Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir includes: Pam Pettaway, Karen Melendez, Robin Giles, Randy Phillips, Susan Quintyne, Josh Carroll, Paige Strackman, Charles Allen, Alvin Slaughter, Cynthia Greene (vocals).
Additional personnel: Jonathan Woodby (Hammond b-3 organ); Oliver Wells, Kareem Riley (keyboards); Joey Vazquez (bass guitar); Michael Archibald (drums).
The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir is the sort of remarkable organization that often forms the basis for inspirational movies. The members are anonymous, untrained, and sincere individuals, members of a small church in inner-city New York--inspired, passionate voices who come together to create a rich, hallowed sound. The director, Carol Cymbala, is wife to the pastor and together they inherited a congregation numbering in the double digits in the early-1970s and built it into a thriving flock featuring a world-renowned choir.
The Brooklyn Tabernacle is at its finest on live recordings; THIS IS YOUR HOUSE is their seventh live offering, and with good reason, the live atmosphere captures the heart and soul which permeates every entreaty to God. There is an incredible and refreshing earnestness throughout the record. This heart-on-the-sleeve sentiment is best exemplified on a spoken track of testimony by member Danny Velasco, where he addresses his fellow members with an informal greeting and proceeds to talk about initially seeing the story of "some guy who died on a cross 2,000 years ago" as "fantasy" before his ultimate conversion. That kind of genuine spirit flows through the orchestral, incredibly produced songs. THIS IS YOUR HOUSE stands as a good sampling of why the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir have ascended to such a position of prominence.
