Friday
5:55 PM National Anthem
The Thompson Community Singers start the bill; everyone will eventually end up onstage together.
11:50 AM Gospel Warm-up with Betty McDaniel
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Although Atlanta-based LaShun Pace and her siblings, known professionally as the Anointed Pace Sisters, began traveling the Pentecostal revival circuit as children, it wasn’t until the release of her first solo album, 1991’s He Lives, that she emerged as a major force in contemporary gospel music. (Her fourth record, Just Because God Said It, came out on Savoy in May.) Her influence was such that one track from the debut, the powerhouse “I Know I’ve Been Changed”–an a cappella performance with the choir from Atlanta’s Cathedral of Faith Church of God in Christ–almost single-handedly spurred a renewal of interest in a cappella congregation-style singing. But Pace can do more than just down-home stuff: her electrifying vocal style combines earthy revival-tent moaning and shouting with the multioctave, melismatic virtuosity of Aretha Franklin or Vanessa Bell Armstrong and the improvisational daring of Ella Fitzgerald.
1:05 PM Allegro Metro Mass Choir of the Gospel Music Workshop
3:40 PM Maranatha Revival Choir
