The local high school’s Wind band has qualified for next year’s Music Fest Canada after getting a ‘Gold Standard’ at this year’s Atlantic Festival of Music.
During council’s May 2 meeting, Parry Sound Mayor Jamie McGarvey congratulated the band on bringing home the gold under the direction of Nikki Brown in Halifax on April 28.
“Miss Brown and her students received a gold standing for their performance of ‘Acclamations’, ‘Where the Mountains Touch the Sky’ and ‘Krakatoa’,” he said. McGarvey says 38 students and five chaperones, including the town planning department’s Megan Morrison, enjoyed their experience in destinations along the way, from a Jazz club in Old Montreal, to a Historical Ghost Tour in Old Quebec City, as well as a visit to the memorial of the 1998 Swiss Air Flight 111 tragedy.
Mike Morrissey, one of the Directors of the Atlantic Festival of Music, says this is the first year since the pandemic that the festival has been running after taking a four-year break following a continuous 30-year run. This year, he says the festival got groups in from Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and all the core Atlantic provinces as well.
Morrissey says the performing groups were either in a non-competitive or competitive class with most of the groups, including Parry Sound High School, in the competitive class. He says Parry Sound’s team was awarded the Gold Standard, which he says is the highest standard that the adjudicators can award. Morrissey says that also qualifies them to attend Music Fest Canada Festival in 2024.
“[Music Fest Canada] is a national festival and schools are approved to attend that festival by receiving a gold standard at any one of the festivals related to Music Fest Canada. It takes consistent performance at a high level [to receive a gold standard]. These are all high school or junior high groups that perform various levels of music according to their age and years of playing instruments. To receive the gold, they have to perform in tune, consistently. They have to follow directions from their teacher so that they’re performing as a well-trained ensemble with a good quality, balanced sound,” he says.
Morrissey says that’s not easy, certainly not under pressure, when you’re on a stage that seats 900 people. He says the adjudicators look for those that deserve the gold standard and award it because they know that they can attend the Music Fest Canada Festival if they want to. Morrissey says the adjudicators make sure that the groups attending Music fest Canada are worthy of that standard.
He says it can be a little intimidating, especially this year with most of the groups that attended the festival having not done any travel or any major performances in public at all, because most of them weren’t in high school four years ago when all the festivals stopped.
“So, it was somewhat with some trepidation and perhaps some anxiety that a lot of these groups stepped onto the stage because they had had no real preparation throughout their three or four years of music career in high school to get them ready for being on a stage in front of adjudicators,” he says.
But Morrissey says it was also exciting for them all, adding he knows a lot of the teachers have talked about how enthused the kids were at the end of the festival.
According to McGarvey, Brown extended her sincere appreciation to the Town of Parry Sound for their continued support of the Parry Sound High School music program.