Damien Sneed: A Gospel Holiday

As a multi-genre recording artist and instrumentalist, Damien LeChateau Sneed is a pianist, vocalist, organist, composer, conductor, arranger, producer, and arts educator whose work spans multiple genres. He has worked with jazz, classical, pop, and R&B legends, including the late Aretha Franklin and Jessye Norman, Wynton Marsalis, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Ashford & Simpson, Denyce Graves, Lawrence Brownlee, and many others. In addition, Sneed has served as music director for several Grammy Award–winning gospel artists, including The Clark Sisters, Richard Smallwood, Donnie McClurkin, Hezekiah Walker, Marvin Sapp, Karen Clark Sheard, and Kim Burrell, among others, and BET’s hit gospel competition, Sunday Best. Sneed is a 2014 Sphinx Medal of Excellence recipient, a 2020 Dove Award winner, and a 2021 NAACP Image Award winner for his work as a featured producer and writer on the Clark Sisters’ project, The Return.

Sneed recently joined the esteemed faculty of Howard University and the Juilliard School.  His other professional affiliations have included the faculties of the Manhattan School of Music, Berklee School of Music, Michigan State University, the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University, Nyack College, and the City University of New York (CUNY).  In 2015, he established the Damien Sneed Foundation Performing Arts Institute.  Sneed is the founder and artistic director of Chorale Le Chateau, that has gained a global reputation for vividly interpreting vocal literature, from Renaissance period pieces to art songs to jazz, spirituals, gospel, and avant-garde contemporary music.  Sneed is featured in the award-winning PBS documentary Everyone Has a Place starring Wynton Marsalis, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Sneed’s own Chorale Le Chateau, which captures Sneed’s journey as musical conductor of the historic tour performances of Marsalis’s Abyssinian Mass.

He has released several projects on his boutique label, LeChateau Earl Records, established in 2009 to reflect his varied musical interests. Some of Sneed’s commissions as a composer include Empower (2018) by Lyric Opera of Chicago; Marian’s Song (2019) by Houston Grand Opera; “The Earth Sings” (2021) by the ASCAP Kingsford Commission; the film score for Testament (2021) by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater; The Tongue and the Lash (2022) by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL); and Treemonisha (2023) also by OTSL, a reimagined adaptation of Scott Joplin’s opera.

As conductor, he has debuted with the Flint Symphony Orchestra, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Stockton Symphony Orchestra, Gateways Music Festival Chamber Players, Harlem Chamber Players Orchestra, and his own ensemble, Orchestra of Tomorrow.  Sneed will be featured as a vocal soloist on a new PBS documentary featuring Marsalis’ All Rise Symphony in the first quarter of 2025.  He was recently signed to Apple Music Classical & Platoon Records (London). His newest recording project, Our Song Our Story, featuring Metropolitan Opera singers Jacqueline Echols McCarley and Justin Austin, along with the Griot String Quartet and Sneed on piano, will be released early 2025 while his second project with Apple Music, Kaleidoscope, featuring the solo piano music of African American composers, will be released in Fall 2025. www.DamienSneed.com