Grammy Award-winning artist Richard Smallwood, singing with the choir Vision, will headline the 22nd Annual Festival of Black Gospel at Cornell Feb. 20 to 22. The festival is the centerpiece of the university's Black History Month celebration.

Richard Smallwood and Vision will perform Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall. Also performing will be Malcolm Wilson, Joshua's Generation and the Anointed Voices. Doors open at 6 p.m. Tickets are $8 with Cornell I.D. and $10 for the general public. Group rates also are available. Advanced sale tickets are available at Willard Straight Hall Ticket Office from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and at Logo's Bookstore on the Commons and the Christian Vision Bookstore, 510 W. Clinton St. In Syracuse, tickets are available at Sacred Melody, 3535 James St. Tickets also are available at the door the night of the performance.

Smallwood began his recording career in the late 1970s with his debut album, The Richard Smallwood Singers, which lasted 87 weeks on the Billboard gospel album chart. Grammy nominations followed for his subsequent albums, Pslams, (1984) and Textures (1986). His 1992 release Testimony won the Dove Award for Best Contemporary Gospel Album of the Year. Smallwood finally struck Grammy gold with his next project, Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration, which won the award for best song production.

For his most recent album, Adoration: Live in Atlanta, Smallwood appears with Vision, a 24-voice choir from Washington, D.C.

Smallwood has played on stages across the United States -- including a performance at the White House -- and throughout Europe. In addition to his recording career, Smallwood is music director for a 300-voice choir called The Children of the Gospel, which performs annually to standing-room-only audiences at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

"The Festival of Black Gospel is pleased to have Richard Smallwood and Vision as our featured performer," said sophomore Keiva Dennis, publicity coordinator of the festival. "His music is very moving and inspirational, and it combines traditional gospel movement with a classical sound. That should be appealing to many individuals."

Over the past two decades, the Festival of Black Gospel has attracted some of the biggest names in the industry, including Hezekiah Walker, Yolanda Adams and Witness.

The festival continues Saturday, Feb. 21, with a free performance by the Mass Choir at 7 p.m. in Bailey Hall. The Mass Choir comprises gospel choirs from across the northeastern United States. Rehearsals for the Mass Choir, which are open to the public, begin at 10 a.m. in Bailey Hall. The Mass Choir will be directed by Donnie R. Harper, director of the New Jersey Mass Choir, which was featured on the rock group Foreigner's international hit "I Want to Know What Love Is."

The festival concludes Sunday, Feb. 22, at 4 p.m. with a worship service in the Memorial Room of Willard Straight Hall. Officiating will be the Rev. Daris Dixon-Clark, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Ithaca.

Festival of Black Gospel sponsors include the Student Assembly Finance Commission, Cornell Concert Commission, Dean of Students Office, Department of Theatre, Film and Dance, Africana Studies and Research Center, Ujamaa, Willard Straight Hall Program Board, Cornell Council for the Arts, Third World Student Program Board, Cornell University Program Board, Minority Finance Commission, Protestant Cooperative Ministry and the Episcopalian Church at Cornell.

The Festival of Black Gospel, a 22-year-old campus organization dedicated to strengthening ties between Cornell and the community through an annual weekend of gospel music and worship, was honored for its work by receiving Cornell's 1996 Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony.

Last year, gospel festival committee members presented a program of song and fellowship at the MacCormick Detention Center and conducted their annual Next Step Program, a partnership program with the Ithaca City School District that brings interested high school students to campus for "a day of college awareness."

In addition, gospel festival committee members volunteer for various human service agencies, either in Ithaca or out of town, and for many Cornell-related activities, including Big Brothers, Summer Bridge Youth Program, NAACP, National Society of Black Engineers, University Career Center and Amnesty International.