The longest-running annual festival on the Sunshine Coast is set this month to expand beyond its time-honoured tradition of adjudicated performances by multigenerational participants.
The Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts, which marked its half-century mark last year, will co-present public concerts and a series of workshops for local musicians.
“As we launch into the festival’s next half-century, we’re reflecting on what we’ve learned from the example of past organizers and participants,” said Sarah Lowis, who has been president of the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts since 2020. The festival is entirely volunteer-led, including discipline specialists who recruit the professional artists that provide written and interactive instruction to registrants.
“More and more, we see the festival as a chance to enrich the whole community, not just the performers who directly benefit from adjudicator feedback,” added Lowis. “So we’re working with partners to present one of B.C.’s finest emerging pianists in Sechelt, and bringing one of our country’s top fiddlers to Gibsons. Those concerts — plus specialized workshops and of course our publicly-accessible adjudicated sessions — are a reminder of what lies at the heart of the performing arts: appreciation, interaction and growth.”
The core of the festival constitutes nine days of prepared performances in live disciplines ranging from folk instrumental to dramatic arts. Members of the public can attend and witness adjudicators’ feedback at St. Hilda’s Anglican Church in Sechelt, beginning Tuesday, April 8 with baroque piano repertoire.
Keyboard performances will be adjudicated by Vancouver music educator Torey Zachary (coincidentally also an accomplished ceramicist). In 2022, Zachary founded a Practice-a-Thon event to raise money for humanitarian relief in Ukraine. Her students raised more than $7,000.
The scores of young pianists will be followed by a day dedicated to instrumental folk music and two days of pieces played on cello, violin and viola.
Meanwhile, a four-time provincial champion fiddler — Mike Sanyshyn, traveling from his home community of Cloverdale — will be the featured headliner at a fiddle concert at Davis Bay Community Hall on April 11. Sanyshyn, a third-generation fiddler, will also serve as the festival’s folk adjudicator.
Two local fiddle groups, the Coast String Fiddlers and the Harmony Hall Fiddlers and Friends, are scheduled to perform as part of the April 11 program. The next day, a folk instrumental workshop will take place at the same venue.
At St. Hilda’s on Monday, April 14, the festival’s bowed strings adjudicator — Dutch-born Arthur Arnold, founder of Powell River’s Pacific Region International Summer Music festival and academy — will lead an orchestra workshop for members of the Coast Messiah Orchestra, with members of the public invited to observe.
On April 23, soloists and seven choirs will perform and receive feedback from George Roberts, a composer and Capilano University music professor. A full day follows dedicated to bands, woodwinds and brass. Walter Martella, the conductor of the Powell River Academy of Music (himself a trumpet soloist and jazz pianist who has recorded six albums) will adjudicate performances that include perennial festival favourite Paul Pedlar playing cornet.
A morning of speech and dramatic arts is scheduled for April 25 as junior, intermediate and adult performers recite poetry and enact theatrical monologues. An eight-season veteran of Bard on the Beach, Luisa Jojic, is scheduled to provide adjudications. Jojic has also performed with the National Arts Centre and dozens of other theatre and film projects. She will lead a workshop for participants and public drop-ins at midday.
The month-long celebration of live arts is closely linked to the Coastal Dance Festival, which takes place at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons on April 12 and 13. Professional dancer and instructor (as well as credentialed yoga instructor) Katherine Robidoux will be visiting the Coast to adjudicate numbers from participating studios.
On May 4, a two-time winner of the BC Provincial Performing Arts Festival will visit Sechelt for a recital organized by the Sunshine Coast Registered Music Teachers. Hamilton Lau, described by CBC as one of “30 Hot Canadian Classical Musicians Under 30,” will be onstage at the Raven’s Cry Theatre as part of a seven-concert provincial tour.
The festival concludes on May 10 with a highlights concert at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons.
Youth participants in the festival compete for dozens of prizes and scholarships, as well as an opportunity to represent the Sunshine Coast at the provincial level. This year’s BC Provincial Festival takes place in Victoria in early June.
Full listings of events, performers and admission particulars are available online at coastfestival.com and coastaldancefestival.com.
