Lexi Stein isn’t English nor does she speak with an English accent, but that didn’t stop Stein from performing her pieces for the Provincial Music Festival using an English accent.
On Wednesday, May 27, Stein was one of three Barrhead youths who travelled to Grant MacEwan University in Edmonton to take part in the Alberta Music Festival Association’s (AMFA) Provincial Festival.
The AMFA is an association of 38 music festivals across Alberta, which purpose is to promote the arts and give instruction to promising young performers in 17 different disciplines in a wide range of age from five years-old and under to 18.
Stein competed in the 16 and under Speech category.
In the speech category performers are judged on their public speaking abilities, how clearly they enunciate each word, to how they are able to convey the emotion and meaning of the piece. Stein first learned about the competition three years ago, when she listened to a friend practice one of the pieces she was going to perform at the Barrhead Music Festival. After that she knew she wanted to take part in the same festival in the Speech category.
“It’s a really wide category that encompasses so many different art forms, from plays, to poetry to public speaking,” Stein said, adding that for her performance she chose to recite two sonnets from Shakespeare and a poem from David Frost, called the Road Not Taken.
“It is pretty inspirational and it is one of my mother’s all time favourite poems,” she said.
In order to qualify for the AMFA provincial festival, Stein first had to be recommended by the speech adjudicator at the Barrhead Rotary Music Festival earlier in March.
“I really learned a lot at the Barrhead festival, by watching and listening to the other performers,” Stein said, adding that the adjudicator also provided helpful tips that would help her improve her future performance. “The adjudicator gave me suggestions on my stance and how to project the right presence when you are performing something by taking people on a journey and walk them through the poem.”
Stein took everything she learned at the Barrhead Music Festival to heart and started to prepare for the provincial competition, but soon decided she needed to do more than what the adjudicator suggested in March.
In order to compete with the finalists from the larger centres and music festivals, Stein decided she would perform her works with the same accent the actors of the day would have had.
Fortunately for Stein, her family is currently playing host to a young exchange student from England. It was a choice her mother, Darlene, agreed with.
“Yes, it is a competition and you want to do a good job, but it is an experience and you have to have fun,” her mother said.
So with the help of the British exchange student she set out to perfect her English accent.
“I am so glad I decided to do it with the British accent,” Stein said, adding that it wasn’t until she walked in the door of the competition hall that she realized how committed the other participants were.
“We thought they just wanted us to get up and recite our particular piece, but there were people there in full period costumes and props,” she said, adding that many of them would change costumes when the adjudicators were giving the other performers their feedback.
* * *
For Madeleine Arent, another one of the Barrhead students who competed in the Provincial Music Festival, the decision to enter the Barrhead Rotary Music Festival was an easy one.
Although Arent, 15, a ninth Grade piano player, has been playing the piano since she was seven or eight years old this year was the first time she has competed in either the local or the provincial music festival competition.
“Music has always been a big part of my life. My mom plays the piano and she thought it would be a good way to get into music and I have always been interested in the instrument,” she said, adding that like Stein, she found out about the local festival through a friend.
“A friend of mine competed last year and I didn’t find out about it until it was too late,” she said.
For the piano competition, Arent had to play two pieces of music, including one of her favourite pieces.
“I played something from Shubert and his moments musical pieces, Opus 94, number 4,” she said, adding that she learned a lot from listening to the other musicians at the Barrhead festival.
However, she said that the adjudicator was particularly helpful, adding that the music festival competitions are not truly competitions in the truest sense.
Although competitors receive a grade, and for those in the local festivals, a chance to earn a spot in the provincial festival, Arent said the festivals are really about learning how to be better as an artist or musician.
“It was really a great learning experience,” she said. “I know the adjudicator in Barrhead, Mrs. Kulak was wonderful and was very helpful about how I could play my pieces better.”
Arent said the provincial festival provided an even better learning opportunity. Unlike the local competition where the adjudicators had a limited time to critique each of the performers, Arent said they were able to spend a considerable block of time with each of the performers.
For the 16 and under category, there were two blocks, each three hours long, of performances, one in the morning and one in the evening. Arent was in the morning group with about nine different piano players.
“I just can’t say how much of a learning experience it really was. I learned as much from the other players as I did from playing myself or the adjudicator,” Arent said, adding that she wished there were more opportunities for performance artists to learn and perfect their art.
Beside the Rotary Music Festival, both Arent and Stein said there are very limited opportunities for a performance artist to perform in a public in Barrhead.
Something Jennifer Thomas, Barrhead Rotary Music Festival president, agreed with.
“In order to learn and grow performers must play, recite, or act in front of people,” she said, adding that besides the band and drama programs at schools, the opportunities to perform in public are few and far between. Every once in a while someone is able to perform at one of the seniors’ lodges or at their church, but besides that there isn’t much,” she said, adding what the town really needs is something like a community band and actors’ studio groups. Something Thomas is hopeful will happen.
Until then students like Stein and Arent will have to make do practicing on their own and with private instructors.
