St. Mary School band teacher Oscar-José Garcia and his wife Judith will be hosting a flamenco music concert this Saturday, Nov. 1 to help raise funds for a band trip to Madrid, Spain, in 2016.
The concert will be held at the Westlock Cultural Arts Theatre and starts at 7:30 p.m.
Oscar and Judith have been performing flamenco for many years under the performing name “Flamenco en Vivo.” However, the concert will also feature a number of other dancers out from Edmonton. The purpose of this concert is to raise funds for the St. Mary School wind ensemble’s 10-day trip to Spain in March 2016.
Oscar said he has been taking the St. Mary band to international festivals for the past 30 years or so. Notably, the band won gold medals at the 2013 World Strides Heritage Performance Festival in San Francisco.
“I said, ‘OK, we’ve done a lot of international festivals ... We’ve got to do something a little different,’” Oscar said, noting that 2016 will be his retirement year.
Luckily, this travel package came up through World Strides International Discovery, a branch of the company that puts on the World Strides Heritage Festival.
“Their representative said they could come up with a good package to travel through Europe. I said I only want to focus on Madrid,” Oscar said, adding that he himself hails from the capital of Spain.
The 10-day trip will include a total of four concerts at Madrid and the cities of Segovia and Toledo. Oscar said this differs from their usual trips because it’s technically a performance tour, not a festival. The rest of the time will be spent sightseeing. They will be visiting prominent museums, cathedrals and other sites within all three cities.
In addition to 60 or so students in the high school wind ensemble and jazz band and a number of chaperones, Oscar said there will also be about 25 “fans” accompanying the group who won’t be performing or chaperoning.
“We’re looking at almost 100 people going on this trip when all is said and done. Sixty kids, the chaperones, another 25 people coming as fans,” he said.
Oscar noted that they will need to rent percussion instruments for their performances in Spain, which cost about $3,000. They commonly do this for most of their international festival performances.
While the students are paying some of their own expenses, Oscar said he didn’t want to put that burden on them. Hence the concert, which fits in with the focus of the trip. Oscar said he hopes to draw out a lot of people raise the entire $3,000 that night.
Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students. They are available at St. Mary School by calling 780-349-3644.
