Las Vegas Mass Choir gives — and receives — praise

Rarely has a more unnecessary question been posed.

“Did you come to praise him?” choir director James R. Smith asks, his slim, twitchy body coiled between the singers behind him and the crowd before him, looking like a compact rocket in a suit, about to break free of gravity.

Lung-busting roars — streaked with shouts of “THANK YOU, JESUS! HALLELUJAH! THANK YOU, LORD!” — answer him.

“Visualize being in our living room,” Smith says as his performers rock and sway in a run-up to “Free to Praise,” the concert-opening barn-burner. “We hope the songs we have chosen will bless every ear. We’re going to make the Lord happy tonight.”

Happiness here — in the sleek, spacious sanctuary of Unity Baptist Church on Marion Drive — more closely resembled ecstasy on June 13, declared “Las Vegas Mass Choir Day” by Mayor Carolyn Goodman. Recorded for a future release, the performance by the group celebrated its 10th anniversary, reuniting many of the singers who have rotated in and out of the ensemble, lending it their power pipes and interpretive passions.

Over a decade, the choir has scored numerous high-profile gigs: appearing on “The Billboard Music Awards,” backing Stevie Wonder for his “Icon Award” medley; vocalizing with artists including Neil Diamond, Ne-Yo, R. Kelly, John Legend and Wynonna Judd; performing on the former Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Telethon; recording with Imagine Dragons; supporting Clint Holmes and other stars in “Georgia On My Mind,” the brief Ray Charles tribute production at The Venetian; and its five-year stint anchoring the Sunday Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.

On this night — led by Smith, a spinning top of a man onstage, arms thrust ever skyward, mopping the sweat off his face, but never the grin — the choir was the singular star. Gospel shouters such as “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” “I Love You, Lord,” “He Kept Me,” “Bring Me Out” and “I’m Blessed” kept the church rockin’ in tuneful delirium, owing to 35 blended voices from teenage to AARP-age.

“When people are going through big things, the preached word really can’t take people through what a song can,” says Smith, a former Las Vegas resident who now lives in Houston but makes a handful of visits every year for rehearsals and performances. “That’s why I love what I do — it digs deep into the soul of people.”

Singer Denise Robinson describes the gospel music they perform as a direct link to divinity itself. “It’s based on singing about Jesus Christ and it puts them in touch with the creator, it lets people know things are going to be all right,” she says. “It’s like an oasis in the desert. It’s water to the soul.”

Those souls cover the religious spectrum.

“Most of the audience comes from a gospel background of some sort, but they’re all different denominations,” says Dee Dee Prejean, the choir’s business manager and a performer for its entire history. “Some of the people are Catholic, Baptist, Apostolic, Methodists, Seventh-day Adventists and some people who don’t even go to church.”

Not originally envisioned as a formal group, the choir was born out of a recording commitment when, in 2004, Street Gospel Records asked Smith to audition, select and develop a 15-voice ensemble to complete a project that had begun in the late-1990s. After the CD, titled “Mass Appeal,” was released in 2005, the group officially became The Las Vegas Mass Choir.

In his initial exposure to the choir, singer Dar Lawrence was working as a cameraman at a General Nutrition Corp. convention in town where the group was performing. “It was giving me goose bumps being in the presence of this inspirational, motivational, exciting sound,” says Lawrence, who asked one of the singers where else he could see them perform and was told to come to a Baptist church — but not to watch.

“She said it was a rehearsal. She said, ‘You’re going to audition and become a member of our choir.’ I said ‘You don’t even know if I can sing.’ She said, ‘I’ve seen you back there dancing to our songs, you got the rhythm in you.’ I said, ‘You’re an all-black choir and I don’t think I fit the color description.’ And she said, ‘We’re not an all-black choir, we’re an all-Christian choir. It just so happens we’re a little darker than you.’ And I loved them.”

After practicing with a Mahalia Jackson song, a nervous Lawrence took the audition plunge. “I was so terrified and Brother James said, ‘Take a seat in the tenor section.’ We started going through the songs, I was picking it up, and I heard, ‘You go, honey — uh-huh!’ I wasn’t touching the floor anymore. At the end, James said, ‘OK, we have a new member today.’”

As the choir’s pedal-to-the-metal driving force, Smith — who holds the dual title of choir director and CEO — has earned an evocative nickname from his troops.

“We call him The Matrix,” says singer Wilma Roberts, referring to the body bending executed by Keanu Reeves’ Neo character in the movie franchise — and approximated by Smith onstage as a way to physically channel passions in search of an exit.

“He can make a choir sing,” Roberts says. “With some of the songs we were rehearsing, he wasn’t available and we had a different director and it just didn’t sound the same. It’s just something he does that brings it up and out of you.”

Admiring how he “gets inside your head and your soul,” Lawrence says he quickly saw Smith as a role model — and a hoot. “I’ve never seen somebody so on fire,” Lawrence says. “I said, ‘I don’t know who this guy is, but I want to hang out with him. He is everything I want to be when I grow up.’ ”

As the choir advances into its second decade, Prejean says several goals have been outlined, including expanding its melodic complement to 100 voices. “And we want to make it more interracial,” Prejean says. “Las Vegas is a melting pot like New York or Chicago. We’re also getting ready to have a junior mass choir.”