It is perhaps the only festival where you can watch a toga-clad 16-year-old perform a dramatic monologue from Julius Caesar and an eight-year-old play “Für Elise”. For 41 years, the Athabasca and District Music Festival has offered young locals a chance to be adjudicated in the performing arts.
Without new executive board members, however, the seven-day festival may take its final bow.
“We are a very viable, financially secure festival,” said Ida Edwards, a 10-year veteran of the music festival executive. “At the event itself, we always have enough volunteers for the door people, the secretary people — the people who need to be in place to do all the care of the performers.”
The festival just doesn’t have enough committed advance planners, she said, especially when it comes to the computer-based parts of running a festival.
The festival will carry on as planned this year from March 12–20, said Edwards, but after that, she’s not sure.
“I think we have passionate people for the arts. I want to find them,” she said of the need for new blood.
The committee is looking for people to fill a couple of standard executive positions — secretary and fundraising coordinator — as well as a couple new positions: webpage coordinator and program layout coordinator.
The committee meets on the third Thursday or Friday of each month, and Edwards said some training is available for the newer, more technical roles, though she recommends volunteers for those jobs have some relevant experience.
Edwards said the festival work is increasingly online, from email communication with parents and schools to submitting provincial entries via the web. She said the committee needs help getting online entries up and running that would feed into specialized software and minimize manual data entry.
“We would love some expertise in a program — it’s called the Music Festival Organizer. It’s a data program that takes the entry forms and then puts them into categories and classes. You take the class numbers and punch in your timelines, and then you get your program,” she said.
Edwards said the festival is an invaluable resource for young performers.
“They have an opportunity to perform in our community and share their talents, and through the adjudication process can advance to provincials and have the experience of meeting other youth of their interests and talents.”
Edwards said Athabasca usually sends six to 12 youths to provincials, which are held in May.
However, she said the competitive arts festival is like a spelling bee: a fairly archaic system of testing youths’ aptitude. She said spelling bees have experienced a revival in the last five or six years, but it remains to be seen if the music festival will be the same.
“And now we have to examine: does our community, does our school system want this as a vehicle for teaching the performing arts and exploring the performing arts? And I’m a little afraid of the answer,” she said.
She acknowledged there are other performing arts opportunities in the community, like the Northern Lights Spiritus Singers, Edwin Parr Composite’s drama program and casual music jams.
“We have a viable arts community in town. I’m just saying, is the competition, performance aspect of the festival an element we want to keep?”
Edwards said she has noticed a decline in enrollment province-wide in the speech classes at the festival, which she believes goes hand-in-hand with the fear of public speaking. But the festival could help youths overcome that fear, she said.
“So, there is a part where we learn to present ourselves and have the courage to know that, ‘Wow; I’m afraid to go in front of people, but I love what I’m doing, so I’ll do it.’ So you learn to cope with your trepidation and the anxiety that comes up when you put yourself on the line,” she said.
Registration in choral speech and music classes has been steady over the last few festivals, she noted.
For Edwards, volunteering is worthwhile because of the rewards, which include seeing Grade 12 students perform at the festival who have grown up performing every year.
“I could compare it to a little Timbit hockey player kid, and then they’re in Grade 12 and they’re just ripping the ice up,” she said. “You just see that span of starting and achieving great success. That’s exciting.”
Edwards said the real value in the festival is not in shaping a steady stream of professional performers.
“We’re not here to say, ‘Oh, whoever participates in the music festival’s going to go on to a performing arts career.’ We’re here to say that you’ll have a great avocation developing those skills.”
The deadline to express interest in any of the volunteer positions is Dec. 29, and interested persons can reach Edwards by calling 780-675-4524 or by emailing the Athabasca and District Music Festival at [email protected].
