Weekend Cultural Fest at UCI Catches Fire Choir : Show: The 7-year-old ensemble, whose popularity has soared, will perform excerpts from its stage musical, ‘Voices,’ at the event.

The Fire Choir started modestly enough, performing free gospel music concerts at senior centers and nursing homes during the holidays.

But now, 7 years old, the ensemble counts 105 singers on its membership roster and has created a full-length stage musical, “Voices,” that ran for four months last year at the Embassy Theatre in Los Angeles and will go on a national tour in the fall.

Five members of the choir will perform Sunday on the second and final day of the Kaleidoscope Festival in UC Irvine’s Aldrich Park. The festival, back for the first time since its 1989 debut, will offer a multicultural mix of more than 100 performances by about 30 groups, along with ethnic food booths and exhibits and an “international marketplace.”

The Fire Choir will do excerpts from “Voices,” a revue of black musical history. In two sets, at 12:30 and 1:45 p.m., the singers will portray such Golden Age performers as Louis Jordan, Lena Horne, Nat “King” Cole and Sam Cooke.

Maurice Kitchen, the ensemble’s artistic director, said the choir has its roots in “old show business--good singing, pacing and dynamics.” There is a theatrical bent to the group’s performances: “We tell the performers that the lyric is the script, so treat it like that, instead of just singing.”

Most of the members are professional musicians who work their Fire Choir engagements around other gigs, which include backing such stars as Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and Anita Baker on tour and in the studio. That accounts for the big membership roster; Kitchen and founding director Windy Barnes usually pull together ensembles of up to 15 for the choir’s frequent performances.

The Fire Choir was started informally in 1984 with an emphasis on gospel and inspirational music as a way for musicians to “give something back to the community,” Kitchen said. Every year, however, the group was invited to give more performances: From two weeks at Christmas, the choir added shows during the week of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, then during all of Black History Month. “People started getting wind of it more and more,” Kitchen said. “Now we are year-round.”

Venturing into the theatrical arena, the choir has performed “Voices” at a number of Southern California venues. All the shows, including the Embassy run, have been entirely self-produced. “We just started renting theaters and selling tickets,” Kitchen said.

The “Voices” tour will head first to San Diego and Oakland and then to the Midwest and South. Meanwhile, the choir has ventured into other kinds of new territory, including backing Michael Bolton on his hit “Time, Love and Tenderness,” with appearances in the video and on the “Tonight” and “Arsenio Hall” shows.

In addition to the Fire Choir, the Kaleidoscope Festival will feature American Indian dancers, Irish bands, traditional Vietnamese music, Chinese opera and Caribbean fire dancers among other performers. The entertainment will be continuous; special activities and projects for children also will be provided.

A cultural pavilion will house displays and demonstrations ranging from traditional Japanese tea ceremonies to Armenian lace-weaving. The food park will include at least 17 ethnic food booths, and the international marketplace will offer more than 30 vendors selling such items as craft works and musical instruments.

The Kaleidoscope Festival’s first appearance, in 1989, was the closing event of the county’s centennial celebration, and had been intended as a onetime event. But its organizers say it was such a success--it drew 28,000 people over two days--that they decided to bring it back.

As before, it is being organized by the nonprofit Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County, an umbrella group for local ethnic councils and organizations.

Kaleidoscope Festival ’91 takes place Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Aldrich Park, UC Irvine. Admission: $5 for one day, $7 for both (children under 16 free). Parking: free. Information: (714) 250-1957.