Take 6 Delights PUC Audience with A Capella Sound

Grammy-award-winning a cappella group Take 6 performed at the Pacific Union College Church on February 15 at 6 p.m. President Heather J. Knight introduced the musicians, mentioning the group’s beginnings at Oakwood University and their longtime ties to Adventism. Knight also included a brief overview of the group’s greatest moments; the sextet has won 10 Grammy Awards, 10 Dove Awards, a Soul Train Award, and performed for several U.S. presidents, including current president Barack Obama.

The concert was well attended by an audience of students, faculty, staff, and community members. During the performance, Take 6 frequently encouraged “call and response” from the audience, and invited the audience members to clap, snap, and “make a joyful noise” in any way that felt right. After the concert, fans had the opportunity to meet the performers and get copies of their latest CD, One, signed. 

Take 6, heralded by Quincy Jones as the “baddest vocal cats on the planet,” is a quintessential a cappella group and model for vocal genius. The six virtuosic voices unite in crystal clear harmony, against a backdrop of syncopated rhythms, innovative arrangements, and funky grooves that bubble into an intoxicating brew of gospel, jazz, R&B, and pop are the most awarded vocal group in history. With praise from such luminaries as Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Brian Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald and Whitney Houston, the multi-platinum selling sextet has toured across the globe, collaborated across genres, and is recognized as the pre-eminent a capella group in the world. 

Take 6 has come a long way from their days at Huntsville, Alabama’s Oakwood College (now Oakwood University) where Claude McKnight formed the group as The Gentleman’s Estate Quartet in 1980. The group eventually became known as Alliance, but when they signed to Reprise Records in 1987, they found that there was another group by the same name. It was then that they became Take 6. Their self-titled debut CD won over jazz and pop critics. Since then, they have never slowed down.