Rev. Timothy Wright

Reverend Timothy Wright spent most of his life directing gospel choirs on a consistent basis. At twelve he began playing piano at Brooklyn’s St. John’s Fire Baptized Holiness Church of God, later writing material for that congregation’s choir. By 1969 he had become the regular pianist for the late Bishop F.D. Washington; his work with Washington’s ensemble drew the notice of Rev. Isaac Douglas and the N.Y. Community Choir, prompting Wright to switch to organ and to compose nearly every track on Douglas’s 1971 album Let’s Go Higher. In the middle of the decade he established the Timothy Wright Concert Choir, which issued Who’s on the Lord’s Side and Do You Know the Light, and he began performing with additional ensembles throughout the country. He also collaborated with Myrna Summers on her album We’re Gonna Make It and assembled the 500-voice project Come Thou Almighty King. As pastor and founder of Brooklyn’s Grace Tabernacle Christian Center, Wright released a steady stream of recordings after 1990, among them I’m Glad About It, Moving in the Spirit, and Story to Tell. The 1994 edition of Come Thou Almighty King earned a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Soul Gospel and reached Billboard’s Top 20 gospel chart. His activity continued through the 2000s until a July 2008 automobile accident left him critically injured and claimed the lives of his wife and grandson; he died the next April at the age of sixty-one.