A festival of music to inspire, enjoy and unite will be bringing in the spring season.
The Moose Jaw Music Festival will be taking place in two sections again tis year.
“The choral portion of the festival, which runs March 18 to 20 is the non-competitive, workshop format,” Moose Jaw Music Festival president Jeri Ryba told the Times-Herald. “Most of the schools have their workshops at Zion while some of them have them at their particular school.”
Ryba said there is a concert for the choirs that is open to the public on March 19 at 7 p.m. at Zion United Church with a silver collection at the door.
“The general festival begins on April 13 and runs until April 19,” Ryba said. “The festival finale will be on April 21.”
She said due to an increase in vocal entries, the festival had to add the April 13 date to accommodate all entries for this year’s festival.
“The scheduling is still taking place for the general festival,” Ryba said on the planning stages.
Ryba said the adjudicators are as follows for this year’s festival: choral — Marcia McLean of Swift Current; vocal — Phyllis Thomson of Winnipeg; band — Peter England of Saskatoon; piano — Carol Konesci of Regina; and strings — Kim de Laforest of Saskatoon.
“We will be running several ads in the paper as soon as scheduling is complete and we do have a large amount of scholarships that are given away,” Ryba said.
According to the Moose Jaw Music Festivals website, “To qualify for the scholarship competition competitors must: achieve a mark of 87 or higher in one of their classes; be performing music that is of sufficient standard; perform from memory during festival; be available to stay for the entire competition and deliberations and compete in two solo classes in the same discipline.”
“The festival is non-profit, run by volunteers — so we don't really generate revenue,” Ryba said. “We have generous donors and patrons to help sustain us.”
For more on this story pick up the next issue of the Times-Herald.
