Composer and pianist Richard Smallwood is gospel’s singular visionary. A Gospel Music Hall of Famer whose songs are as likely to be recorded by Aretha Franklin as Yolanda Adams, Smallwood makes the choir sound like a symphony, layering endlessly subtle shadings and textures into a music of magisterial exaltation.

Smallwood founded the first gospel group, the Celestials, at Howard University, where he studied voice, piano, and ethnomusicology. He became one of gospel music’s leading recording artists in the 1980s, with the Billboard Chart-smashing The Richard Smallwood Singers and the Grammy-nominated Textures and added new standards such as “Center of My Joy” to the canon. Now Smallwood brings the 21 majestic voices of Vision to the luxurious but comfortable Carolina Theatre, in the heart of Durham, for an evening of conceptually dazzling, musically riveting praise.