During a multidisciplinary highlights concert last weekend, the longest-running annual arts event on the southern Sunshine Coast concluded its entrée into a second half-century.
The volunteer-run Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts was founded in 1973 by Aletta Gilker and Mary Brooke. Owing to a cancellation during the COVID years, the 2025 festival was the 51st instance of the month-long celebration of local instrumentalists, singers, choirs and orators.
During the concert at the Heritage Playhouse on May 11, organizers announced 22 representatives and alternates who qualified for advancement to the provincial-level arts festival in Victoria next month.
The concert performers themselves were selected by festival adjudicators as among the most exemplary contributors. Pianist Gene Sato, who opened the show following a welcome by shíshálh Nation representative kway?imin (Andy Johnson), performed a Mozart sonata — and was recognized with five distinct awards in the disciplines of piano, strings and folk. (Fittingly, one of them was a multidisciplinary award for the genre-hopping polymath.)
Another artist with performances spanning disciplines was Taho Shinagawa — who, with a half-dozen awards and scholarships, was the festival’s most-lauded participant. At the concert, Shinagawa reprised her emotional interpretation of the Magnolia Suite by Canadian composer R. Nathaniel Dett; she also played the piece the previous evening during an appearance at the Artesia Coffee House in Gibsons.
Daniel Claudepierre, a fellow Artesia headliner, pocketed the performer’s choice award for senior piano.
Both Sato and Shinagawa were chosen as representatives to the provincial festival, in the junior and intermediate levels respectively. Each of their siblings collected accolades: award-winning pianist Ally Sato is a provincial alternate, and thrice-decorated cellist Miyo Shinagawa will represent the Coast in the discipline of bowed strings. Shinagawa was also featured during Saturday’s concert, playing a passionate concertino by German composer Julius Klengel.
In the category of dramatic arts, Brielle Taylor and Amy Wood (both qualifying for attendance at the provincial festival) swept the awards. Wood delivered one of her festival selections during the concert, preceded by adult performer Patricia Hetherington who reprised a self-authored work recounting a miscommunication-riddled misadventure in Mexico.
Isla MacKay, recognized for the best performance of an Indigenous tune, performed numbers on her fiddle including Soul Reel — composed by a former folk adjudicator, Wesley Hardisty of the Dene First Nation. Violinist Jinny Marshall, who played a piece written by an 18th-century composer originally born to a Creole slave in Guadeloupe, earned the award for music written by Black, Indigenous and people of colour (plus the top award for intermediate strings).
Madeleine Malcolmson, who earned a prize and scholarship for strings, joins Marshall as merited participants for the provincial festival.
Singer Julian Falkin — named the most promising young performer for voice — delivered a powerful solo from the 1960 stage musical Oliver!, complete in Cockney urchin’s garb.
The festival is closely linked with the Coastal Dance Festival, which featured nearly 200 performances over the weekend of April 12 and 13. Two of its award-winners and provincial representatives — Adele Dubin and Connor Dixon — delivered original choreography during the highlights concert.
Dixon also joined dancer Aoife Murphy in a number specially designed to effect artful stagecraft: movement of the venue’s grand piano (titled Intertwined Melodies, it was created by Dixon himself).
The woodwind category was dominated by saxophonists Leif Montgomery and Ythan Leitso (both qualifying for the provincial festival), who concluded the concert by playing Baroque and jazz duets.
Two choirs received honours that commemorate Coast music luminaries: Choralations Children’s Choir earned the Sue Milne Memorial Award; the Barbara Lightfoot Memorial Award was presented to the Suncoast Phoenix Community Choir.
“These kinds of festivals are so important,” observed dramatic arts adjudicator Luisa Jojic, a performance coach and veteran of stage and screen. “They bring people together in a really beautiful, supportive, positive, and uplifting way. They are a time we can get together and support each other to celebrate creativity, and to hone a specific craft.”
Find awardees, provincial delegates and sponsors at coastfestival.com and coastaldancefestival.com.
