Alexis Carter concert benefits Community Kitchen

Singer-songwriter Alexis Joi Carter is ready. She's always been ready. It was God, she said, who told her to slow down.\nNearly 200 people congregated Saturday night at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 E. Kirkwood Ave., for "'Joi' to the World: A Personal Serenade to Thee," a benefit concert and CD release. The buzz emanating from the crowd showed -- they were ready, too.\nCarter and a small support team, including mom-away-from-home and show general manager Inger Nemcik, vocalists and band members, spent Saturday morning preparing for the two-act event. \nThe morning of the concert, Carter sat at the vanity mirror of a backstage dressing room with stage manager Garlia Jones and gown designer Geoffrey Coyle nearby. \nDressed in jeans and an open-backed black sweater, Carter began to tell her story. \n"It was about the end of last school year ..." she said. \nCarter, a native of Gary, said as an IU sophomore, her anxiousness to pursue the singing career of her dreams took hold. She had passed up a chance to jump-start a musical career a few years before when she decided to pursue a degree in radiology at IU. Years passed and Carter said she began to think: \n"I want to be singing. I want to do this or that -- but I'm here," she said. \nThen a revelation emerged.\n"I thought, since I'm here, I might as well use what I have here," she said. "God is blessing me, he has me here for a reason, so let me do something."\nCarter said she decided to coordinate a benefit concert and CD release. She spent the summer writing songs and making calls to potential sponsors. \nLess than a year later, the theater lights dimmed and Carter's plans began to unfold. She arrived on stage, her floor-length dress shyly kissing the stage floor.\nThe performance began with the Carter original "A Personal Serenade to Thee." \nFrom the long-haired guy in jeans to the older woman in a sequined blazer, the audience's reaction mirrored Act I's first number -- slow and steady, eventually reaching a hand-clapping high point at the song's bridge.\nAudience members moved from their seats every time Carter tilted her head back to send a high-flying note into the microphone. With every high A over C, the icy piece on her ring finger glittered against the rays radiating from the lights at the stage's foot.\nFour songs later, an intermission allowed a representative of Community Kitchen of Monroe County, which received proceeds from the event, a chance to inform the crowd of the organization's latest efforts. \n"It's the funnest concert I've been to. I grew up listening to this stuff," Director of Fund Raising Margaret Radke said in the theater's hallway.\nBack inside, the concert reached its height when guest soloist James Mumford, bedecked in white, joins the young singer in a duet.\n"That's what I'm talking about!" said IU senior and fellow Gary native Armeda Hill, rising from a seat beside her fiancé, IU senior Mark Ford. \nHill raised her hands, swaying in time to the duo's rendition of "The Prayer," a song often performed by gospel stars Donnie McClurkin and Yolanda Adams.\n"She sees herself on the scale of a Yolanda Adams already," Lucius Rouser III said, CEO of Carter's record label Ground Level Music before the show began.\nEarlier that day, Carter had said she already felt like a star. All of her life she's "been bustin' moves," she said. \nGod directed her to do the concert and CD release, she said. \nShe now waits anxiously for the next cue.\n-- Contact Staff Writer Melanie Sims at mjsims@indiana.edu.