Take 6 at Ethno Jazz Festival: the Grammy-winning vocal sextet combines pop, soul and jazz

Five years after their memorable Ethno Jazz Festival concert, the world's most famous vocal sextet and winners of 10 Grammys return to sing in Wrocław! The vocal supergroup will perform on 3 December in the Auditorium Hall of the Wrocław Congress Centre, ul. Wystawowa 1.

Their music has been described as “Christian pop-soul-jazz”. Yet drawing on the Christian tradition has not stopped the sextet conquering the charts, and songs from “Brothers” very quickly became dance-floor hits. Thanks to their outstanding voices and remarkable arrangements, Take 6 perform brilliantly without instruments. For a long time, they resisted adding instrumental support to their vocals. The breakthrough came with the 1996 album “Brothers”.

It began in the early 1980s, when Claude McKnight founded a male vocal quartet in Huntsville, Alabama. Mark Kibble soon joined, bringing the number to five; Mervyn Warren was still needed to make Take 6 truly six. Names and line-ups changed until their 1988 debut, “Take 6”, reached shops. It brought Platinum status and their first Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance with “Spread Love”.

Since then, part of the musical world has simply gone wild for these Black artists’ superb voices. The members have worked with almost everyone of importance in music. They can be heard on productions by Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder, as well as Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. They appeared on more than a dozen film soundtracks, including “Dick Tracy”, “Boyz N the Hood” and “Glengarry Glen Ross”. Their awards and honours could be shared among at least several bands.

The subsequent albums “So Much To Say” (1990), “He Is Christmas” (1991), “Join The Band” (1994), “Brothers” (1996), “So Cool” (1998), “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” (1999), “Beautiful World” (2002) and “Feels Good” (2006) brought a string of successes, earning the group 9 Grammy Awards and 8 Dove Awards. Today, they perform at leading jazz festivals and prestigious clubs around the world.

TAKE 6 are: – Alvin Chea (bass) – Cedric Dent (baritone) – Mark Kibble (first tenor) – Joey Kibble (second tenor) – Claude McKnight (first tenor) – David Thomas (second tenor).

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