The Battlefords Kiwanis Music Festival Committee thanks all the children and youth who submitted beautiful creative image ideas for the Battlefords Music Festival program cover contest. The winner of this year's program festival cover is Grade 6 student Kaila Robertson from Bready School. Submissions from other schools included EMBM, Ratushniak Elementary, BCS, St. Vital and Holy Family. Look for other entries to be featured within the pages of the program and adorning the festival venues. The $7 printed program should be available at Sobeys by Feb. 15. Keep your eyes open around town for posters summarizing the festival schedule's dates, disciplines, times and locations.
Through this column you have been introduced to the speech arts adjudicator for this year's festival, Ian Nelson of Saskatoon, followed by two Edmonton residents, our band adjudicator Larry Shrum and Harold Wiens, who will adjudicate vocal performances. Travelling to us from Dysart to adjudicate piano students is Carol Konecsni-Christie.
Konecsni-Christie's first contact with the piano was nestled beside her mother, who played and sang out of a large red songbook. Later she would be influenced by her father's jazzy riffs and arpeggiated runs up and down the keyboard. Konecsni-Christie studied at the Sacred Heart Academy of Music in Regina and was inspired by teachers Sr. Joan Miller and Sr. Geraldine Boyle. Contact with the styles of other influential keyboard, voice, and pedagogues such as Theresa Fleming, Lana Ramsay, Hart Godden, Lori Erhardt, Margaret Walsh Cobb, Janine Pearson, Stella Wallace, Deanna Guthiel, and Jack Partridge helped to shape her musical education and prepare for the diplomas ARCT and LTCL. She continued further studies in California with Mary Jean Pryor of the College of the Desert in Palm Desert. She opened her Regina studio in 1980. In addition, Konecsni-Christie currently commutes to her students' homes in the Fort Qu'Appelle and Balcarres area and teaches from her own home in Dysart.
Konecsni-Christie enjoys duo piano work alongside her sister, Sarah Konecsni, and enjoys coaching the local church choir with her parents. She has been an active organist since the age of 10 years, providing accompaniment and music for many local occasions. She plays with a three-piece band and they are currently organizing and refining material for a promotional CD.
With all entries organized and finalized, we can announce firm Festival schedule dates for 2013. Speech arts will begin the festival running from Monday, March 4 through Wednesday, March 6. Band sessions will begin Thursday, March 7 ending Saturday, March 9. The longest running discipline in the schedule is voice which runs from Sunday, March 10 through Friday, March 15. This is followed by four days of piano performances from Saturday, March 16 through Tuesday, March 19. The festival will close with one day of strings Wednesday, March 20. The celebratory gala and awards ceremony will be held on Friday, March 22 at Third Avenue United Church.
Did you know that there are 49 music festivals in Saskatchewan; the most of any province? In the Battlefords, this year marks our 82nd local music festival.
"The piano is kind of like a dance floor for our thoughts you know? A very woody foundation so that we can really focus on the poetry" - Bianca Casady
