Video
Historical Narrative
Composed in 1988, The Angel Rolled the Stone Away (JP 102) reflects Betty Jackson King’s lifelong devotion to merging the spiritual tradition with concert-level choral artistry. The work’s dedication to Dr. Randall Johnson and the Kennedy-King College Community Chorus honors a distinguished Chicago educator, musician, and choral director whose leadership helped sustain and advance the city’s African-American sacred-music tradition.
Under Dr. Johnson’s direction, the Kennedy-King College Community Chorus became one of Chicago’s most respected collegiate-community ensembles, performing both traditional spirituals and contemporary compositions by Black composers. Johnson’s dual career as an academic dean and as Director of Music at Saint John Church-Baptist exemplified his dedication to education, faith, and musical excellence—values he shared with Betty Jackson King.
Their collaboration reached a memorable public moment on November 7, 1992, when Dr. Johnson and the Kennedy-King College Community Chorus appeared at Orchestra Hall, Chicago, in The Festival of Choirs: Music of African-American Composers, Series II. The event—organized as a rental of Orchestra Hall—featured choirs performing works by leading African-American composers and was documented in correspondence involving Moses Hogan, underscoring the concert’s artistic significance. Among the selections was Betty Jackson King’s Psalm 57, a performance that connected King’s spiritual compositions to Chicago’s broader professional choral scene. Though King passed away in 1994, this concert captured her enduring presence within her home city’s musical life and the esteem in which Dr. Johnson and his ensemble were held.
Through this dedication, The Angel Rolled the Stone Away preserves a rich Chicago lineage of composers, conductors, and choirs bound by faith and excellence. Dr. Randall Johnson’s leadership of the Kennedy-King College Community Chorus ensured that King’s sacred music—rooted in the Black spiritual and elevated through classical craftsmanship—continued to inspire both community and concert audiences well into the 1990s.
Musical Description
The Angel Rolled the Stone Away opens Happily in the bright key of A Major, its joyful energy immediately evoking the triumph of the Resurrection. Written for SATB voices with piano for rehearsal only, the arrangement begins in homorhythmic texture, allowing the full choir to proclaim the text together—“The angel rolled the stone away”—with rhythmic unity and vibrant clarity.
Betty Jackson King balances classical choral craftsmanship with the rhythmic vitality of the African American spiritual. The harmonies move with confident motion, supported by a grounded bass line and luminous upper voices. Syncopated accents and brief modulations bring the text to life, symbolizing the dramatic rolling away of the stone and the burst of light that follows. Marked mezzo-forte, the piece calls for warmth and expressive strength rather than volume, reflecting King’s preference for dignified joy over exuberance.