Allison Crowe Brings Tidings 2011 from St. John's to Victoria

It's coming on the season to celebrate with one of the great voices in popular music.


Expect plenty of rocking holiday cheer, laced with overtones of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles and more when Allison Crowe delivers "Tidings". The 2011 edition of Crowe's annual holiday favourite begins in St. John's, NL, the eastern terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway, and wraps in Victoria, BC, the western terminus.

The internationally-acclaimed musician, born on Vancouver Island, and home in Newfoundland for years now, stirs together traditional Christmas carols and holiday favourites with an organic blend of rock, jazz, folk, gospel and soul. "Be prepared to be amazed," chimes ChristmasReviews.com Longtime NPR broadcaster Ross Hocker calls Allison Crowe's show, "The most honest, heartfelt, and directly intimate concert in my entire life."

Italian radio calls Allison Crowe "Una voce incredibile per una forza della natura."

As a performing artist, Crowe is akin, in ways, to the late, great, Swedish power-house soprano, Birgit Nilsson, about whom it's said "No record or CD could quite prepare a listener for the real thing, live in the opera house".

Tidings is Allison Crowe's melding of the sacred and secular in "songs of the season" and spirit. Some of the music is familiar repertoire, delivered in singular style. Some is not like anything customarily heard in a holiday-time concert.

Tidings viscerally surveys a musical terrain of carols - It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, In the Bleak Midwinter, What Child Is This, First Noel, Silent Night, O Holy Night - performed with rare artistry and passion, and emotive arrangements, alongside the modern canon of Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Lennon/McCartney+, and Allison Crowe's original songs, (including the just-composed "Arthur", and the epic "Disease"), that draw on themes of faith, hope, sorrow, joy, redemption, transcendence and more from life's well.

First staged in 2003, Tidings is an exciting experience shared by music-lovers around the world. This holiday season, Allison Crowe, with some very special musical guests, brings Tidings to:

St. John's, NL - D.F. Cook Recital Hall - November 25

Corner Brook, NL - First United Church - December 2

Nanaimo, BC - St. Andrew's United Church - December 10 - Featuring: Christopher Wood; Raymond Salgado; Kiana Smith; Kaleigh Hargrove; Taylor Manns; Emily Blake & Guests to aid The Mind's Eye + Woodlands SS Band and Basketball programs

Vancouver, BC - St. Jame's Hall - December 11 - Featuring guest artist: Juniper Watters

Campbell River, BC - St. Peter's Anglican Church - Dec. 15 - Featuring: The Campbell River Childrens Choir with Director Barbara Prowse to aid Campbell River Hospice Society & CR Food Bank

Victoria, BC - Fairfield United Church - Dec. 17 (NB a shift from original date of Dec. 9) - Featuring guest artists: Haley Walker; & Billie Woods to aid Artemis Place, (girls' educational and life-skills), and HepCBC

On Thursday, December 22, you can join Allison Crowe in her birth-place of Nanaimo, B.C. for the "Light Up a Life" Sing-along - part of the campaign for Haven Society organized by the Old City Quarter Merchants.

Full details of the "Tidings" concerts and sing-along will be posted @ allisoncrowe.com