Terrence J. Dooley moves through a school hallway the way he moves a choir stand on Sunday—focused, intentional, and just playful enough to keep everyone on their toes. A celebrated gospel choir master and a full‑time classroom teacher, he has quietly crafted a life where blackboard and B3 organ, lesson plans and lead sheets, all live in the same sacred space.
A man of many callings
Ask Terrence J. Dooley who he is, and he does not start with accolades or chart positions. He calls himself a man of God, a father, a husband, a teacher, a former athlete and lifelong basketball enthusiast, and, maybe surprisingly, a lover of comedy. Comedy, he explains, fuels his creativity, helping him stay loose enough to write freely and connect to people on and off the stage. That sense of range—sacred and silly, disciplined and improvisational—shows up in everything he touches, from his classroom culture to the way his choir, Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony, sounds on record.
Teaching was not a fallback but an early dream. He remembers flipping through an old middle‑school yearbook and seeing that he had already written “teacher” as his future occupation. He loved to help people, to share what he had, and to lead, even as a kid, and though the road to the classroom was “scenic,” landing there feels like a promise kept.
In the classroom, presence and representation
This school year, Dooley admits, has been draining. “Everybody’s been in their rooms just with their heads down,” he says, describing colleagues returning from break and diving straight back into the grind. Yet he remains deeply committed to the work, insisting that the key is ruthless prioritizing—protecting rest, planning ahead, and honoring downtime as much as rehearsal time. On Saturdays and Sundays, he pours himself into music and ministry, but by Monday he knows teenagers are coming “with full energy” and expects himself to be ready to receive them.
As a black man in the classroom, he sees his presence as non‑negotiable. From kindergarten through his master’s degree, Dooley never had a single Black male teacher, a void he still feels when he looks back. He does not claim that representation alone would have changed his grades, but he understands the power of walking into a room and seeing someone who looks like you in charge, making the classroom feel like an “all‑around safe space.” His own management style is direct and relational—“we can laugh, we can joke… but y’all gonna act like you have some sense in this class, and you’re gonna do your work”—and it has translated into strong rapport, solid grades, no write‑ups, and a room where students know they are heard.
A versatile sound, on purpose
If the classroom is where Dooley shapes lives, the choir stand is where he narrates his own. His catalog—songs like “Lift Him Higher,” “Mystery,” “Turning Point,” “Trust in the Lord,” “I Owe God Praise,” “Testimony,” and “Where Would I Be”—has earned him a reputation as one of the finest choir masters of his generation. One hallmark of Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony is that no two songs sound alike. Listeners will not find the same groove recycled at three different tempos; instead, each album plays like a journey rather than a loop.
That variety is not accidental. Dooley loves big choir music, but his tastes stretch into worship, jazz, and beyond. He played in jazz band in high school, a New Orleans‑flavored influence that surfaces on the song “Mystery,” and he carries that eclecticism into his arrangements. He often returns to something he heard from Prince: albums matter. To him, a project should move through keys, textures, and moods, resisting the temptation to chase one proven sound just because it once “popped” in a certain season.
Making albums in a singles world
In an era dominated by streaming and singles, Dooley still believes in the full album, even as he acknowledges the economics have shifted. When he released his first project around 2010–2011, the CD release concert served as both ministry event and business strategy, with physical sales helping recoup thousands of dollars in costs in a single night. Today, supporters “go to Spotify” instead—and their version of support, he notes with some honesty, is his too—yet that support pays only pennies, sometimes barely a penny for an entire album stream.
Still, he keeps creating. A new album, recorded several years ago but delayed by life—a master’s degree, two children with his wife, and buying a house—is finally ready, with a release planned for the first half of this year. The project, featuring powerhouse evangelist Lillian Lloyd in a marathon, 20‑minute performance the team is still “trying to chop… to make it palatable,” promises the same breadth his listeners have come to expect. There will be church choir anthems, songs that put “a little boom in your subwoofers,” and, above all, lyrics anchored in Scripture.
Keeping Jesus at the center
If versatility is one pillar of Dooley’s work, theological clarity is the other. The new material, he stresses, is intentionally Christ‑centered, a response to a landscape where some music labeled “gospel” feels more vaguely inspirational than explicitly rooted in Christian confession. He does not deny the need for clean, uplifting songs of all kinds, but he draws a clear line: if it is called gospel music—which he defines broadly as Black Christian music—it should stay close to the vine. On this upcoming album, that conviction shows up even in the titles: “Tell Somebody About Jesus,” “Follow Jesus,” “I Love the Lord,” “Praise the Name of Jesus.”
Dooley is a student of those who kept that center of gravity before him. As a lyricist and arranger, he has studied James Hall, Donald Lawrence, the late Richard Smallwood, Kurt Carr, Fred Hammond, and John P. Kee, artists who, in his view, write the majority of what they record and marry strong theology with sophisticated musicality. He also carries lessons from mentors closer to home—Bishop Roger Harrison, local ministers of music like James Watley and Gary Lewis, and Elder Walter Roberts in Columbus, Ohio, whose hymn traditions continue to shape Dooley’s own writing.
Between the classroom and the choir loft, Terrence J. Dooley is building something that looks less like a career and more like a calling lived out in harmony—rigorous, joyful, biblically grounded, and unmistakably his. For those who want to follow that journey, he keeps it simple: search his full name—on any streaming platform, on social media, or at his website—and the music and ministry of Terrence J. Dooley & Testimony are right there, ready for the next lesson, the next service, the next song.
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