Craig Adams & Higher Dimensions of Praise is a dynamic gospel group — some sixteen voices strong — led by Houston/New Orleans native Craig Adams on keyboards and Hammond B-3 organ. Their natural home is the Gospel Tent at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where they are invited back year after year. Reviewing their 2019 set, JamBase described Adams opening with a slow build on his “heavenly Hammond B3” as his band and a twenty-person choir filled in behind him — then hopping up from the organ, grabbing the nearest mic, and shouting and sweating “with the fervor of a man possessed,” the propulsive rhythm section driving complex harmonies higher and higher.
Adams’s gospel roots run deep. He joined the Gospel Soul Children — once the largest community choir in the city, more than a hundred young people strong — as an organist in 1994, when he was about seventeen, and took over as director in 2014. The Soul Children first performed at Jazz Fest in 1972; their signature tune, “Can’t Stop Praising His Name,” famously froze the entire choir in place on the word “stop.” Higher Dimensions of Praise carries that same exuberant, full-throated tradition forward — young and old, male and female, lifting every song a little closer to heaven.
