Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Sean P. Turner and I believe that anything is possible.
Welcome to Anything is Possible. I'm Hallerin Hilton Hill.
It is always such a joy to come to you with these great stories about great people whose lives prove that anything is possible.
And this is Sean Turner. Welcome to the broadcast.
Thank you for having me.
I am so excited to have you in this space, in this room, because I think the world of you.
Likewise.
I've been working together for a few years. I've known you for a while. We had these great conversations.
But let me start with a compliment, right?
One of the things that I always just thoroughly impressed me about you was how reliable you were.
Like, you were one of the young men that I met that if you gave your word, that's what you did.
You did it on time and it was structured. I remember the first meeting we had with you, you sat down and you had your tech geek like I am.
And you had your iPad and a pencil. And when I looked at the notes you were taking, I mean every, I'm like, this dude is a nerd like me.
Just a little bit.
Where did that come from?
Honestly, being raised by old folks and being around old folks who had that mentality.
Tell me about that. I mean, I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, mostly in an area called Woodstock.
Around my grandmother, she was very, very present.
What was her name?
Her name was Helen Wallace and she was special. Very, very special.
What was special about Miss Helen?
Oh my goodness. She was the glue for her family. I mean, for years I saw sacrifice.
I saw peace. I learned what peace was through my grandmother and I think her reach and her impact on our family, even though she's no longer with us, I mean it still exists.
I mean, she just left such a mark on all of us and impacted us in such a way.
She set the framework for being a person of hard work, dedication, that kind of a thing.
Absolutely.
Tell me about your parents. Tell me about growing up in Memphis and tell me about when music, as the old folks say, as we say often, got a hold of you.
It got hold too.
It got hold to me early on. Again, I have to go back to my grandmother.
She was always in church every time the lights were on or the doors were unlocked or, you know, anytime there was something going on, my grandmother was there.
And because of that, and me being around her, my mother would be working.
My dad, I'm kind of all over the place, but my dad was not very much so in my life early on.
I always tell people that song, Papa Was a Rolling Stone, was written for my dad.
I love him. He's a great man and we do have a relationship now, but early on he was not present.
And because of that, I spent a lot of time with my grandmother.
Well, my mom worked.
And so those times with Granny, as I affectionately called her, were spent at church in choir rehearsal most often.
My grandmother was known for two things, singing in the choir and managing the church kitchen.
So she was the chef at the church for any and all occasions.
And so those times sitting in her lap in choir rehearsal shaped my life.
And back then I didn't know it or I didn't realize how much of an impact it was having on me.
I was just there with Granny, you know.
But looking back, that formed my whole approach to music, my approach to just relationships and life in general.
Do you remember the first time you played the piano?
Kind of.
I was like any other kid that when rehearsal was over, I would go to the piano and just kind of tinker or, again,
with my grandmother always being in church, if there was a funeral or something, you know,
a repass after the funeral took place, the actual funeral services.
And when she was back in the kitchen serving food and I was waiting for her to finish doing all of the things,
I would sneak into the sanctuary and just kind of peck around on the piano.
But I mean, it was literally pecking, investigating, not really taking it seriously.
It was just something to do to kill time then.
But my earliest, I would say, just pull to music or when music got a hold to me was at our home church.
So I spent a lot of time between two churches.
One was Little John Missionary Baptist Church or as the locals call it, Lil John.
And that was my grandmother's church which was in the Woodstock area.
But then the other church that really had an impact on my life was Barin Missionary Baptist Church,
which was in South Memphis.
And so it was at Barin where they had an angel choir.
And being a church kid, my mom, being a church kid, I had to sing in the angel choir.
And for whatever reason, I volunteered to direct the choir.
I don't know my mom.
How old were you?
Probably six.
I mean, I was a youngster for sure.
This had to be kindergarten or first grade.
And so that was my first, like, in my mind, real pull to want to participate or to want to do something.
I mean, other kids were singing, but I just distinctly remember feeling like I shouldn't be singing.
Like I should be in front of this group.
There's this call on your life to lead.
Perhaps.
And to bring people together.
And maybe, I don't know if it's leadership as much as you love to see people come together.
Oh, absolutely.
And then what happens when they collaborate well?
It makes something greater than the sum of the parts.
It's funny that you said that.
That feels like the story of my life.
That's crazy that you pointed that out because I just shared that with the gospel choir last week.
And I think that that was my favorite part of this whole experience.
The whole thing of being in an ensemble and starting with a song or a project that seems intimidating or seems like a tall task.
And, you know, people being frustrated on the front end because they can't see the end goal or they can't really hear how it's going to come together.
But the celebration that takes place at the end when you get there and the harmonies are there and the synergy is there is what fuels me.
Because so much takes place along with that.
Become rotary builds.
People start to actually like each other.
And there's so much just organic things that take place when people come together.
And it's funny.
But to hear you point that out makes me feel like that's something I've been doing my whole life.
Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
You're an agent of possibility.
By the way, this is anything that's possible.
This is Sean Turner.
He is a maestro, a musician extraordinaire, as you will find out.
So you're directing the Angel Choir.
Yep.
And you're in school.
I'm in school.
And the very first instrument I played was bass drum.
I was always one of those kids because of my situation.
I was on the tails of others.
So I was in choir rehearsal because of my grandmother.
But then I ended up in the middle school band, concert band, when I was in first grade because of my brother, my older brother.
How many siblings do you have?
So just with my mom too and my dad again being that dad, Rolling Stone 12.
Wow.
Yeah.
So you're playing the bass drum.
I'm playing the bass drum with my older brother because I couldn't walk home alone.
I was in first grade.
And the band director, I was sitting in the back of the room.
There was an old bass drum just kind of laying on the floor.
And again, I distinctly remember reaching over and just like kind of tapping it, being a kid, but also like noticing what's taking place in the room.
So I wasn't randomly hitting the drum.
I was in sync.
And the band director noticed and soon after got permission from the principal for me to be in the middle school band, which started at fifth grade.
This was a K-3 school.
So in first grade, my mom has pictures of me standing on a stool playing bass drum in an actual concert with the middle school band.
And that's when it all started.
So it's interesting that your possibility, the possibility of your life is emerging on the tails of other people's possibility.
And then you become this agent of possibility, which is a beautiful thing.
So you go through school, you're in band.
I'm in band.
I'm playing drums.
By the time I get to fifth grade, we got a xylophone.
And because I had been playing the longest compared to the other guys that were also fifth graders, the band director decided that I would explore xylophone.
And so xylophone is a percussion instrument.
It's just like a large piano.
You just strike it with mallets.
And so he started kind of teaching me the major scale, just C major scale, basic stuff and the grand staff because all I had been reading was rhythms.
I had not taken formal piano lessons.
They had no real formal music training.
And so he kind of caught me up a little bit, spent a little extra time with me.
I would stay after school just to kind of get a grip on it.
And eventually I would take what I learned from the xylophone and transfer it over to the piano.
I mean, it's the same instrument.
So I would take what I was doing with my hands and just start to do it with my fingers.
By the time you get to high school, what's going on?
By the time I get to high school, I had played eighth grade graduation because I had gotten comfortable enough on piano.
So I played the school song in eighth grade graduation, freshman year, a marching.
So you're in the pride of the Southland band.
Well, that's freshman year of college, freshman year of high school.
You're in the marching band.
I'm in the marching band, yeah, because I had had all those years of playing percussion instruments.
And when you're in a high school band, of course, there might be some down time or sectional time.
But never sectional time, I ran to the practice room and I would tinker on the piano.
So then you make this leap to come to the University of Tennessee.
Yes.
And you're in the pride of the Southland band.
Mm-hmm, playing bass drum.
Did you imagine any of this?
No.
I had not been to a UT game or visited or anything of that nature.
In fact, being a product of military parents, soldiers, I felt kind of influenced by that.
And I respected it a lot.
I had done four years of ROTC in high school.
And so I kind of set myself up to potentially go into military as an option.
So I only applied to UT.
That was the only school I applied to, which looking back was kind of silly or courageous
or I don't know.
But I just decided my senior year after having played piano in church, I had started playing for a church.
I was like, ah, this may be something I can do.
So I auditioned to get into the jazz program.
And I sent an audition tape to get into the marching band.
And the rest is kind of history.
What did you think you were going to do with this?
I really didn't know.
What did you think the possibility of your life was?
Well, I felt like having grown up in church and being self-taught on piano,
I wanted to be able to understand what I was playing.
For so many years, I would say I guess from eighth grade on,
I was kind of taking mental pictures of chords so that it could kind of help me when I came back to relearn something.
I didn't have the theory to understand, oh, this is a two-chord or this is a five-chord and how the chords functioned.
And so I wanted to know that stuff.
Growing up in Memphis, there were so many killer players everywhere.
And these were people who were self-taught and beast.
Oh my goodness, so many that came through churches and it was a situation where oftentimes it felt like there were people even sitting in the congregation
that weren't playing on Sunday that if they wanted to, could come up to the piano and absolutely shred.
But a lot of them, I noticed some of them could read and did have some music theory,
but many were just self-taught and just had a gift or just played out of need.
And I just wanted something different.
What you did and you studied with the legendary Donald Brown.
Lifetaining. Absolutely life-changing.
Do you remember the moment when you found God or God found you?
Yes, I was probably seven or eight years old at Berea Missionary Baptist Church, again in South Memphis on Reigns Road to be specific.
And it was a Palm Sunday and Dr. Edward Parker was a pastor at that time and he was a dynamic speaker, someone that I looked up to and respected.
Because again, not with my dad being absent, it was the deacons and the pastors and the guys at church that kind of showed me how to be a man.
And so him being someone who I respected and even noticed as a child was very academic and well read, well versed in the scripture.
He just had an impact on me and the culture of that church in the 90s was so lit, as we say now.
Oh my goodness. I mean the energy in the room on every Sunday was just dynamic.
It was a place where you almost had to be dead to not feel something in that room.
And it was a Palm Sunday in 1995 or 96 when I just felt that nudge and gave my life to Christ.
Tell us what you're doing now.
Still serving in church. That's the main thing. That's the call of my life.
You have a family now.
Have a family. Oh my goodness.
So the main thing right now is I'm super proud to serve on staff as a Berea Highest Baptist Church.
There I conduct the choir and orchestra every week. That's my main responsibilities and goodness.
I've been there a year or so now, but I have about 21 years now of official ministry.
It all began when I was about 15. That's when I started out on my own.
Like nobody's standing over me. I'm playing the organ and teaching the pards and working with the pastor to pick songs at 15, which was crazy.
But 21 years later, we're still doing it. And outside of my responsibilities as a Berea Heights, I'm super proud to be directing the UT Gospel Choir,
which is an official ensemble within the College of Music in the UT Coral Department.
And so if you know anything about Gospel Choir at UT for a long time, there was love United Gospel Choir.
Right.
And they were around for over 30 years or so and really made an impact on this area.
But the pandemic kind of took them or they just kind of disappeared during the pandemic like many choirs.
And so Dr. Kyle Whodan, who was recently at UT as the Associate Director of Coral Activities,
noticed that there was no Gospel Choir and decided to restart one about a year or two ago.
And so it started off, you know, very raw and just had a couple of members, maybe six members or so.
And in year two or year three, whatever this is now, we have about 25 singers.
One thing that's really special about the choir is that it's part of the UT community school so anybody can be a part.
I have freshman students, senior students, but then I also have people who may be in their 70s and retired.
And so it's a really special thing.
And in many ways, reminds me or makes me feel like that's what heaven will be like, you know.
The ability of music to bring people together is amazing.
Unmatched.
It creates new possibilities, this whole thing of teaching people parts and seeing people sing together and work together, right?
And especially when they don't see that it's possible.
That's why I called you an agent of possibility.
But there's another through line that I see in your story.
Here's the through line that I see from a young man on the tails of all of these possibility people in your life.
You were trying to figure out how to do life.
You wanted to learn how to play.
Your father, you wanted a father figure in your life because you wanted somebody to teach you how to play life, right?
Yeah, I see what you did there.
You wanted a deeper relationship with God because you wanted to know how to play life.
And that essence is something in you that I want to honor and acknowledge.
I'm really proud of you, Sean Turner.
Thank you.
You are a person of possibility and I've watched you bring people together.
I've watched you have been up close and seen you as a young man in our community do that.
And I want to celebrate you as an agent of possibility and of representative of all the great things that are possible.
Oh, please don't get away without mentioning your wife and your daughter.
Of course.
My wife is Jenae Turner.
She works at the University of Tennessee in the College of Access for Dr. Tyvee Small and she is all ball.
She loves UT.
I have a little girl named Scarlett Paisley Turner, SPT2.
She's three years old and she lights up my life.
She has a great personality and just the best little spirit and I just love seeing her develop along the way.
And man, thank you for that compliment.
It's not lost on me the impact that you had on my life.
I mean, those years of serving together was a game changer for me.
You heard me say earlier that being around you is like being around a walking masterclass of many subjects.
I got to see you like work on several projects at one time and sit back and wonder like how is he doing all of these things?
Are you doing radio and TV and you would come in to breakfast and I'm like cross-eyed and sleepy and you've already been up.
Watch the stars come up at the park and ridden.
And I'm like, how? What kind of person are you?
And since we're no longer serving together, I've been literally pulling and gleaning from so much that I just saw you do.
Again, that's I guess my story, being on the tales of others.
You inspired me as well and I wish you all the best going forward.
Man, Iron Sharpens, Iron.
Sean Turner, thank you for being on anything is possible.
Thank you for having me.