Buryl Red

BURYL RED (1936 - 01 Apr 2013) American composer, arranger and music leader at Manhattan Baptist Church in New York, New York and for a number of Christian releases on Word and Broadman Records. He was the founding musical director and conductor for The Centurymen. His production company is BR Productions. A resident of New York City, Buryl Red was born in Little Rock, Arkansas where he took up piano at the age of three, later playing in his parents’ church. Heavily influenced by the Black Gospel music he was exposed to in his hometown, he began improvising on the hymns he played in church. A graduate of Baylor University and Yale Graduate Music School, in the early 1960’s he served as the music minister of Manhattan Baptist Church--the first Southern Baptist church in New York City. A composer, arranger, and hymn writer, Red was the founding musical director and conductor of “The CenturyMen,” a choir composed of Baptist church music directors from around the world. Founded in 1969, the group performed internationally. They were nominated for a Grammy in 2000 for their recording “Beautiful Star—A Celebration of Christmas.” Red was also the composer of the landmark choral work “Celebrate Life!” which he created with Ragan Courtney and released in 1972. One of the songs from that work, “In Remembrance,” became a standard and was included in the African-American Heritage Hymnal in 2001 and in the Baptist Hymnal in 2008. In 1974 he released his classic recording and accompanying hymn booklet “The Old Songs,” which brought modern, rhythmic arrangements to 33 favorite church hymns, introducing Baptists and other denominations to the idea of modern worship music which had begun with the Jesus Movement of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. Equally confident whether on stage at Carnegie Hall or the set of Saturday Night Live, during his career Red produced over 2,500 published compositions and arrangements and more than 4,000 recordings; provided musical supervision, composition and arrangement for several hundred shows, documentaries and musical specials for network and cable T.V., and wrote and edited over 50 musical textbooks. He was also a member of the Church Music Publishers Association.