London Community Gospel Choir(LCGC), the first black community choir in Britain

London Community Gospel Choir(LCGC), the first black community choir in Britain, will continue to hold music concerts throughout this whole year - in Paris, York, Essex, Dublin, London and various other cities around the world.

During May the concerts are planned to be held on the 15th in St Mary's Church, Dedham, Essex, and on the 18th in Newbury Spring Festival.

The LCGS will also hold a special fundraising event, Midsummer's Ball on Friday 18 June, to celebrate the end of its 21st anniversary year. The funds raised through this ball will be used to refurbish its academy of gospel music, The Arts Factory. This will help to develop the talent of future generations of gospel singers and musicians. Through this ball, it is hoped that £250,000 will be raised for the facility. Media, arts, and sports celebrities will also be attending to help LCGC's fundraising.

LCGC was established in 1982 under the joint efforts of three young black men, Bazil Meade, Delroy Powell and Lawrence Johnson .

Before this there had only been American-originated gospel choir music, and those who were musically-talented had flourished only in black-led churches, and it was very hard for black-led gospel music to spread into the wider community due to the high racial tension between blacks and whites.

LCGC became the first black community choir in Britain, bringing together talented young Christian musicians and singers from different denominations. LCGC explains, "we were formed from those who were passionate about their faith and were willing to take gospel music into venues that many churches at that time dared not enter."

Meade, one of the founders of LCGC comments, "The idea of an inter-denominational choir was something totally new to the church community. A few church leaders felt threatened by it. It took a while before we were able to convince them that we were not forming a new church and stealing their young people away! We knew this was a vision that God had given us and that inspired us to keep going despite the controversy which surrounded us, " he added.

The choir made a noticeable sucess in their first public apperance on the Christmas edition of Channel Four's 'Black on Black', and continued to move on from their debut performance with a hugely sucessful gathering a Kensington Temple of over a thousand people. In its first year, LCGC grew from sixty to one hundred and ten members from forty Christian churches.

So far LCGC has performed not only in churches, but also anywhere which needs gospel, such as prisons, clubs, schools, on TV and radio. It even expanded to touring venues in other foriegn countries, such as Holland, Denmark, and Sweden.