Jeneveine Candler always aspired to be a performer. Music was her major at Calvin and when she graduated in 1954 she was encouraged to pursue advanced education in music.

"But money was an issue back then," said Candler. "My father died a month before I graduated from Calvin and I needed to stay around and take care of my mother."

So Candler spent 34 years working at Calvin as an office administrator for the education and economics and business departments but never gave up her love or practice of singing.

She has done performance programs during her entire career at Calvin and continues to do them "whenever I'm asked," she said. But the highlight of her career came late last year with the production of her first CD, Jubilee: Art Songs and Spirituals by Black American Composers.

"It (producing a recording) is something you like to think about doing, but I never had the money for it," she said. "Then when two sponsors, Calvin College and Mr. and Mrs. Dan Aument, came along, I couldn't pass it up."

Singing classical music by black composers was especially meaningful for Candler.

"I've done a lot of research on Black American composers," she said. "I've given lectures and co-taught an interim course on it and I think Black American classical music is a neat thing to make people aware of. Most people are familiar with jazz and blues, but you very seldom hear of classical music."

In fact, the music is difficult to find.

"I've searched the internet for it," she said. "A lot of it is out of print or within other song collections," she said.

But finding it and performing it is worth the search, she said.

"Black people have been composing since the 16th century and before," she said. "It's not in the history books or in music books, but it happened. Their music is not heard like Mozart of Beethoven, but it's very beautiful music."

Names of black composers like George Walker and Florence Price are not well known, but Candler hopes that through performances and recordings like hers, they will become more so.

The CD ($15) includes nine vocal classical songs and six spirituals and is available from the Calvin College bookstore, 1-800-748-0122 or www.calvin.edu/bookstore.

Songs from Jubilee:
I Went to Heaven
Child's Grace
Song to a Dark Virgin, Night, Three Dream Portraits, For You There is No Song
I Am in Doubt
In the Springtime
Winter's Approach
His Eye is on the Sparrow
Here's One
Deep River
Steal Away to Heaven (Nobody Knows the Trouble I Feel, Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child, Steal Away)
The Gospel of Grace (Amazing Grace, I'm New Born Again)
He's Got the Whole World in His Hand

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