Toussaint; “How I Got Over” by Aretha Franklin; “You Raise Me Up” by Rolf Løvland and Brendan Graham; “A Change Is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke; and “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ’Round,” an oft-heard Civil Rights anthem based on the spiritual “Don’t You Let Nobody Turn You Round.”
“All these songs are really important — perhaps now more than ever, considering what our communities and country are navigating today,” Buell says.
The Gospel Connection first started to take root a dozen years ago, when Buell was a faculty member at Indian Hill Music (now Groton Hill Music Center).
In one concert, she was one of four singers, each showcasing a set of four songs related to a certain time frame of history. “Because it’s my love,” she says, Buell chose gospel songs from the 19th century to the present day.
“The reception was incredible,” she recalls.
The success of that concert led to Buell’s creating a full concert of gospel music with history and background woven through. From there, the demand grew.
Of the name “Gospel Connection,” Buell says “it shows that it’s not just gospel music we’re working on: It’s the connections of gospel music to many different places and people and things.”
The Gospel Connection “has grown to be, in its most recent evolution, a mix of traditional spirituals, traditional gospel, contemporary gospel, a cappella,” Buell says.
The group soon recognized “plenty of modern-day artists that may not be doing gospel music, but [who have] an obvious connection to gospel roots [...] with the work they’ve done and written,” she says.
“We started exploring that route, and that’s kind of where we are now,” Buell adds. “We have all those traditional things that we do while, I would say, one-third of our repertoire includes modern-day artists.”
Take Paul Simon, for example, Buell says: “His ‘Gone at Last,’ is a spiritual, it’s a gospel, it tears you up.”
The goal, she explains, is “to bring the music that people don’t realize is part of their present tense” and “not to be at all affiliated with any one religion.”
Rather, she says, “it’s to be spiritual and focused on the spirituality of each song. And each one is different from the next.”
Take the message of “Yes We Can Can”: “Now’s the time for all good men / To get together with one another / We got to iron out our problems / And iron out our quarrels / And try to live as brothers.”
“That’s not at all spiritual — or religious — but then you hear the words, you hear what they’re talking about,” Buell says.
“We all need something to hold on to, to make sure that we can get through this whole time right now without going nuts,” she adds.
The Gospel Connection has played venues primarily in the Metrowest area of Massachusetts such as the Littleton Lyceum Series, Sanctuary in Maynard, Groton Hill Music Center Concerts, Groton’s Juneteenth celebration, Chelmsford Center for the Arts, and the Warner Free Lecture series of the Harvard (Massachusetts) Public Library.
Integrating the creation of music
The Gospel Connection’s arrangements develop, Buell explains, from available recordings and are “usually a collaborative effort [among] all members of the project, from harmony voicing to final arranging. I do a lot of research to find the best possible recording/arrangement that fits our style, and we put our own spin on them.”
Buell grew up in a family that sang songs her parents knew, “like Elvis songs and songs from the ’60s.”
“[We would] do harmonies and all that,” she says.
She attended the Boston Conservatory at Berklee after growing up in the mountains near Woodstock, New York, “where there was pretty much nothing. A beautiful place to enjoy, but I knew I had to go.”
When she finished her first year, her musician brother ended up meeting and introducing her to Ed Townsend, who, she explains, “was at that point riding high on his most famous song that he wrote for Marvin Gaye, ‘Let’s Get It On.’”
Townshend’s influences led to opportunities that prompted Buell to “put the conservatory on the back burner.”
“I went to New York; I went to L.A. I worked with amazing people in L.A. like [jazz keyboardist and composer] Joe Sample. I was 18 years old and I was starstruck, but I also knew I had a job. So I was taking it as seriously as I could,” she recalls.
“They did sign me to Stax Records,” which was intent, she explains, “on putting white people and black people together in the same creative space.”
“They were absolutely tearing all those [barriers] down,” Buell continues.
But Stax was on its last legs, and the label became insolvent in 1975.
So much of what I recorded never made it out of the building, Buell says.
Regardless, she says she was “so grateful and so blessed to be there for a very short time.”
“What didn’t get lost was the fact that I’d been in a very special time in a very special place. And learned a whole lot of things,” Buell says.
Could performance by white musicians of music that comes out of the Black experience seem disingenuous or be cultural appropriation?
“No,” Buell says. “The music stands alone on its own credits.”
“I’d been singing spirituals and gospel music in my choir at school,” she observes. “So it was never unfamiliar territory for me. Then being on stage with many African American musicians, I felt like those lines were already blurred for me. I didn’t have that ‘you’re-white-so-you-must-sing-this-music/you’re-Black-so-you-must-sing-this-music’ [perspective]. That didn’t really exist in my life, and it never has.”
“The thing that I want to make sure people understand is that spiritual, gospel — all those forms of music — they really don’t have a color,” Buell says.
“The fact that some of those songs were written by African Americans lends itself, especially in the spirituals and in slave times, to a lot of reasons why Black people had to sing, had to make these songs, had to share these songs, and that, of course, is the roots,” she continues.
“But that it can be shared without being African American is to me just a no brainer,” Buell says.
Largest fundraiser
The concert will be Center for Solace’s largest fundraiser of the year, with proceeds supporting the organization’s mission: to offer free services and support “for serious illness, hospice, and grief, while engaging the community in vital conversations about mortality and life.”
The Center for Solace operates without federal or state funding, relying completely on community donations, sponsorships, special events, and proceeds from its thrift store, Experienced Goods, on Flat Street in Brattleboro.
The concert takes place on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 4 p.m. at the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St. in Brattleboro. Tickets are offered on a sliding scale from $35 to $150 “to ensure community accessibility while maximizing fundraising impact,” according to the concert’s organizers.
For more information, to purchase tickets, or become a sponsor, visit CenterforSolace.org/fundraiser.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.