The highly acclaimed Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir bring their unique soulful groove to the St Martin’s stage, presenting an invigorating programme of live gospel and soul.

Gospel music is a wonder of the world, a blend of authentic Spirit-filled praise, artistic greatness and sheer musical emotion. A product of the horror of trans-Atlantic slavery, gospel music is inseparable from the Christian gospel, both being stories of hope and beauty stemming from suffering and abuse. Meanwhile gospel music lies at the core of all African-American music and has thereby reached every cultural corner of the world, secular as well as sacred.

In A Brief History of Gospel Music, Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir tells this story in twelve songs, interspersed by brief texts prepared for the occasion under the guidance of Robert Marovich. Beginning with the sounds of West Africa and their synthesis into antebellum Spirituals, the evening’s programme consists of archetypes of the genre’s evolution – from the Jubilee era from 1870, the jazz/blues fusion from 1930, the “Golden Age” of 1940-1960, the civil rights and soul era from 1960, the popular era from 1980 and the urban era from 2000.

Soul Sanctuary Gospel Choir is a London-based gospel choir committed to creating and performing contemporary gospel of the highest standard as widely as possible, especially in the places where gospel’s power to raise the human spirit is most needed. Author and radio host Robert Marovich is the founder and editor of the Chicago-based “Journal of Gospel Music” and is one of the world’s premier authorities on gospel music.

Please note this performance will last for approximately 60 minutes without an interval.

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