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Top artists in town for music week by Cindy Stephen Hey, Toronto! Thanks for the chance to host Canada’s most meaningful music award show, the annual Covenant Awards, for four years in a row. We know you hosted it for 27 years and you thought you’d try it out west for a year or two. But you had to know that Calgary doesn’t do things half way. We put on a pretty great program during GMA (Gospel Music Association) Canada Week and a super splashy awards show for the Covenant Awards. We’re just thrilled and so are fans of Canada’s premier Christian artists. Their support has helped jet this country’s gospel greats to a new level of excellence and global exposure. "We’ve had a huge buy-in from the public and from the artist community," said Leroy Harder, executive director of GMA Canada and producer of the Grammy-quality Covenant Awards. "As a committee in Calgary, we said to the GMA Canada board, ‘Here’s the radio, here’s the venue, here’s the support, here’s the production value – so many things. There’s a whole team in Calgary willing to make GMA Canada Week and the Covenant Awards work.’ " Harder said that the move west has helped jump start Canada’s gospel music industry.
"It’s like sticking 220 volts in it and saying, hey, let’s go. Artists like Carolyn Arends, Starfield, Brian Doerksen and Steve Bell started coming back when it moved to Calgary. It’s a brand new day," he said. The change has also renewed enthusiasm among Christian radio stations across Canada to host local talent competitions to discover fresh new singers and musicians. "The local competitions are becoming a central clearing place for artists who really want to make it happen," he said. This added exposure has resulted in more musicians sending in material for consideration and more artists, who may not be able to afford to travel to Calgary for the event, to have their way paid. One of the many artists to come out of GMA Canada Week is 18-year-old Jared Salte of Sherwood Park, a virtual overnight sensation. A finalist at last year’s Cross Canada Talent Search, Jared was "discovered" and whisked away to Nashville where he won first place in a vocal category this summer at the prestigious Immerse competition. Salte was happy with the accolades he received but a bit surprised. "Some of the stuff in my music I thought they (the judges) wouldn’t get in Christian music. I mean, musically, it was all over the place. Not your three minute and 30 second pop song. I thought they would get lost," he said. His father Arlen Salte, a Canadian gospel music pioneer, said the reviews in Nashville were startling. "Jared’s not going to tell you this, but they said he’s a musical genius. They haven’t been excited about anything like this in the last 15 years," said Arlen proudly. This is the first year that there have been nominees from every province across Canada. Ontario and B.C. have the most nominees this year, with Alberta coming in third with 14 per cent of the nominees. Artists will be arriving from across the country for GMA Canada Week, Oct. 20 to 23, playing for the public at churches and performing halls in Calgary, as well as Lethbridge and Claresholm. GMA Canada Week festivities will culminate Oct. 23 with the Covenant Awards at First Alliance Church. Workshops, concerts and ticket information are posted on the website at www.gmacanada.ca. A total of 50 Covenant Awards will be handed out in 2009. Following are the general category nominees:
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