Even if his back’s to the audience, Jason Max Ferdinand can tell when a choir he’s directing has listeners in the palm of their collective hand. “You hear oohs and aahs,” Ferdinand says, “or maybe even some crying during the twists and turns of a program.”

He can also see it in the faces of the members of the choir, when the joyful sound they’re making together is really connecting. “It’s hard to put into words,” he says. “It’s amazing.”

A singer, pianist, composer and conductor, Ferdinand’s musical talents have taken him a long way from Trinidad and Tobago, his Caribbean homeland. As a young man, they brought him to the U.S., where he studied music at Oakwood University, the same Huntsville, Ala., campus rock pioneer Little Richard attended in the late ‘50s and in the ‘80s produced Grammy winning gospel group Take 6. After graduating, Ferdinand later became Oakwood’s choral director and led the university’s globetrotting choir, The Aeolians.

More recently, his talent took Ferdinand and his sprawling vocal ensemble, the Jason Max Ferdinand all the way to the famed New York stage of “Saturday Night Live.” Jason Max Ferdinand Singers accompanied British pop-rock band Coldplay, who were the musical guests of the Feb. 3 “SNL” episode hosted by “The Last Of Us” and “Mandalorian” actor Pedro Pascal.