On Sunday May 6 at 2 p.m., the Gospel Music Extravaganza, the largest gospel music show in several years will hit the stage of the Florence Filberg Centre.
The show is sponsored by the Evergreen Club. This is the eighth annual fund-raiser for the Courtenay Sonshine Club Luncheon Program (soup kitchen) at St George’s United Church.
This is the latest in a long line of successful shows organized by MacLeod and features gospel music performed by excellent local talent. The show features a lot of classic Southern Gospel music of the 1960s and 1970s and several traditional spiritual numbers to inspire and lift you up along with having the audience clapping their hands and tapping their toes.
The show will feature the Jacqueline Lambeth Singers, which wowed the capacity audience last June with Jukebox Saturday Night: the Music and the 50s and 60s.
Individual singers in the group will add to the repertoire: Heather Rapin, Holly Davidson, Heather Sprout, June Munro and vocal leader and local songstress Jacqueline Lambeth.
Newcomer Amy Vanderpol of Nanaimo, will join the Jacqueline Lambeth Singers for this event. Vanderpol, who was a child prodigy in singing and a frequent winner at the BC Kiwanis Music Festival as a young lady and who most recently was a featured vocalist with the Victoria Soul Gospel Choir.
The show also features local Courtenay Councillor Erik Eriksson, who is featured in the annual Have a Heart productions and who will turn up the heat on the keyboard as he backs up the Jacqueline Lambeth Singers on spirited, hand-clapping numbers.
Retired Colonel Dick Cowling, who has sung in the last two Memories of the War Years: a Musical Tribute to Veterans shows and the recent Evergreen Club Robbie Burns Luncheon, will use his rich baritone voice to sing Go Down, Moses and the Battle Hymn of the Republic, accompanied on latter by Shari Campbell of the Comox Valley Band on the snare drum.
Sandy Austin, with her lovely soul voice, will sing Take My Hand, Precious Lord and Give Them All to Jesus. Lindsay Day of Qualicum Beach will lend his fine country voice to The Old Rugged Cross and Family Bible, the first hit song written by Willie Nelson.
Glen Hiebert, the man with the golden fiddle, and his band will perform the preliminary show from 1:30 to 2 p.m.