Michael J Lewis: Heaven is my Home

International Opera Star records with Stone County Singers. 

Members of The New Welcome Hill Baptist Church Choir in Wiggins, led by Music Director and lead soprano Kaliahya Stubbs Collins along with soprano Dwana Haley Wells and a quintet of girls from Stone High School, have recorded a spectacular anthem ‘Heaven is My Home’ with British International Opera star Andrew Staples. 

Staples, an outstanding classical tenor, has performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, The Metropolitan Opera, New York, The Lyric Opera, Chicago, The Philadelphia Orchestra, The London Symphony Orchestra, and The Berlin Philharmonic.  He regards the recording of ‘Heaven is My Home’ with the Stone County singers as ‘epic’. 

The anthem was composed by Emmy Award Winner (The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe) Michael J Lewis, a Stone County resident, with words by Thomas Rawson Taylor, the eighteenth-century English hymnist. 

Lewis was introduced to the local singers at a choral concert in The First Baptist Church of Wiggins in 2017. Four gospel singers from New Welcome Hill astounded Lewis with their spontaneous, improvisational music presentation. “I thought they were absolutely marvelous - as were the choir from Stone High. I immediately knew that I wanted to record them and demonstrate to the world how alive and well choral music is in South Mississippi."