It’s Amazing – Stavanger Gospel Company

It’s Amazing
Stavanger Gospel Company
SGCompany Records 2008
www.sgcompany.no

It’s amazing, indeed…how you can hear gospel music just about everywhere on Earth, whether on CD, on the radio or the Internet, or, better yet, in live performance. In less than 90 years’ time, this folk-urban amalgam of African American sacred music has worked its way around the globe, captivating audiences and leaving fervent fans in its wake.

Norway certainly has its share of the good news music. The Oslo Gospel Choir and the Stavanger Gospel Company are two examples. The latter choir released its debut CD, It’s Amazing, last November.

It’s Amazing benefits from the all-in expertise of the Chicago-based gospel group Light of Love (Anita, Kimberly, LaDonna, Maurita and Robert Holmes). Light of Love produced the project with Aril Schold, founder and director of the Stavanger Gospel Company. You can read more about the partnership between the Chicago and Norway gospel artists in the TBGB article here.

Other talented Chicagoans involved with It’s Amazing include musicians Bryant Jones and Joey Woolfalk. Jones, whose parents are Fellowship alumni Rev. Billy Jones and Jeanette Robinson-Jones, wrote the bluesy “Thank You” and arranged “Revive Us,” a variation on “Revive Us Again” (folkies will know the tune from the Depression-era “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum”). Woolfalk is the go-to guy for guitar backup these days. He, too, has a strong gospel pedigree through his father, a veteran quartet singer.

The Stavanger Gospel Company has clearly done its homework on how to render contemporary gospel music, demonstrated by their energetic and enthusiastic performances, portly sound, rich harmonies and robust musicianship.

For example, “Rejoice” is a bright, charming, up-tempo piece that delivers a lovely melody with good old gospel muscle. “Thank You Lord” showcases the group at its most intense, with dueling leads by Gus Lacy, Odd Arne Berge and Christina Ims. As a radio edit, it would make a fine single. “Medley” features an enjoyable rhythmic succession of popular Old Landmark hymns and storefront-shaking congregational songs.

Good gospel choir singing, sure, but is there anything quintessentially Scandinavian about It’s Amazing? I’m no expert, but it seems that while the female vocalists sing with studied black gospel technique, they do so with a light and ringing purity of tone that can be commanding one moment and utterly delicious, like soft kisses on the ears, at another. The choir loves to sing gospel music, and it shows. Listen to Ingrid Kjosavik on the title track and “Rejoice,” and the duet between Aina Okland Schold and Kimberly Holmes on the high-energy “Good to Me” for aural examples.

The world needs to come together more often. The blissful partnership between Light of Love and Stavanger Gospel Company on It’s Amazing is how delightful coming together can sound.

Four of Five Stars