The École Olds Elementary School (ÉOES) choir won first place in the choral category for grades 1-3 at the Alberta Provincial Music Festival.
The festival was held May 26 - June 1 in Edmonton. However, the choir did not attend. A recording of them singing was entered instead.
This is the first time a choir of any age from Olds has won first place in provincials, according to Wendy Durieux, the Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival coordinator. She also serves as the provincial administrator of the Alberta Music Festival.
Also, Anja Kelly of Olds placed second in 15 and under girls vocals.
"This is the first time in all the times I've been involved that an Olds choir won and that's about 15 years," Durieux said during an interview with the Albertan.
What makes that result all the more amazing, Durieux says, is that for a number of reasons, local officials had to send the festival a cellphone recording of the choir, which of course, was not of the same quality that other recordings could have produced, but despite that, they still won.
"We had such a hard time getting it all together, but it worked," Durieux said.
"We were taping them at the (Olds) festival but it didn't work at the festival. So then we tried to get them together over at the fine arts centre. We couldn't do it, so we finally just came here (to École Olds Elementary School).
"We brought the stuff here to record them and it didn't work. But I had recorded them on my cellphone," she added with a laugh, "and so we sent the cellphone recording in and they did wonderfully — in a little room, not the same acoustics and everything else, so it was kind of a fun story."
On June 4, in the music room, ÉOES music specialist Lois Munchinsky showed the first-place plaque to the choir.
"This is you, boys and girls, you guys did this. All of your hard work that you did. This has never happened for the Olds Elementary (School) choir before — first time ever," Munchinsky said.
"Are you guys happy?" she asked.
"Yeah," they shouted.
"I'm very excited. I'm very surprised," Munchinsky told the Albertan. "I did not expect this honour and I just didn't expect to win, I really didn't."
She agreed it's especially amazing for the choir to win when they were only able to send in a cellphone recording of their prowess.
Munchinsky has been a music specialist at ÉOES for 14 years. She says in all that time, this is the greatest success she and her choirs have had.
"It's very encouraging and makes me want to continue to do this for a few more years before I get to finish my career here," she said.
Munchinsky was asked if there was any special reason; any special training, skill or advantage this choir had over others.
"That's a great question. If I knew the answer to that question, I would do the same thing next year," she said with a laugh. "But no, I think every year has been great. I've been very, very pleased with their performances all through the years that I've been here.
"And I think that this year, for whatever reason, it just worked out that they were able to get this honour and win.
"But if that doesn't happen in the future, that doesn't mean that any future choirs are not as good or anything like that. There's just a lot of really good choirs and this year we got chosen to be first, so I'm thrilled.
"I think every year has been very good, but when you're at that level, there are so many that are good and you just never know, so we'll just keep doing what we do and enjoying it and sharing music," she added.
Olds Kiwanis Music Festival board president Kim Christensen was also on hand for the plaque presentation.
"I think it's really exciting that our choir has won first place," Christensen said. "I think it's a real testament to the skills that Lois Munchinsky has.
She said the fact that Munchinsky has entered the choir in the music festival in Olds helps as well.
"I think with the comments the adjudicator gives every year, she takes those to heart and then she uses those in her instruction with the choir and then that just makes them better as she brings the choir to the festival year after year," Christensen added.
"She's just got a good presence about her that helps. She teaches them so they're confident with their skills; they're very confident," Christensen said.
"I find choir singing is really a wonderful skill to learn, because you're working with other people. You feel the support of those around you, so it's a wonderful opportunity to have to be able to sing in a choir and to be led by a really skilled music teacher."
Members of the choir received a certificate of their accomplishment. But perhaps the bigger deal for them was that all those in the choral room were presented with Dilly Bars as a reward.
