Glory!

Sunday, May 25 at 3:00pm
The Port Theatre, Nanaimo

Special Guest: Marcus Mosely
Tickets (reserved seating): $31.50 Adult / $8.50 Youth under 18 (Prices include all taxes and fees.)

Island Soul Choir is coming back to The Port Theatre this Spring with their latest concert, Glory! Music Director Tom Arntzen has selected another amazing collection of songs to provide you, our audience, with respite from your daily stresses with good vibes and positive energy. Please know that we don’t want you to be a “polite” audience: you are encouraged to sing, dance and shout out to the music, however it moves you!

The choir will reprise Brian Tate’s funky arrangement of Can You Get To That, Moma Boyd’s Everything is Gonna Be Alright, the traditional South African song Freedom is Coming, and Carole King’s classic (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman, as well as Tom’s new arrangement of Leadbelly’s Bring Me Little Water, Sylvie. New to the choir’s repertoire are Stevie Wonder’s As; Bonse Aba, a lively traditional Zambian folk song; and Dance with a Stranger by Bridget Kearney and arranged by Karla Mundy (the choir’s former conductor). In addition, the choir will collaborate with our concert guest on Glory (from the movie Selma) that envisions the hopes of glory in overcoming segregation in the U.S., and Rest Assured, a new Gospel song with a funky Bo Diddly beat composed by Tom Arntzen.

And just who will be our concert guest? The choir is delighted to announce that it will be Marcus Mosely! Marcus is a much-sought-after musician for his wealth of knowledge in Gospel music. Marcus has numerous credits in stage productions and studio work, and was inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2016. Most recently, he was awarded the B.C. Achievement Award and the Mitchell Award of Distinction by the Honourable Janet Austin, OBC, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia. He was the artistic director of the Marcus Mosely Chorale from 2011 to 2022 and recorded a CD, Labour of Love, with the Chorale in 2017. He has since formed a smaller group: the Marcus Mosely Ensemble. He was a founding member of the award-winning roots Gospel trio, The Sojourners; the trio won the Western Canadian Music Awards for Best Contemporary Christian/Gospel Recording in 2011 and Best Spiritual Album of the Year in 2014, and it was nominated for a JUNO in 2010. Marcus has led numerous Gospel workshops across Canada and is a featured performer in Vancouver’s annual Black History Month celebrations.

Island Soul Choir is a community choir in its purest sense. The choir welcomes members from all over Vancouver Island, from Victoria to Port Hardy, and from Bamfield and Ucluelet to neighbouring easterly islands including Gabriola, Protection, Salt Spring, Cortes, Lasqueti and Quadra. Members don’t need to have any prior choir experience; they don’t even need to know how to read music—they just need to love to sing. There’s definitely safety in numbers for newcomers to find their singing voice within this choir.

Choir rehearsals are scheduled on weekends only five times per session, about a month apart, unlike traditional choirs that rehearse weekly. Now in its 18th year, the choir continues to be hugely popular in spite of (or maybe more due to) this unorthodox rehearsal format. Since resuming after the pandemic, the choir offers membership both in person and online so that people everywhere can be singing.

NanGo Grannies will partner once again with Island Soul Choir at this concert. They will be selling crafts and baked goods in the theatre lobby before the concert and during the intermission, and all proceeds will be used to support The Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers-to-Grandmothers Campaign. Even after almost two decades since the Campaign’s inception, thousands of grandmothers and “grand/younger-others” are more committed than ever to raise awareness, build solidarity, and mobilize funds for community-based organizations that support African grandmothers and the children in their care who have been orphaned by AIDS. We encourage our audience to take advantage of this opportunity to support this truly worthwhile endeavour.

We hope to see you there!

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Phenomenal! We’ll absolutely be back for another concert… So exhuberant!… Loved being part of the uplifting energy… Lots of fun… We just loved it!… Thanks for such a lovely show… The singers are so enthusiastic!… Wonderful! We really enjoyed it… Very uplifting!… Absolutely delightful… Fabulous… Makes you want to join… Really fun to watch you guys… Always great… Fantastic!

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