DATE: Friday, April 25, 1997                TAG: 9704230103

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 04   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JANIE BRYANT, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

CONNECTICUT STUDENTS TO GIVE GOSPEL CONCERT

Twenty-some years ago, George Watson III was a student of Jerlene Harding, one of Portsmouth's most beloved band and orchestra teachers.

He's all grown up now, but still following the late educator's lead.

Harding took young people all over the country, and even overseas, as director of the Tidewater Area Musicians (TAM) Youth Orchestra.

Now Watson is showing a new generation of musically gifted students the classroom outside their school. This week, the world he'll be showing them will be his hometown.

Watson will be directing the 48-member Paul Laurence Dunbar School Gospel Choir in a Saturday concert at New Bethel Baptist Church - a program dedicated to Harding, who was a member of the church.

The church is located at 4212 Greenwood Drive in Cavalier Manor. The free concert will be held at 6 p.m.

Watson, a 1975 graduate of Manor High School, went to New Bethel Baptist before leaving the area for a teaching job in Bridgeport.

The trombone player had been a band director for a Suffolk School and then assistant band director at Hampton University before leaving in 1984.

He took a Connecticut teaching job because it offered him an opportunity to work with inner-city youths, and a closer proximity to New York City.

Watson, the son of David E. Watson Jr. and Maxine Watson of Portsmouth, has been at the Paul Laurence Dunbar School for the past six years. He helped start the gospel choir at the school five years ago.

Gospel music is especially popular in that area and was a natural route for the choir to take. There are 15 churches in the school's community, he said.

``It was a way to get out into the community and to give a positive outlook for the city,'' Watson said.

``We've been going through hard times here,'' he said, explaining that there has been a large number of factory shutdowns in Bridgeport.

``We're more or less the public relations for the board of education here,'' he said.

This year, Watson added, the choir sang for Gov. John Rowland at the state Capitol in Hartford, Conn.

They were winners for the state of Connecticut in McDonald's Gospel Festival in 1995, and won second and third place awards in previous National Elementary/Middle School Gospel Choir Championships in New York City.

This year, they took fourth place among the 22 competing choirs in the New York event. Their accompaniment section was selected ``Most Outstanding,'' and an elementary choir that Watson took with them won Most Outstanding Choir.

Like Harding, Watson has learned to work at the fund-raising necessary to get the students on the road.

The school choir performed on more than 40 occasions last year for local, state and national concerts or competitions.

Besides bringing a special concert to his home church, Watson said, the trip to Hampton Roads will serve as a college tour for his middle-school students.

The choir will be performing for students and faculty of Norfolk State University on Friday and at Hampton University on Saturday. Next year, he plans to take them to colleges in Atlanta. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

George Watson III, a Portsmouth native, will be directing the

48-member Paul Laurence Dunbar School Gospel Choir.

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