Last Friday night, Voices of Inspiration had its annual spring gospel concert. Although the night was filled with uplifting songs, the mood was bittersweet as the director of Voices of Inspiration TK Stillman sang his last and final song with the choir.
Stillman, 22, a corporate communications and public affairs major, will graduate this year and leave the directing to someone else. Stillman directed the choir for the past five years, starting in his freshman year.
“Directing Voices has allowed God to prepare me for my ministry beyond this campus,” he said.
Crystal McCullough, 20, a CCPA major, said Stillman will be missed.
“Everytime he comes to practice he is always prepared and ready to direct us in singing and through our spiritual lives,” she said.
At the end of the concert Whitney Patternson presented Stillman with a gift from the choir.
Patterson, 20, a CCPA major, said she doesn’t know what the choir will do without him.
“TK is the heart and soul of Voices; he made this group who we are today,” she said.
Stillman said he hopes to become a minister of music as well as have a group of his own one day.
Voices of Inspiration was chartered on the SMU campus in 1987. The group was created so that students could practice and perform spiritual music, engage in campus and community services, and strengthen their spiritual foundation. The new executive board for next year includes Avis Harden as president, Amen Amachigh as vice president, Shalisha Galloway as secretary, Ashlee Holmes as treasurer, and Richard H. Terrell as the group’s historian.
The concert also featured different gospel choirs and singers from around Dallas. Dynamic Praise and Perpetual Praise Gospel Choir from the University of Texas at Dallas and DeSoto High School student Jazzmeia Horne lifted the crowd with their songs. Ronald Julian, another solo gospel singer, had the crowd clapping along to his original song “Detours.”
Throughout the concert the crowd, which filled about two-thirds of the Hughes-Trigg Theatre, was on its feet, clapping and singing along.
