By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times
After a dazzling performance in front of a national audience and an invitation to the next round on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent”, the Birmingham Youth & Young Adult Fellowship Choir returned home for a 10th anniversary celebration back-to-school benefit concert on Sunday in front of a packed crowd at 16th Street Baptist Church.
The group garnered national attention when they won the Golden Buzzer on AGT and will return for the next round of NBC’s talent show in September.
Sunday’s concert in the Magic City lasted nearly 2 hours and included several solos which drew standing ovations from the packed sanctuary.
“Ten years ago, we never thought we would see the day where we would be here,” Ahkeem Lee, the group’s founder and director, said Sunday at the church. “It’s been a tough 10 years, but it has also been a great decade of praise, of dedication, of love, of faithfulness.”
On AGT, the group performed a rendition of “Joyful, Joyful Lord We Adore Thee” infused with elements of hip-hop. The performance received tremendous applause from the audience and all of the judges gave a standing ovation. Simon Cowell, one of the show’s most recognized judges, pressed the Golden Buzzer which allows an act to go straight to the live show without the typical three votes to advance.
Lee, a graduate of Ramsay High School in Birmingham, said the group was started in 2015 as a way to give back to the community, but it continued to grow after youth kept requesting to join. He told Cowell that the youth choir decided to audition for the show this year to demonstrate that Birmingham has talented individuals despite often being “last on the list when you think about cities in America.”
The group, filled with many Birmingham City Schools students, appeared at City Hall on Tuesday and afterwards Mayor Randall Woodfin posted on social media: “You represented the Magic City so well on the national stage,” he wrote. “There’s nothing like homegrown talent!”
To learn more about the choir and donate, visit here
