The Port Townsend Acoustic Blues Festival is excited to welcome Rev. Ann Jefferson to lead the Gospel Track for 2017!

Daily classes start on Monday July 31, 2017 and run through Friday August 4, 2017 from 3:30-5:30pm. Your tuition includes entry to the main stage performance on Saturday August 5, 2017.

African American gospel music has spread beyond the Black Church to become a part of festivals and choral programs in schools, churches, communities, and professional choruses throughout the world. As the gospel style has become increasingly popular singers, musicians and conductors with limited experience and training in the gospel style are seeking tools and resources that will allow them and their choruses to perform gospel music with stylistic authenticity and maintain the artistic integrity.

As a collective art form gospel music has always been able to bring people together from different backgrounds to create one musical family. As a music of joy and hope it has always been used to foster harmony, healing and mutual understanding. Therefore, this workshop will bring people together to celebrate diversity and artistic expression through the performance of Gospel music.

Rev. Ann Jefferson, a 36-year resident of the Bay Area, currently works as Director of Community Life and Spiritual Care at Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in Berkeley, CA. In that role, she is one of the Campus Pastors and a Co-Instructor in the Spiritual Formation for Leadership course.  Beginning her career at PSR as Worship Director and serving in that capacity (for a total of 10 years) as well as a Program Coordinator in Community and Continuing Education, Ann has been a part of this community for 16 years.  Beyond PSR, Ann serves as Associate Pastor of Worship & Liturgical Arts at City of Refuge UCC in Oakland, where she has also served as a Field Education Mentor for numerous seminarians.  She has also worked as a musician and music director of several congregations throughout the region.

Ann brings 30+ years’ experience and passion to her study and teaching of the history of African-American sacred music. A key planner of the African-American hymn festival for the Society’s conference held in Berkeley in 2008 and a recipient of a 2010 Heritage Keepers’ Award from the Friends of the Negro Spirituals, she has taught numerous seminars in this subject area.