Joyful Noise

The Posmontier Brothers group played yesterday as Jazz Vespers marked its fifth anniversary of continuous monthly services at Old Pine Street Church at 4th and Pine streets. The combination of jazz and worship has drawn warm responses from both musicians who appreciate a focused audience and worshipers who enjoy an alternative setting for praise. The program came to Philadelphia in response to Old Pine's search for a community outreach program.

Celebrating 77 years of gospel music is a blessedly auspicious occasion. But Saturday night's tribute to/concert with the Dixie Hummingbirds at World Cafe Live was near sacred. Last man standing Ira Tucker is as godly as he is dramatic. Showiness is what made the Hummingbirds: flashy stage gear and manic presentation in league with incendiary preaching techniques, theatrical "ring shouts," and sensualist dynamics that baritone Tucker made signature. So why wouldn't this tribute be filled with variety-show participants: Roberto Rodriguez and his swishy "dance to God"; Dr. Tommy Davis and his psychological discourse; Bill Jolly and his weirdly maudlin synthesizer lines dedicated to deceased Hummingbirds.

As recently as a generation ago, most kids who had the inclination and ability could depend on a shot at vocal or instrumental music training in the public schools. True, it wasn't for everybody, but it wasn't just for budding concert pianists either. And although most folks put aside their tubas, flutes and choir robes after graduation, the benefits of early exposure to music never fade. Long months of practice for a concert teach discipline and self-motivation. The process also boosts self-esteem - and can enhance academic performance.

Here's a rare thing: a family show that everybody in the family might actually enjoy and not have to be a good sport about. Here's another rare thing: a holiday show without the cute and cloying. No dancing elves, no singing animals, no moral lesson, just (just?) energy, talent, testosterone, and lots and lots of noise: bashing, crashing, clapping, tapping, snapping, drumming, thrumming, clanging and banging. Nobody says a word. It's all percussion. It's terrific. There are eight performers in this show at the Merriam Theater - six guys, two girls.

There will indeed be a joyful noise at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church on Sunday afternoon. It will be the world premiere of "A Joyful Noise," a suite of sacred music composed by Trudy Pitts, well-known in this area for her skill on the piano and organ, but less known as a composer, arranger and educator. Pitts' new work - being presented by the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz & Performing Arts - is steeped in the African American classical music tradition. The influences include spiritual, gospel, blues and, of course, jazz.

Jazz hasn't always been welcome in black churches. But Trudy Pitts' sacred jazz suite, A Joyful Noise, bridged that gap in a performance Sunday that honored both traditions. There was plenty to nitpick in the 75-minute performance in Society Hill's historic Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church. At times during the work - commissioned by a grant from the Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest Commissioning Program, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund - Pitts' electric piano sounded schmaltzy.

Come New Year's Eve - this most heralded New Year's Eve - an Episcopal church in Burlington County will sound its steeple bell 2,000 times. Down the road, Zen priests will conduct a seven-hour prayer session. Southern Baptists will join hands and encircle the Convention Center in prayer. Baptist, evangelical and Pentecostal Christians will flock to neighborhood churches for sermons and soul-searching, a year-end tradition known as Watch Night. A Roman Catholic convent in Chestnut Hill will begin a 72-hour peace vigil with a nonstop program of films, songs, drumming, dances and shared worship.

As divine inspirations go, Marie Green's had its problems. The electronic organ at the Reformed Church of Willow Grove, where Green sings in the choir, was shot. A new instrument was desperately needed. But Green did not want another electronic organ. She envisioned singing hymns and anthems amid the grand, dramatic sound of a pipe organ. Although the church could not afford a pipe organ, Green kept dreaming. And, six years later, the church has one. But it did not get it through some mysterious benefactor.

For most people, success would be enough. But though success is coming their way, the Rev. Ernest Davis Jr. and the members of the Wilmington-Chester Mass Choir have a different goal in mind. They are intent on salvation. Member Craig Butler exhorted the choir to reaffirm its goal in a backstage warm-up room just minutes before a performance Nov. 4 at Chester High School. "I think that this is the time we need to worship the Lord. Tonight, I know somebody out there will be saved," Butler told the choir members, as they prepared to go on stage.

WASHINGTON – It is hard to walk into the Phillies' clubhouse at Nationals Park without thinking of Harry Kalas. It is where most of the Phillies' traveling party got the news in April of 2009 that the club's beloved broadcaster had collapsed in the press box before a game, and it was from behind its closed doors that club president David Montgomery later emerged to tell reporters, "We lost our voice today. " This is not that, obviously. It is brought up not as a comparison, but instead as part sign of affection and part milepost on a continuum.

Weeks    Per    Rank/Title/Studio Last Week   Total    Out   Location    1. Underworld: Awakening (Sony) $25.3 mil.   $25.3 mil.   1   $8,222    2. Red Tails (Fox) 18.8 mil.   18.8 mil.   1   7,477    3. Contraband (Universal) 12.0 mil.   45.9 mil.   2   4,195    4. Extremely Loud (Warner Bros.) 10.0 mil.   10.7 mil.   5   4,083    5. Beauty & the Beast (Disney)

The Mark Wahlberg thriller Contraband stole the top of the weekend box office, smuggling away $24.1 million, say preliminary studio stats. It just pipped the 3-D version of Beauty and the Beast ($18.5 million). The rest of the top 10: (3) Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , $11.5 million; (4) Joyful Noise , $11.3 million; (5) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows , $8.4 million; (6) The Devil Inside , $7.9 million; (7) The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo , $6.8 million; (8)

OYFUL NOISE," sort of a "Glee!"-meets-gospel-music choral-competition musical, makes a pleasant-enough racket. A cheerful, not-quite-off-color crowd-pleaser that rarely breaks formula, it's the big-screen equivalent of a sloppy smooch from your overaffectionate aunt over the holidays. You grimace. You stand there and take it. And you don't let anybody see you grin afterward. Writer-director Todd Graff, who specializes in this sort of cheerful, campy musical ("Bandslam," "Camp")

NEW YORK - It's easy to roll your eyes at Joyful Noise, a broad-stroke dramedy about a small-town gospel choir struggling for greatness. Easy, that is, until the song "Man in the Mirror" kicks in. It's only a few minutes into the movie, as the choir at Divinity Church in impoverished Pacashau, Ga., is still reeling from the death of its longtime director (a briefly glimpsed Kris Kristofferson). The appointment of his longtime second-in-command, a mother of two played by Queen Latifah, over his widow (Dolly Parton)

In a season filled with new and original holiday shows from the region's professional theaters, you'll find some with a more traditional sugarcoating than Delaware Theatre Company's A Cappella Humana , but I doubt you'll find anything more inventive. This retelling of the nativity in modern terms, with three Magi guided by a star only after their GPS conks out, links the story through the ages and is especially effective in Kevin Ramsey's staging of a cast with wide-ranging singing voices and a smooth upper register when they sing as one. Ramsey, whose work is a staple at Delaware Theatre Company, created A Cappella Humana and, along with his niece, Pearl Ramsey, wrote the book for the show.

As music neared our modernity, it lost much of the earthy joy in the sounds of Christmas. Holiday music pulled on the robes of solemnity, or it bathed in nostalgia and sentiments gone threadbare. All that served to magnify Piffaro's celebration of Advent and Hanukkah, which portrayed the early-music ensemble's turf, the 17th century, as a time to celebrate the winter holidays with unabashed joy and dash. In weekend concerts in Philadelphia and, Sunday, in Wilmington, the ensemble, with soprano Julianne Baird, showered the season with boldly imagined performances that could only have been an accurate translation of the solstice mood 400 years ago. Texts drawn from psalms must have invited lusty dancing, and sacred texts, as sung by the soprano, drew images of almost boisterous celebration.

EVERY year at this time, instead of endlessly shopping, I count my blessings of the last 12 months and eagerly anticipate the ones to come in the new year. But while these meditations on appreciation may work for me, they're of less consolation to my children, who yearn, in their youthful way, to receive the same material rewards - meaning gifts - that their friends get. Despite the fact that my children consider it almost sacrilegious that we refuse to spend shameless amounts of money on Christmas, we don't budge from our position that we don't celebrate the holiday.

When the Anointed Voices stepped to the front of Ford Memorial Temple in North Philadelphia Sunday night, the floor shook as audience members began stomping their feet in anticipation. The 30-strong choir began to sing, clap, dance in place, and soon the entire congregation followed suit, shouting along, taking to the aisles and losing themselves in song. "We strive to do everything we do with a spirit of excellence," said Bishop Andrew J. Ford 2d, who noted half of each of his church's services were sung.