Monterey Peninsula Gospel Community Choir delivers transcendent music.

In March of 2012, the century-old First Baptist Church of Pacific Grove hosted a concert presented by the Monterey Peninsula Gospel Community Choir. At one divine moment, guest singers and pastors traded verse after verse of Hezekiah Walker’s slow-building “Grateful,” a simple song with an undeniable refrain of “Grateful, grateful, grateful, grateful!” with chords shifting higher, the backing choir growing louder, the whole joint swaying, audience members fanning themselves with church fans while the music swirled and enveloped them.

That’s not an unusual day at the office for this community choir.

MPGCC is led by music maestro John Nash, 59, who grew up in Seaside, born into and raised in Greater Victory Temple Church, where his mother sang in the choir and his father is, today, chair of the board.

After excelling as a choir singer and director, then meeting, working and singing with the gospel greats including Edwin Hawkins, Rev. James Cleveland, Thomas A. Dorsey, Dr. Mattie Moss Clark and others, Nash was commissioned to put together a community-based gospel group to perform at the 2007 Monterey Gospel Festival. They lit up the Fairgrounds’ Garden stage.

Nash was living in Washington, D.C. at the time and went back to resume his life. But a handful of the people who saw his ad hoc group perform wouldn’t let it end there. They approached Nash about keeping the group going.

Dr. Peter Silzer, a professor of Indonesian language at the Defense Language Institute, was one of them.

“I’m Anglo, an older guy, raised on Protestant church music, Bach and Handel,” Silzer says. “But gospel helps [the] spirit side of me.”

As for the fans: “They were persistent,” Nash says. And effective.

They formed the choir as a nonprofit, an educational institution teaching, through performance, about a history and culture that happens to be overwhelmingly Christian and predominantly black.

They rehearse twice a month at Monterey Peninsula College. They sing at churches, parks, civic institutions, weddings (including this writer’s wedding), convalescent homes and businesses. This Saturday they’re singing at the Marina branch of the Monterey County Free Libraries in honor of Black History Month. For their 10-year celebration concert in September, they would like to get Golden State Theatre.

Nash now lives in Houston, works as a flight attendant, and is involved in other choirs and gospel workshops, but even from afar he and the others – especially co-director David Wells – keep MPGCC going with donations, grants, dues, volunteer toil, and constant communication via texts and emails.

“It has worked for 10 years,” he says.

The group is diverse. If they had a theme song, it would be the exuberant shout-along called “Rainbow.”

“We’ve had people from Italy, from the African diaspora, Hispanics, Japanese, Vietnamese, South Korean, just unbelievable,” Nash says. They count teachers, correctional workers and an Esalen Institute masseuse as members. Some are religious, some aren’t. They are mostly local, but come from as far away as Sacramento to be part of this thing. The roster climbs up to 80, but the performance group numbers 40. They are almost all untrained.

“We would never deny anyone,” Nash says. “These are people just off the street. We have several tone-deaf people. [Laughs]. In 10 years, you get brilliant people and you get, as my friend would say, people who are working it out.”

And wherever they go, they put gospel music on blast. (View a Weekly video of the choir with this story online.)

Keyboardist Antoine Cameron can make a piano sing. One man – older, one of the originals who recently moved away – sang with the bearing of a heated Martin Luther King, Jr. sermon. The women in the group seem the most cohesive, showing up at events together, but onstage everyone gets in sync.

When Nash is conducting them, he uses his whole body, dancing as if he’s swimming and splashing in the music. The singers’ eyes remain locked on him because he may suddenly turn to them and throw a hand up for a reprise of a chorus. When they get warmed up and their music gets going, the rhythm section chugging away, everyone clapping, it becomes apparent why gospel music is a vehicle for deliverance and exaltation.

Even nonbelievers get to shout.

“It’s like when you go to a Broadway show and say, ‘Wow, I wish I could be part of that.’ Well, you can!” Nash says. “Some [members] say they look forward to the end of their week, singing gospel, because it takes them to another place.”

This is one choir that can take its audience there, too.

MONTEREY PENINSULA GOSPEL COMMUNITY CHOIR performs 1pm Saturday, Feb. 11, at Marina Public Library, 190 Seaside Circle, Marina. Free. www.mpgospelcc.org.