Jun
23
3:00 PM15:00

Zoar Poland Mission Benefit Concert: Featuring Marv & Rindy Ross, John Nilsen, and The Prairie Blossoms

Zoar Poland Mission Benefit Concert, featuring Marv & Rindy Ross, John Nilsen and The Prairie Blossoms

Marv & Rindy Ross are the singer/songwriter duo who founded Seafood Mama, Quarterflash, and The Trail Band. Oregon natives, they are best known for their five top-forty songs with Quarterflash including their #3 hit, Harden My Heart.

After a decade in the eighties of gold and platinum records and extensive touring with acts like Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, and Jefferson Starship, the Rosses moved back to Oregon and created The Trail Band - a brass and string folk ensemble that has released thirteen CDs and has toured internationally, including a rare two-week series of appearances in North Korea.

Marv & Rindy also co-created the hit Artist Repertory Theater musical, The Ghosts of Celilo garnering eleven Portland-area musical theatre awards. The Rosses received the Legends" award from the Portland Music Association, were inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame, and received an Alumni Award of Excellence from their alma mater, Western Oregon University.



John Nilsen is an award-winning, delightful pianist who features elements of folk, classical and jazz. He has a warm and welcoming reparte with audiences and plays his original songs with beauty and grace and also accompanies himself on some original vocal tunes as well.

Like each of the past twenty-five years, John played two hundred and fifty performances
in 2018, most being out of Oregon. Nilsen splits his performances between touring
nationally as an in-demand pianist with a national and international presence,
performing with the John Nilsen Trio, which has toured internationally, and with John's guitar/vocal rock band, John Nilsen & SWIMFISH.

John has given back to his community by teaching songwriting residencies and
speaking to students in schools throughout the country, and locally including every
school in the West Linn/Wilsonville School District over the past twenty-five years.



The Prairie Blossoms (Karen Kitchen & Mel Kubik) perform a program of contemporary and traditional Native American music, drawing from an engaging repertoire of tribally-specific American Indian songs:  Lullabies, stomp dances, round dances, stick-game songs, planting songs, and more; using their voices, a variety of percussion instruments, and piano to share unique songs and stories

They perform in many different languages including Cree, Creek-Seminole, Cherokee, Paiute, Dakota, English, French, Lakota, Osage, Pima, Polish, Spanish, and more.

Both women were raised on the prairies of Kansas (Mel: Polish-German-American) and Oklahoma (Karen: Osage Nation), and in the midst of well-established and varied music careers, were brought together to collaborate on a small project (put together by Marv Ross) in Portland, OR in early 2000...melding Native American songs with contemporary musical arrangements, and again during the development of "Ghosts of Celilo" with Marv Ross.  They reunited in 2016, in a trio (Cedar Rose). In June of 2018, they formed The Prairie Blossoms, and immediately began work on a number of recording projects.  Their first CD, "Till the Star Rises Here was released in February 2019.  

Karen and Mel are part of the eight-person team going to Poland and, in addition to the curriculum, will be sharing Native American songs, stories, and crafts with our Polish hosts and the kids (ages 6-12) at Dziegielow English Camp in July 2019.

Advance Tickets are $20 each or $30 a pair at Zoar Lutheran Church and https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4255167 or $25 at the door.

All of the proceeds from this concert will fund this mission project.  We deeply and humbly appreciate your generous support.

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