09/23/2026
A man you've heard, a name you may not know...
I want to introduce you to someone whose work you've almost certainly experienced, even if you've never heard his name.
Stand in the rotunda at EPCOT and eight voices fill the room — that's his. The Voices of Liberty opened with the park on October 1, 1982, and they're one of only two acts still singing there from opening day. If you went to the Candlelight Processional, he arranged and directed it. And if you lived in Central Florida between 1975 and 1994, you may have stood in front of the Glory and Pageantry of Christmas at what's now Disney Springs and felt something you couldn't quite name. That was his too.
Before any of it, he founded The Re'Generation and took them on the road for twelve years — a million miles, six thousand concerts, twelve million people who heard them sing. Along the way: 150 songs, 2,800 arrangements, thirty-three years as a creative consultant to Walt Disney World, and a Mousecar on the shelf.
But none of that is how the people who actually know him talk about him. They talk about the young singer he took a chance on. The direction he gave in one rehearsal that changed how they sang for the rest of their life. The thing he said once, forty years ago, that they still carry.
His name is Derric Johnson. He is 94 years old.
And every one of those nights — the rotunda, the Processional, the Pageantry — happened once, and then it was gone. Nothing was ever kept.
We're changing that, and we need everyone's help to do it.
We're building a 22-minute musical meditation on the Nativity, made in Derric's honor and built on his life's work — delivered as a VR experience and as a standard 4K video. Our goal is $250,000 to fund and deliver this first piece, launching at a showcase on December 12.
We're asking you to share this with your personal and professional network — anyone you think would want to be part of a project like this. Every gift, at every level, helps us pay the people already doing this work on trust, lock in vendors and dates, and put our full attention on making something worthy of him instead of splitting that attention with fundraising. Once this first piece exists — not a pitch deck, an actual thing you can experience — we go to outside sponsors with something real in hand. A second phase, the full live stage production, follows on the strength of what this one delivers.
If someone in your life has ever been shaped by a teacher, a mentor, or someone who gave everything away and asked for nothing back, this is a story they'll understand immediately. This is a chance to help make sure something of his finally gets to stay.
See What We're Building Here:
This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn
