When Edna Crenshaw unleashes her first soprano note this Saturday night, she will no doubt convey the "overjoy" that comes so naturally to her.

A member of the UCSF Gospel Choir, whose spring performance will be held at 7 p.m. at the Neighborhood Baptist Church at 608 Hayes St., Crenshaw emotes genuine cheerfulness - not to mention melodious salutations - as an employee at the Mount Zion information desk (and formerly at Parnassus). To say her singing is well-known campuswide would be an understatement.

"I sing everywhere I go," she says. "My neighbors might not know my name. But they know what I do."

The choir's fourth performance ever, titled "It's Time to Praise the Lord," will be their first as a headliner at an off-campus venue. (They performed with the San Francisco Choral Society in Davies Hall last year.)

Wilma Baptiste, a clinical trial coordinator and president of the choir, began singing gospel at the age of six at her church in Houston, Texas. "We're trying to broaden our involvement in the surrounding community," she says. To be sure, the choir has done a remarkable job of promoting itself on campus, more than doubling its membership in the past four years.

"When we started practicing, it was just something to do at lunchtime," explains Bridgit Price, a billing assistant at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute. "It just took off from there."

Bob Pizzi, a principal analyst in facilities management for 12 years, says he spends most of his time at UCSF keeping track of University space, which requires considerable number crunching. But away from his Mission Center office, music has always been a major part of his life. A huge fan of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and just about any other arrangement of blues music, Pizzi plays harmonica during informal jam sessions with members of his family.

The past four years as a tenor in the gospel choir, however, have enabled him to tap into a different part of himself. "I guess it's my soul," he says.

Abeba Wuhib, an administrative analyst in the office of affirmative action/equal opportunity, says she joined the choir for one very simple reason.

"I don't think I sing very well," she says. "The main reason I'm doing this is to worship the Lord."

Describing her own initiation into the choir, Crenshaw says, "I was always singing over at Medical Center Way while waiting for the shuttle. And one day Elaine Dempsey (a recreational therapist at UCSF and well-known Bay Area musician) said I should join. I've been going ever since." She says gospel music gives her a sense of "overjoy."

"It flows out from me. And when it does, it's hard to be distressed and distracted. It's just a jubilant feeling," she says.

The UCSF Gospel Choir, which will be accompanied by The Greater New Jerusalem Choir of San Francisco, is led by Jeffrey Williams, a minister of music at Olivette Institutional Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland.

Tickets for the performance are $5 and are available by calling 502-0106 or 476-7204.

By Brad Foss

1st appeared 5/15/97