After two weeks of live music, the longest-lived performing arts festival on the southern Sunshine Coast has reached its first rest. Starting April 8, audiences gathered almost daily at Sechelt’s St. Hilda’s Anglican Church to witness rising stars in the festival’s piano, folk, and bowed strings categories.
Meanwhile, the closely-linked Coastal Dance Festival drew dancers from three local studios to a two-day competitive lineup last weekend at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons.
The 51st Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts pauses for the Easter break before resuming next week with vocal, band, and woodwind performances.
“It’s fantastic,” said Torey Zachary, a Vancouver-based piano educator serving for the first time as a festival adjudicator. “I really appreciated that it wasn’t rushed and there was plenty of time to work with the students. I felt that the festival created a very welcoming feel for both me and the students, reducing the intimidation factor for some of the young kids just starting out.”
Zachary, who taught at Capilano University’s community music school prior to launching her own studio, offered in-depth feedback to Coast keyboardists delivering renditions of Baroque, Classical, and Romantic repertoire. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Musette in D major was interpreted by no less than three participants: Keely Wong, Eli Lochhead and Emil Enfeldt. Adult artist Penny Dunford typified the range demonstrated by serial performers, following Bach’s first prelude and fugue with her sensitive delivery of Béla Bartók’s Six Rumanian Folk Dances.
On April 10, as genres embraced by performers grew to include contemporary compositions, diverse selections became the order of the day. Preparatory pianist Abigail Wiebe shared a spellbinding version of John Williams’s Hedwig’s Theme. Daniel Claudepierre (who two days earlier thundered through Mozart’s Turkish rondo with a pair of aviators clipped to a florid button-down) played a winsome arrangement of jazz standard Autumn Leaves, including original embellishments. Intermediate and senior-level artists Ally Sato and Taho Shinagawa interpreted technically demanding concertos by Isaac Berkovich and Felix Mendelssohn respectively. The day’s coda came by way of The Beatles, as Leif Montgomery and Katherine Hume played a spunky duet version of Yellow Submarine.
“Listening to other performers and other styles of music can inform your own perspective,” added Zachary at the conclusion of piano performances. “You can never go wrong with listening more keenly.”
On April 11, fiddler and guitarist Mike Sanyshyn — a four-time provincial fiddling champion and the top-ranked B.C. finisher at the Canadian GrandMasters Fiddling Championships — adjudicated performances from a lineup of soloists and groups. Youth collectives (among them the exuberant Coast String Fiddlers) were supplemented by the adult Teatime Fiddle Ensemble, Quartetto Uno and the Low Key Fiddlers.
“It just sort of restores some faith in the preservation of fiddle music,” said Sanyshyn, who that night headlined an evening concert in Davis Bay also featuring the Harmony Hall Fiddlers and the Coast String Fiddlers. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the outcome. The fiddle, which has become popularized in the mainstream over the last 25 years, is still one of the hardest instruments there is. But hard work pays off.”
Earlier this week, bowed strings specialist Arthur Arnold — former music director of the Moscow Symphony and co-founder of Powell River’s PRISMA festival — adjudicated performers on violin, viola and cello. Brother and sister multi-instrumentalists Gene and Ally Sato re-appeared for a musical hat trick: the two have played in every discipline of the festival so far. Arnold encouraged strong contrasts, urging violinist Maddie Malcolmson (who performed Béla Bartók’s Bear Dance) to add ursine boisterousness to her dulcet interpretation.
“Music has a ripple effect in society and it has such an incredible power of spreading positivity and joy and connection and community,” said Arnold. “It is important that we keep spreading it so we inspire the next generation, and teach them the importance of the joy of it. It’s what makes you a happy human being, but also makes others happy human beings.”
The two-day Coastal Dance Festival last weekend featured performers from the Coastal Academy of Dance, Waldorf Ballet, and Gibsons Dance Centre. For the first time in its history, six Waldorf Ballet dancers have been elevated to to the BC Performing Arts provincial festival — which will be held in Victoria in June —: Saje Morin, Charlotte Altenburg, Brooklyn Turner, Adele Dubin, Gracelyn Mailey, and Audrey Altenburg (who was selected during the Chilliwack Music and Dance Festival).
Over the weekend, youth performed nearly 200 dance routines, including a half-dozen that were choreographed by students themselves.
The performing arts festival resumes on April 23 with a focus on vocalists and choirs. A full schedule and details of the May 10 highlights concert are online at www.coastfestival.com.
