Take 6 sets the Standard at the Casper College Kinser Jazz Festival

by Elysia Conner
Monday, February 1, 2010 3:22 PM MST

Oakwood College in Huntsville, Ala., claims a rich a cappella heritage, but “we wanted to try to take it to another level,” Claude McKnight said.

Winners of 10 Grammy’s and Dove Awards, one Soul Train Award and two NAACP Image Award nominations, Take 6 certainly has done that.

As an a cappella group, Take 6 emulates “all of what you’d normally hear in a regular band,” McKnight said. “We get the audience involved and we make sure you don’t miss any of the ‘instruments.’ We cover all the bases.”

“My entire family sings,” the group co-founder said about how he got his start growing up harmonizing in church. At family reunions, “we pretty much eat and sing.”

He added that he and his famous brother, Brian McKnight, aren’t even the family’s best singers.

Mark Kibble, Claude V. McKnight III, Dr. Cedric Dent, David Thomas, Alvin Chea and Joey Kibble make up Take 6. The group currently is based in Nashville, Tenn., with two members living in Los Angeles, Calif. Their latest album, “The Standard” showcases a new jazz-influenced approach for the group.

They came together as four original members but met Mark Kibble while rehearsing as a quartet in a men’s restroom before a gig. The quartet became a quintet, and Mervyn Warren joined shortly after.

As sextet Take 6, they have toured the world and sold millions of records.

“We did not expect that at all” McKnight said, “It was just something that we love to do.”

One thing that set them apart was the size of the group. It allows for the more extended chords of jazz-influenced arrangements, he said.

“We’re all really good friends,” he said. “I think when you’re together such a long time, you either love each other or hate each other.”

Musically, they know each other so well they can almost read one another’s minds.

“On stage, one guy might decide to take a slight left turn, and everybody knows immediately how to go there with him,” McKnight said. Those are things you “don’t know unless you’ve been together for a long time and have that kind of rapport.”

He is honored to perform for the first time in Casper, headlining the Kinzer Jazz Festival.

“We have a good time with the college crowd,” he said. “It’s a fun time for them and us as well.”

They enjoy passing along their jazz knowledge, especially in places with a great jazz program.

Besides jazz, they also are a gospel group. They have shared wonderful spiritual experiences on the road, he said. Once in Poland, the electricity went out in a beautiful, old cathedral. “All the people huddled down near the stage, and we had this really intimate, wonderful time with them.”

Stories like that let them know that it’s not all about the entertainment value of something, he said, “but really about what you’re doing for somebody’s spirit.”

More than any accolades, “It’s what somebody feels inside from our music,” he said,

If you go…

Take 6 at the Casper College Kinser Jazz Festival

Tuesday, Feb. 9, 7:30 p.m., at the John F. Welsh auditorium, Natrona County High School.

Tickets are $15 each and are available by calling 268-2021.

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