Takoma Regional Hospital and the Niswonger Performing Arts Center played host Tuesday night to the popular and well known Ernie Haase and Signature Sound gospel music group.

Attended by some 600 people, the NPAC concert was the highlight of the seventh annual Takoma Regional Hospital Foundation fundraising event.

The Foundation will use proceeds from this year's event toward upgrading mammography equipment at the hospital, according to a spokesman.

A Fujifilm full-field digital mammography unit was installed at Takoma early this month.

Upgrading digital mammography equipment at the hospital will allow physicians and clinicians to use less radiation, while also capturing images that allow for finer discrimination and better interpretation, explained Lindy Riley, Foundation director.

According to Dr. Raymond Kohne, the hospital's medical director of radiology, "This new equipment is important because it enables us to see the tissue underneath the breast and will help us save more lives."

Dr. Kohne added. "We want the best possible images because our patient's lives are in our hands, and this new machine will provide that."

Daniel Wolcott, who last summer became president and CEO of the hospital, welcomed the audience, and thanked sponsors of the benefit concert and all others who were attending.

Noting that he had now been at Takoma for 100 days, he said that he and his wife had been very impressed with the town and how welcoming local people had been to his family, which includes four children.

He added that he and his wife already love the community and feel very much at home here.

Wolcott also spoke briefly about technological advances at the hospital.

He explained that Takoma is a pilot hospital within the Wellmont Hospital system for Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE), and is one of the most advanced facilities in the nation in this technique.

Traditionally, physicians' instructions for treatment of patients have been handwritten.

CPOE is seen as a more accurate and thus safer means of getting physicians' orders concerning patients' treatment into the hospital record system.

As the concert progressed, it quickly became clear that a great many of those attending were already very familar with the Ernie Haase and Signature Sound group.

The group is known for "combining 21st-century ideas with the timeless quality of great quartets from the 1950s," according to a news release, which went on to add that Ernie Haase and Signature Sound "has built a devoted following of fans who are inspired by the group's unconventional approach to communicating their Christian faith."

The group's founder and leader, Haase, was a longtime member of the famous Cathedral Quartet.

After the Cathedrals bid farewell to their five-decade platform in the music industry, Haase's passion for gospel music led him to begin a new era in gospel music.

At times the concert became very interactive, through the use by group members and audience members of small LED flashlights.

The first 500 people to enter the NPAC for the concert were given the small lights to use for this purpose, and from time to time the audience was asked to wave the lights in response to the group members' doing the same.

Some of the most powerful musical numbers, including a couple of patriotic pieces, came in the second half of the program,

At the end of the concert, the audience gave the group an extended standing ovation.

Riley noted that, in a departure from tradition, VIP ticket-holders for the benefit event were invited to attend a reception with the singing group prior to the concert rather than afterwards.