July is a wild month for gospel music fans in Nashville...even more so if you're an artist seeking to learn more about your musical craft. There are three music schools that take place over the month: Christ Church music conference, Steve Hurst school and Stamps-Baxter school. All three of those include concerts. I heard so many great things about these shows from people in past years, so I hoped to be able to take in some of those now that I'm here. Unfortunately, this year it was hard to get timely information...many of those concert lineups seem to be secret or are not widely publicized, so I was a bit disappointed to learn after the fact I missed some folks I really wanted to hear.
I did catch one well publicized concert by one of Nashville's greatest musical treasures: the Christ Church Choir. The choir gave us a preview of its upcoming release, "He Still Leads", due in January. As always, it's a treat to hear the choir tear it up and watch choir director Landy Gardner boogie down and get totally absorbed in the music. I also found his testimony on seeking God's direction and the steps that brought him where he is today quite inspiring. The Christ Church choir is known for having superb soloists and there were many, standouts among them Gaither video favorite Joy Gardner, daughter Dionne Gardner Dismuke, Maurice Carter and Christ Church Pastor Dan Scott. Dan Scott in particular impressed me at Mark Lowry's Senior Trip in Asheville last year and I promptly bought his CD. I would go hear him in a solo concert anytime.
Before the Christ Church portion of the concert, there were sets featuring vocal group Higher Ground, the Voices of Lee and Gordon Mote. I knew Gordon has a new CD out, so part of my reason for going to this show was to hear him and get the CD. Gordon told the audience he was working through some laryngitis, but you'd hardly been able to tell. Gordon did the title track of the new release "Don't Let Me Miss The Glory"(which earned a standing ovation), "Adoration", backed as on the CD by the wonderful Voices of Lee, and always crowd-pleasing favorite "Old Gospel Ship", where he cuts loose on piano. But country radio, listen up: Gordon has a potential smash hit on his hands with the song "Wake Up Dancin". I heard this song about a year and a half ago as a demo on one of Mark Lowry's website shows, and I told Gordon then I thought this song could do big things. I'm glad he recorded this one...we'll see what happens.
The fun continues for Southern Gospel fans with the SoGospelNews.com Fan Festival. I'll report on one of those concerts in the coming week.
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