Getting the Best From Boys Choir of Harlem

“Lift Every Voice” is the title of Walter Turnbull’s new book about his experiences as founder and director of the Boys Choir of Harlem. The subtitle is “Expecting the Most and Getting the Best From All of God’s Children.”

The second half of that subtitle is no small trick in Harlem, where 76% of teenagers drop out of high school. Nevertheless, Turnbull reports that a whopping 98% of his charges go on to college.

The answer is in teaching values. The only question is how to go about it.

“That is the hardest thing,” said Turnbull, 51, in a phone interview from New York, ahead of concerts today and Sunday at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. “We just keep working at it.

“We try to provide an entire environment that encourages discipline, hard work and self-respect. Everything in terms of their academic and artistic work is based on mutual respect and hard work. It’s nothing grandiose or big. We might say, for example, ‘How will you have a job, and maintain a job, without consistency?’

“We just try to get kids to understand the importance of simple things,” Turnbull said, “and how they grow into big things, and how those things can make the difference between their life being bearable or unbearable.”

The programs will open with Mozart’s “Vesperae solennes de confessore,” K. 339. In celebration of Black History Month, they will continue with more than a dozen spirituals, jazz tunes by Gershwin and Duke Ellington, songs of pride and hope such as “Liya Zula” and “Byede Mandela,” and contemporary works including “Power,” co-written by Turnbull.

The touring ensemble consists of 35 singers drawn from the full choir membership of 450. The non-touring concert choir numbers 200.

Turnbull’s book, released in November, tells of his own rise from an impoverished childhood in Greenville, Miss., to his experiences with the now-famous choir he founded in 1968.

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He earned his doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music, was a tenor soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic, and made his operatic debut with the Houston Grand Opera in Scott Joplin’s “Treemonisha.” Two years ago, as a result of his work with the choir, McCall’s magazine named him one of its “15 Greatest Men on Earth.”

The Boys Choir of Harlem has been featured on “60 Minutes,” the PBS special “Pavarotti in Central Park” and on the soundtracks to “Jungle Fever,” “Malcolm X” and “Glory,” for which it won a Grammy. The group’s first album of its own, “The Sound of Hope,” was released in 1994.

Turnbull believes the decision in 1987 to create a school for the boys, the Choir Academy of Harlem, marked a crucial turning point.

“The defining moment was when we realized we needed to do more for the children’s lives,” Turnbull recalled. “Were we really going to be able to have a school, or just a choir and only be concerned about singing and making music? We had to do more. We work with their families. That’s what we do. It’s more than a choir. Lives have been saved. . . .”

More than 400 students from fourth grade on up attend the academy; in June, the first 12th-grade class will graduate. In 1988, a Girls Choir of Harlem--established in 1979 but stalled because of shrinking space and funding--was reinstated.

“Our biggest challenge is that people see us on TV and in the press and they figure everything is OK,” Turnbull said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. It is difficult all of the time.

“You say ‘choir,’ and that’s all they think we are. People don’t know about the education. We don’t have an endowment--money to ensure long-term stability--and one angel could do it. There is a foundation and corporate support, but more than 40% of our income is from performances--movie scores we might sing, and concerts. Those are how we make money to keep our school going.”

Still, having enough money is not the most difficult aspect for Turnbull.

“I suppose the most difficult . . . is when I lose kids,” he said. “Of course you don’t win them all.”

But Turnbull never lets up. In fact, he conducted this interview from a hospital bed, where he was being treated for a gallbladder ailment.

“I’m always run down,” he said. “And this thing has me totally wiped out. But it’s a blessing. This is a much-needed rest, and it happened before we leave on tour.”

* The Boys Choir of Harlem performs classical and contemporary music, spirituals and jazz, today at Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 8 p.m. Also Sunday at 2 p.m. $20-$32. (800) 300-4345 or (310) 916-8500.