Music Review | ’A Night Of Healing’: Bring Down The House (and Again) All Right!

Give it up for Jesus! The singer was, as they say, getting his praise on. He was also angling to extend his moment in the spotlight. An M.C. crept toward the center of the stage. O.K., he said, trying hard to endorse the sentiment without encouraging further elaboration. All right!

Tye Tribbett, the last act in “A Night of Healing,” sang, preached, jumped and watched the clock, as all the singers had to do in this tightly packed show.

It was Friday night at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden, and there was no time to waste. One gospel star after another took it on the chin and hustled off stage just as the room was starting to rock. Bad news for the performers, but great news for the audience: In a concert this overstuffed, there was no room for warm-up acts or intermissions. They called it A Night of Healing, but that certainly doesnt capture the rapid-fire energy of the show.

This was a crowd that knew its stuff. When one preacher stumbled over I John 4:4, the audience finished it for him: Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. And though there were a few gentle, eyes-closed singalongs, the general mood was feisty. The devil is a liar! Say that phrase fast enough, and throatily enough, and it can stand in for just about any expletive.

Yolanda Adams, one of gospels biggest and best stars, performed early. She announced, God will never bring you to 2007 and leave you there — hes not that kind of God. And she sang an extraordinary version of Someone Watching Over You, improvising like a preacher: She took a familiar musical phrase and embellished it, making it bigger and more forceful, and then, just when she seemed to have forgotten where she was going, returned to the theme.

The pop-gospel sister act Mary Mary is quieter and sweeter, known more for catchy refrains than for roaring codas. The two sang an elegant version of Yesterday, a gospel hit from 2005, but just as they were expounding on Gods infinite love and patience, one of them got a tap on her shoulder. Apparently the stage managers patience is decidedly finite.

Theres something ruthless about gospels traditional reliance on crowd participation: It means that if you dont have the crowd up and singing, youre not doing your job, no excuses allowed. And when the veteran Shirley Caesar took the stage, she made it clear that she would settle for nothing less than total mayhem in the building. She turned drill sergeant for Armor of God, calling out dance moves to the troops who gathered by the stage. Later she passed the microphone to aspiring stars in the crowd (including a 10-year-old who brought down the house) and then, with exaggerated petulance, snatched it back.

Not to be outdone, the Rev. Hezekiah Walker showed off his mastery of crowd control. Please sit down, he said, delivering the words so sincerely that some in the audience didnt realize, at first, that he meant precisely the opposite. Please! Sit down! Grab someone — if you see them standing — and pull them down! People shouted and waved and (of course) stood, in mock defiance of the preacher, and in real defiance of the down-pullers in their lives. Mr. Walker glanced offstage, but kept going, like a baseball pitcher shaking off the catchers sign. They told me to quit, but they shouldve never let me up here.

At the end of the night Tye Tribbett finally took the stage, a high-stepping dandy in a slim-fitting suit and box-fresh sneakers, accompanied by a band with a brass section and a big choir. At first the reaction was muted, and he noticed; after a not-wholly-sung-along-with version of Mighty Long Way, he said, Everybody cant sing that cause youre still doing what you used to do. But eventually he found his groove, buoyed by the bands strutting funk. And soon he was quadruple-tasking: singing and preaching and jumping and watching the clock. Again and again, he punctuated his perorations with familiar interjections: Amen! Hallelujah! Wegottago!

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