Praise Be! Jubilation Return To The Road

Media Release – July 30th 2010

Praise Be! Jubilation Return To The Road

Jubilation Choir presents
JUBILATION 2010

After the success of last year’s Four Corners tour and in the wake of sell-out performances at the Tauranga Jazz Festival and Ponsonby’s Unitarian Church the gospel supergroup Jubilation continue their 2010 season with a show at the Montecristo room on August 21 in Auckland .

They will then head South to the Canterbury International Festival in Timaru with later shows planned for Waiheke and the Concert Chamber. New Plymouth’s Festival of the Lights in January will take them down country yet again!

The Four Corners Tour celebrated the release of their first CD Shout and Never Get Tired, last September The success of the CD has exceeded all expectations from the choir as it continues to sell through stores, online through their website and at shows.

Sam Airey in NZ Musician said of the recording... “The result can only be described as stunning. For me the album quickly lived up to it’s name and I found myself going back again and again for more…my message would be for nothing if you were to miss the Jubilation experience “

Pulling together 33 singers from all walks of life, Jubilation features a handful of New Zealand’s most outstanding and celebrated vocalists. Rick Bryant, founding member of Mammal, the Jive Bombers, The Neighbours and the Windy City Strugglers, is an R & B legend on the local scene. Jackie Clarke of When The Cat’s Been Spayed, the Ladykillers and The Darlings, Callie Blood of the Darlings and Jean McAllister of David Lange’s favourite band The Drongoes also bring their fabulous voices to the party.

Other well-known names in the choir are luminaries of stage and screen Jennifer Ward-Lealand and Amanda Billing and writer/director Fiona Samuel, but most of Jubilation’s singers moonlight as builders, political analysts, electricians, teachers, nurses, …there are also musicians, actors , a boat builder , a voice-over artist and a postie. In other words a diverse group of people drawn together by their love of singing!

Audiences can expect Jubilation to perform originals like Rick Bryant’s ‘Learn To Forgive’ and Jean McAllister’s ‘First To Come Home’ mix it with Tom Waits, Isaac Hayes and Don McGlashan classics – the songs hail from the 1840s right through to the 21st century. What they have in common is soul, and they come alive with the Jubilation a cappella treatment – no instruments, just the naked human voice.

“….what makes this secular choir singing religious music to a secular congregation-seemingly mild mannered folk - affect their audience to the point where by the end they jump to their feet, yelling, stomping and hooting for more?....Quite apart from the obvious enjoyment and entertainment factor - Jubilation are brilliant- I think the answer lies in the fact that the sound is very tangible, creating a shared, enriching experience…But does Jubilation have soul? Hell yes!” - Kate Ward-Smythe, Theatreview

ends