Shady Side Academy Middle School Music Teacher and Admissions Director Jeff Gross will sing with the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh in Let My People Go: A Spiritual Journey Along the Underground Railroad on Friday, Feb. 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in the historic Hill District of Pittsburgh.

This dramatic work, composed by award-winning, American composer Donald McCullough, interweaves 14 Negro spirituals with a dramatic, historically-based script to share the journey of the Underground Railroad. Ebenezer Baptist Church is located in an area that once was home to Underground Railroad stops and later was a staging ground for the march after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968, so the location correlates poetically with the music and narrative of Let My People Go.

Gross joined the SSA Middle School music faculty in 2011. He teaches the choral classes and ensembles and co-directs the winter musical. In 2015 he took on the additional responsibility of serving as the Middle School's director of admission.

Outside of school, Gross is a frequent performer in various opera and theater companies throughout the Pittsburgh area. He has performed with the Microscopic Opera, Quantum Theatre, Pittsburgh Savoyards, Chatham Baroque and the Theatre Factory, and he also sings with the Pittsburgh Opera Chorus.

Learn more about Let My People Go and purchase tickets online.