Wherever and whenever I sing, if there is only one spiritual on a program, people will talk about two things afterward, and one of them will be the spiritual. What I bring to this is the best of my classical training - not all of it. I apply what is appropriate.

New York is a great place to be fed in the arts. The arts in general are a large part of my life. The city was my postgraduate course.

Wherever and whenever I sing, if there is only one spiritual on a program, people will talk about two things afterward, and one of them will be the spiritual. What I bring to this is the best of my classical training - not all of it. I apply what is appropriate.

Some of the music I listen to is pop. I sing it in the shower - and then for public consumption.

I think for more than half of my career I have refrained from talking to the media.

How many of the original songs survive intact from the slave cabins? Probably not many in their original form. Time has transformed them like light in a prism. What we hope to present is a version of those spirituals, and they speak not just to black Americans, but to people worldwide.

I can't imagine life without singing.