The Weyburn Public Library will kick off Saskatchewan Library Week on October 16th with a concert by Dan Cugnet.

With four albums of original music so far, Cugnet is a two-time SCMA nominee who made his performance debut in the spring of 2022. He also opened up for Tenille Arts and the Hunter Brothers at the Young Fellows of Weyburn's Centennial Celebration in June of 2022.

Adult Programmer with the Weyburn Public Library, Krista Klemmer, said the success of another concert at their venue is part of what spurred this next show.

"One of the first concerts that happened here was the Regina Symphony Orchestra, and they actually approached us about doing that concert," she shared. "I'd never even considered something like that, and then we had, like, 100 people signed up, so there was no way we could do it down in the Allie [Griffin Auditorium]. So we decided to set up the upstairs in the mezzanine area to have that concert, and that opened it up and opened my eyes to the fact that we can have big concerts like that in the library and have it take over the entire library."

"So the turnout was amazing for that, it was absolutely incredible. I was blown away by the amount of people that came for that one. It was difficult to count the number of people with how many we had up there," she noted.

Since that concert was such a hit, she said someone suggested they invite Dan Cugnet to perform for Saskatchewan Library Week.

"After I looked at the things he's been doing, I was like, 'there's no way he's going to do this'," she commented. "I reached out anyway, because you never know, right? And he agreed to come to a concert for us. I'm so excited for that. We got the Saskatchewan Library Association grant, so that really helps us to be able to do things during Sask Library Week, and he's going to be performing on Monday, October 16th at 6:30 p.m."

Klemmer said Cugnet seems to be in tune with supporting the local community in this way, and she noted he will be making himself available to chat with the audience after the show.

"That's something that we love in our programs. If you're teaching about music, you're also teaching about the story of the song, you're educating people on how the song was written. I'm really excited to learn about his process a little bit, because it is library week, so we are focusing on literacy, learning, and stuff, and it's not just the music. There's also those aspects of it too, that I'm pretty sure he'll be sharing."

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