Summerland recording artists Tracy Fehr and Linnea Good met this week when they discovered that they both had been nominated for an award.

Both had their newest album chosen as finalist for the B.C. Interior Music Awards’ Gospel/Christian Album of the Year.

“It’s kind of funny competing for top Christian album,” said Good. “But, to find out one of my ‘competitors’ lived just around the corner was hilarious. So, I gave her a call.”

Fehr said, “I think it is rather neat that this award, which is supposed to be a competition for artists, actually has brought two competing artists together! It is so good when artists can work together strengthening community.”

The BCIM Awards were held this past weekend in Kelowna. Corey Doak emerged the winner in the Gospel/Christian category.

Good and Fehr moved to Summerland within the last decade, and both have attempted to balance a successful performance career with a commitment to their young families. 

Fehr is a classically-trained singer who blends operatic numbers with jazzy spirituals and original compositions.

She performs frequently as soloist and with an Okanagan chamber music ensemble, Masterworks Ensemble, and has been involved in many benefit concerts in the Okanagan including two upcoming performances in Vernon and Kelowna in November to benefit a local initiative in restorative justice. 

In December, Fehr will be performing with the Okanagan Symphony Orchestra as guest soprano in A Piping Hot Christmas.  

Earlier this year, Fehr toured North Africa and the UK, promoting A Song for Hope, a sponsorship project for single moms, through concerts, an operatic concert at the British Embassy in Tunisia, and an interview and performance on Maria Toth’s Women to Women morning radio show in London.  

The release of Fehr’s CD, Over My Head, met with two nominations from the Canadian Gospel Music Association’s Covenant Awards last month. 

The album, a fusion of classical, jazz and Middle Eastern influences, was recorded in Kelowna at Big Audio Productions with many outstanding musicians from the Okanagan collaborating on the project.

Good’s new album, Momentary Saints, launched at the Dream Cafe last year, is also a contender for the BCIM award’s top music venue and owned by Summerlanders Pierre Couture and Debra Rice.

An album of “spirituality mid-stream,” it spans Good’s repertoire in the contemporary folk genre with Celtic folk-tunes, a Latin gospel number, a poem by Rilke and a slam-dunk lampoon of church choir politics.

She and her drummer-spouse, David Jonsson, tour throughout North America, sometimes with their three children, Patrick, Nicole and Isaac, performing in concert, leading in services and giving seminars in the area of multigenerational worship.

Good frequently sings with children in schools and fairs in the Okanagan.

“Unlike other categories of music awards,” said Good, “this Christian one is about the content or the intention of the music, rather than one genre. So, what we have here is Tracy with her classical-plus performance, Corey Doak with his adult soft-rock and me with my contemporary folk. That makes it a pretty interesting competition.”