The annual Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival began Monday (March 18).
For a couple of weeks, the TransCanada Theatre, and occasionally the band room and art room will be alive with youth and adults showing off their skills in a variety of disciplines including band, choral, choir, vocals, musical theatre, stringed instruments, piano, speech, and choral speech.
Festival sessions run until March 29.
In addition, the musical theatre showcase, which features some of the best musical theatre performances of the festival, takes place March 22 at the TransCanada Theatre.
The grand concert will take place April 2 and the benefit concert is scheduled for April 11.
Wendy Durieux, the Olds & District Kiwanis Music Festival coordinator, says there are a few changes in this year's edition.
"Every year, one of the things that we do is we try to feature a different class or a different discipline so that we put the focus on different areas, and we have special awards," she says.
"So this year our feature is on piano duets, and it's between a student and a teacher. So that's one of the new things that we're doing and it's really fun."
That event will occur the evening of March 25.
Another change is that this year, the musical theatre showcase has been moved forward from its usual Saturday slot to Friday, March 22.
That in turn means musical theatre sessions are occurring earlier than normal.
"Because we get the theatre for such a great rate, they want to actually rent the theatre out on the weekends, because that's when they make money, right? And so they said, 'any way you could do it on the Friday night?'
"So when we looked at it, we thought, 'well, if we started with musical theatre, then that gives us enough time to actually prepare for that night because in the musical theatre showcase it's the adjudicator who actually picks everybody who sings in it and performs in it," Durieux says.
"So we have to have a little bit of lead time for her to pick who's going to perform and then for us to let them know. So we're starting with the musical theatre so that the theatre can have the weekend to actually make money."
Musical theatre sessions will be followed by band performances.
Durieux says that's an exciting time.
"It's a hopping place when they come because we can have up to 500 kids in that building at the same time.
"Each of the bands can be big and we can have four or five bands — like we can have one that's warming up and one that's performing and one that's workshopping, and then we can have one or two that are upstairs listening to everybody. So it's a really, really full venue on those days," she says.
"They're really fun to listen to and absolutely fabulous players."
Durieux says all the sessions start at 9 a.m. except choral, which starts at 9:30 a.m. Some could go right through to 9 p.m. She says those interested in attending those performances should check out the festival's website: https://www.oldskiwanis.org/musicfestival.
Durieux says the entire festival is organized and operated by herself, a nine-member board and about 40 volunteers.
She says planning has already begun for next year's festival.
