The Battlefords Kiwanis Music Festival Committee thanks all the children and youth who submitted beautiful and creative image ideas for the Battlefords Music Festival program cover contest. Cover winner Alana Olsen, with her remarkable pencil drawing of a keyboard, is a Grade 5 student from Ratushniak Elementary School in Maidstone.
Additional images being used within the pages of the program recognize some Grade 8 students from St. Vital School (Kayanah Elias, Cassy Kuttai, Breah Weber and Avery Fransoo), Grade 5 EMBM student Jade Mensa and Grade 6 Maidstone student Lauren Potratz. After final touches during the printing process, there may be more names added to this list. Congratulations to all of you. We will feature many of the submitted drawings at festival venues. Look for them to be featured at entrances and on the walls where festival activities are taking place. Make sure to take the time to view the range of creative images when you attend festival sessions.
Over the course of the last few Festival Fanfare columns, I have been introducing adjudicators who will travel this year to the Battlefords to support and judge our local budding musicians. You have met the speech arts adjudicator, Gaye-Lynn Kern, the strings adjudicator, Kim de Laforest, and the piano adjudicator, Mark Turner. Dovetailing the end of piano sessions dates we will begin vocal sessions with the vocal adjudicator, Michele Hupaelo.
Hupaelo is a voice and piano teacher in Saskatoon. In 1996 she founded the Cecilian Singers, but retired from the position of artistic director in the spring of 2011. She is a member of the Saskatoon branch of the Saskatchewan Registered Music Teachers' Association (SRMTA) and the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS) and has been an adjudicator for the Saskatchewan Music Festival Association for many years.
Hupaelo obtained an Associate of the Royal Conservatory (ARCT) in piano pedagogy and a Trinity College Licentiate (LTCL) that recognizes completion of a full-time undergraduate course in piano performance. She received the gold medal for the highest mark in Canada for her ARCT in vocal performance. She is kept busy with her teaching and role as accompanist.
With all entries organized and finalized, we can announce firm festival schedule dates. Speech Arts will begin the festival running from March 7 to 9. String sessions will be held for one day March 9. Piano runs for three days March 10 to 12 followed by five days of voice March 13 to 17. Band entries will wind up events March 20 and 21. The celebratory gala and awards ceremony will be held March 23 at Third Avenue United Church.
The $7 printed program will be available at Sobeys after Feb. 24. Shortly before that date keep your eyes open around town for posters summarizing the festival schedule's dates, disciplines, times and locations.
"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
