Located across from the C-Train line on the corner of 7th Avenue and 1st Street Southwest is one of Calgary’s most unique and intimate music venues. In the last ten years, Central United Church, originally built in 1904, has hosted events by the Calgary Folk Music Festival and Sled Island featuring a diverse range of artists including Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Low, and Calgary local Chad VanGaalen.
Kathy Seibel, music, worship and communications director, and office administrator Colleen Robarts are thrilled to see the church being used as a music venue and hope to see it utilized even more in the future. “We are a great venue for concerts,” says Robarts, “and when people get in they realize it.”
Though it’s not the only church in town to host concerts, Seibel says Central United Church is unique due to its gathered-circle seating, “most of the venues are the cathedral type churches like Knox, they are all on straight rows and everything is focused to the front and if you’re about past 8 or 10 rows you’re not really seeing anything so this venue works much better for that.”
The unique seating, combined with beautiful painted glass windows, provides an ethereal atmosphere that lends itself well to live performances. “It’s an intimate feel,” says Robarts, “and more comfortable. That’s the one feedback that I get a lot from these concerts.”
Music, Seibel believes, has the power to bring people from different walks of life together: “People have a visceral reaction to music, you go to concerts and there are reasons why you like certain types of music: it kind of feeds you somehow.”
Hosting concerts and events outside the scope of regular church services has allowed for people who may feel reserved about entering a church, perhaps due to fear of being struck down by lightning, to appreciate and experience the historical building. “It removes a barrier that they might have had before,” says Seibel, “and by offering different types of music it shows that, just because we have an old building, does not mean that we’re old.”
Every Sunday the church holds a recovery service, for people struggling with various afflictions including alcohol and drug addictions, featuring a blues-gospel band called The Cracked Pots. The band blends popular songs by rock and pop artists with gospel and blues music, creating an open and inviting environment. “The music helps people feel okay being in an environment that they may not feel okay being in necessarily and I think it energizes people.”
You can see The Cracked Pots performing at the church every Sunday evening and you can keep an eye out for upcoming events, including the Calgary Folk Music Festival’s Charlie Brown Christmas which the church will be hosting for the third year in a row. For more information, you can visit the church website at centralchurch.ca.
Originally published in Oh the Humanity, issue one, a 24-page magazine made at SAIT in 2017, reported, photographed, and laid out solo.