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Event Description

Enjoy plenty of warm holiday cheer when "Tidings" returns to St. Peter's Anglican Church - featuring the voices and music of troubador Allison Crowe and guests from the Campbell River Children's Choir's "Zephyr". The concert happens Thursday, December 15. (Music - 7 pm + ...Doors 6 pm)

Community-spirited impresario Ron Nicolaye again organizes this holiday tradition - a Winter's celebration of music that also brings some aid to a pair of extremely dedicated groups: The Campbell River Hospice Society and Campbell River Food Bank. The Hospice Society provides a special, key, service - "compassionate support and companionship to individuals facing death, their families and friends and to those grieving a loss due to death". The Campbell River Food Bank provides nourishment to those in need year-round, and, in this season the need is greatest. The Food Bank's team of volunteers are working harder than ever. Donation of non-perishable food items are greatly appreciated and will be collected on concert night.

Opening the Tidings musical program will be the voices of the "Zephyr" from the Campbell River Children's Choir. The community-based CR Children's Choir provides an opportunity for youth to experience the joy of music, learn about other cultures and work with internationally acclaimed musicians at home and abroad. Over the years, the choir has performed in venues across Canada, the United States, Cuba and England. Some of the choir's singers have gone on to pursue careers as performers or, even, to have choirs of their own. This year, the choir has been chosen to be part of a Gala concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

The members of "Zephyr" are the most experienced members of the choir who have chosen to perform more difficult music and to attend extra rehearsals, They will perform with, and under the guidance of, Director Barbara Prowse and assistant director Jennifer Abbott. The troupe has sung at the Pacific Rim Children's' Choir Festival in Hawaii and with Su Hart of the Afro Celtic Band "Baka Beyond". The Choir is accompanied by Judy Melny on piano.

Following intermission, internationally-heralded Allison Crowe, born on Vancouver Island, and home in Newfoundland for years now, stirs together traditional Christmas carols and holiday favourites with an organic blend of rock, jazz, folk, gospel and soul. It's a joyous sound spiced with notes of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles and more. "Be prepared to be amazed," chimes ChristmasReviews.com Longtime NPR broadcaster Ross Hocker calls Allison Crowe's show, "The most honest, heartfelt, and directly intimate concert in my entire life."

Italian radio calls Allison Crowe "Una voce incredibile per una forza della natura."

As a performing artist, Crowe is akin, in ways, to the late, great, Swedish power-house soprano, Birgit Nilsson, about whom it's said "No record or CD could quite prepare a listener for the real thing, live in the opera house".

Tidings is Allison Crowe's melding of the sacred and secular in "songs of the season" and spirit. Some of the music is familiar repertoire, delivered in singular style. Some is not like anything customarily heard in a holiday-time concert.

Tidings viscerally surveys a musical terrain of carols - It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, In the Bleak Midwinter, What Child Is This, First Noel, Silent Night, O Holy Night - performed with rare artistry and passion, and emotive arrangements, alongside the modern canon of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Lennon/McCartney+, and Allison Crowe's original songs, (including the just-composed "Arthur", and the epic "Disease"), that draw on themes of faith, hope, sorrow, joy, redemption, transcendence and more from life's well.

First staged in 2003, Tidings is an exciting experience shared by music-lovers around the world. This holiday season Allison Crowe with the "Zephyr" troupe bring Tidings to:

St. Peter's Anglican Church, 228 South Dogwood, Campbell River

Thursday, December 15, 2011 Music: 7:00 pm (Doors: 6:00 pm)

Tickets now @: IRIS (in Discovery Harbour); The Music Plant; St. Peter's Anglican Church; and c/o Ron Nicolaye 250-923-6972 ; & in Allison's online Box Office @ http://www.allisoncrowe.com/shoptickets.html

Advance Tickets: $20 General/$15 Students & Seniors (Door: $22/$17)

More @: http://www.allisoncrowe.com/