Island Soul Choir Sunday, May 26, 2024 at 3:00 PM PDT

This concert will be a special celebration: it will be Karla Mundy’s final performance as our Artistic Director. Michael Creber, the pianist for all but three of our concerts since June 2008, and our rehearsal accompanist since September 2019, will also be signing off after this concert. Bittersweet to be sure, and a definite reason for you to be a part of this historic concert!

To celebrate our time together with Karla, she has selected a number of her favourite songs from our past repertoire, including a few songs that we learned online during the pandemic but haven’t yet had a chance to perform. She’s also added a few songs that she’s performed with her other choirs on the mainland. The repertoire for this concert is a wonderful collection of traditional spiritual, gospel, pop, African, and Afro-Cuban music, as well as some contemporary songs by Jan Kincaid, Coco Love Alcorn and Sarina Partridge.

We are so pleased to have Topazz join us as our guest for this concert. The history of this band revolves around their lead singer Gina Allan, an alumna of Island Soul Choir. When Gina left the choir, she continued to expand her voice through open-mic nights, and along the way, she found other musicians who shared her love of music. Topazz was officially created as part of a special tribute at her mom’s 90th birthday celebration. Today the band includes Billy Dee and Jerry Schnieder on vocals and guitar, Musial Dean Williams on bass and vocals, Michael Butterfield on saxophone, and Adam Telford on drums, plus Gina. Their repertoire includes a diverse collection of swing, Latin, blues, pop and rock music, to bring a memorable experience of joyful sounds to their audiences, that gets toes tapping and hands clapping. Topazz performs throughout Nanaimo and the Oceanside area in a variety of venues and situations.