Sidloski highlights successes for 64th annual Rotary Music Festival

After a couple of weeks of performances throughout the month of March which were subject to adjudication, the 64th Annual Rotary Club of Weyburn's Music Festival came to a close with the Stars of the Festival on March 29th.

Venues for the various performances of band instruments, piano, vocal, and spoken word included the T.C. Douglas Centre, Cugnet Centre / Weyburn Comprehensive School, Legacy Park Elementary School, and Assiniboia Park Elementary School. 

Committee President Heather Sidloski said they were also able to have performances at Cugnet Centre from students at St. Michael School, who have a new band teacher now, Jeff lundy.

"He's doing wonderful things with the kids and rebuilding the music program there, and in fact, his performance by his grade eight got the best performance by band," she shared.

"We're also excited that Brayden Jensen has taken over as band teacher at the Comp, and he has done amazing things. He had 127 grade sevens up there, which is almost unfathomable, but he just does a wonderful job,  his jazz band and his honour band and it was great, and then he had a couple of ensembles." 

Holly Butz, noted Sidloski, was also, "a very busy woman because she had the senior choir. She also had the Legacy Park, both for band and vocal."

She said the older students at LPES had rhythm instruments and recorders.

"You know it takes a very talented person to make recorders sound as beautiful as a clarinet, but that's what they did. They performed twice, so the first time that was mostly singing with just maybe a couple of drums or something. But then on the band instrument days, then they had xylophones they had drums, they had recorders. They had shakers. She did a really, really, really wonderful job with it. I mean, I think her average size of group was like close to 80 kids of elementary students. And she basically accompanied them by herself."

Kendra Gonczy over at APES, she shared, in addition to being able to convince all the teachers to help their students memorize spoken word pieces, also had her maestro hands full.

"She had a number of kids that sang in a couple of classes, and then she also had the instrumental where they did recorders and drums and ukuleles and the whole works."

"Every grade did a choral speaking piece. So we had a whole morning at Assiniboia Park, it was just lovely and seeing those kids like enunciate those poems and with so much energy," Sidloski commented. "And they were excited to perform for their parents. There were lots of parents in the audience. It was really good, really good."

The adjudicators were much appreciated by everyone, with Chris MacRae from the University of Regina serving as vocal adjudicator. "The kids loved him, like, he just connected to the kids."  

The band adjudicator Gilles Turcotte from Saskatoon, she said, had a lot of helpful comments for the students. 

"Our piano adjudicator, Sarah Konecsni from Regina, a very accomplished musician and composer. She has, in fact, some of her new compositions are in the New Royal Conservatory series that just came out this year. So she's very accomplished and very helpful. All of our adjudicators were really top notch."

Individual performances also showcased those focused on music not only in school, but in their personal lives.

"There's a lot of individuals in our community that are very talented musicians that put a lot of time in both piano and and and vocal," noted Sidloski.

"We have one Lindsay Van der Weyer, she's working on her ARCT for piano, which is like the highest level of Royal Conservatory, and Kiera Meinke is in a fairly high grade of Royal Conservatory," she shared. "Then we have a lot of new pianists coming up, which is really great because it always goes in a wave. You have a bunch of seniors that graduate, well, now we have a whole bunch of new and middle ones. So it's really lots of junior performers." 

She said Weyburn and surrounding area has quite a few excellent piano teachers, but our community can always use more. 

Interestingly, memorization is part of most performances.

"You certainly get higher marks if it's memorized," noted Sidloski. "It's not actually required unless you're going to compete at a provincial level then it is required. But it's the polish that needs to happen for festival and I would say probably 99 percent of everything was memorized. Instrumentalwill have their music. So that's a little different, and their accompanists of course have music."

She said the the acoustics at the T.C. Douglas Centre's acoustics is always a treat, and she thanked Travis Sonnenberg for helping with the sound system out of kindness. 

Awards were handpicked by the adjudicators, as were the performers for the Stars of the Festival.

"You can think something and your teacher can think something, but this is another perspective. The thing with music, it's like art in that there's certain things that are kind of standards. So in music, of course it's the rhythm and those kinds of things. But then to have an outside interpretation, you may not agree with it, but it will make your music fuller because there's another perspective. In piano, you know, there was lots of feedback on how you sit at the piano, how you lean over the keys, how your fingers work, how do you get those triplets in time."

"Even in in the voice, they gave a lot of feedback on how to support your range and your high notes with your breath and how to breathe, expand your rib cage. All those kinds of things, and same with in the band, how do you make that reed not squeak? Well, it's coming from down in your diaphragm and things like that. So yeah, very helpful information for kids."

Sidloski thanked her board, as well as the schools for being accommodating and welcoming.

"I also really want to thank all the teachers and the accompanists because it's a ton of work. People have no idea how much work goes into some of those performances. And you can't have a festival if you don't have kids interested."

She also thanked the Rotary Club of Weyburn as a major sponsor, and "Whitecap Resources also helps us keep our entry fees low and Barber motors recognizing our past music teachers with this year being the recognition of Mr. Cleo Coderre."

She added they couldn't do it all without their numerous volunteers, and of course, the patrons.

"People were very generous with their donations, and so we were very thankful for that because those donations then help us keep the cost of our entry."

"People would throw in 20s, or 10s or fives or coins or whatever, and so even at the Stars, we used to always charge them nominal admission to cover, but no, people were extremely generous, and I think that just speaks to Weyburn, and that we have a very, very supportive arts community and I think pretty much all of the adjudicators commented on that, that they could tell that you know music is very much supported in our community." 

She added Weyburn has one of the lowest costs of entry for music festivals, "so kids can enter more and more kids can enter."

Find the music festival on Facebook HERE.

Submitted photo courtesy of APES parent Jason Stadnyk, taken during the Stars of the Festival.

Find additional photos taken during school performances in the related article link below.