Saint Cecilia is smiling. The patron saint of music, whose day is coming up this Saturday, inspired the first Canada Music Week back in 1960.
The celebratory week is a good time to take stock of musical progress on the Coast. For 35 years, we have held a music festival, the SC Festival of the Performing Arts, which continues to grow in popularity each year, especially with young people. We also enjoy an award-winning children's choir, Choralations. We have a Coast-wide Com-munity Orchestra that anyone of any age can join for a reasonable fee.
The Coast's enthusiasm for the fiddle, particularly among youth, is legendary, and it sparked one musical visitor to remark that the Coast was "a fiddle-friendly zone." The first generation of the local Coast String Fiddlers has gone on to perform across Canada, and many of them have played with the late Oliver Schroer's Twisted String Project. If we needed further proof, the fiddlers' association hosted its eighth year of a Celtic Music School last summer where they easily filled classes with students from all over the world.
In addition, several local talents have performed on the nation's stages: Mark Andrews on piano, Neal Andrews, primarily on trumpet, opera diva Rose-Ellen Nichols, mezzo soprano Patricia Hammond and vocalist Elizabeth Curry. And there are more waiting in the wings to earn their bursaries or trophies. In this coming Canada Music Week, teachers across the country will be readying their students to perform Canadian compositions. On the Coast, the local branch of the Registered Music Teachers' Association (RMTA) presents a recital on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons with a variety of musical genres, including chamber music, folk, contemporary, blues and classical.
The goal was always to shine a spotlight on Can-adian work, if only for a week. Audiences could enjoy Canadian-made music, usually for the first time, and students would learn to play contemporary tunes.
Carolynn Cordsen, current branch president of the RMTA, says that diversity of musical styles will light up this concert - with everything from a Harry Summers composition performed by the adult ensemble, Salix Strings, to a Schroer medley by two Fiddlers - and maybe some Joni Mitchell or a bit of blues.
Cordsen moved to the Coast from North Vancouver 13 years ago where organization of bands and choirs was extremely evolved; the area listed 120 registered music teachers to the Coast's 15. "But the spirit here is absolutely wonderful," Cordsen said.
Take, for example, one of her Grade 7 students who practises over an hour every day. "These kids are into it," she said.
She points out that students receive so much encouragement here for their performances that they don't realize how tough it will be for them when they compete provincially. Two of the students at the forthcoming concert will be performing original compositions, and this is an area where the Coast shines over a community like North Vancouver.
"The level of creativity is higher here," Cordsen adds, who is teaching 10-year-old composers to copyright their new, intellectual property.It hasn't always been as good. About three years ago, the Community Orches-tra was planning to have Santa visit one of their Christ-mas concerts until they realized that there was no need. They didn't have many young kids in the group any more. Last season, Kathleen Hovey, music teacher, jumped in to reboot the Youth Orchestra.
"You sometimes put your violin away as a teenager and go away to university. I know I did. Then one day, you go back to it," Hovey said. As an adult, she finds she enjoys it even more.
It's not Hovey's first time at the job. She recalls that Michelle Bruce began the youth section of the Community Orchestra back in the mid-'90s, then after a few years, Hovey took over. But many of the students moved on; some learned to fiddle or rehearsed with garage bands. This season, Hovey began again with 11 young pupils.
Most kids are doing it for the love of music - they know it's very hard to become a concert violinist, a career that takes a huge commitment and competitive auditions. But the value of music for youth is in meeting other students and forming friendships, a truth apparent to most music teachers. Young people make music part of their social network, and the camaraderie lasts all their lives.
Has there been true progress in the Coast's music scene, particularly in the past few years?
"There has and there hasn't," said Janice Brun-son, now retired from teaching with the School District, but who still leads the Choralations Choir. On the plus side, all three secondary schools on the Coast now have a band program. On the down side, a number of the elementary schools have had to cut the time devoted to specialized music study.
Chatelech Secondary School music teacher Carolyn Mitchell agrees that the band programs have been positive. But she says, "We still don't have music education for all the elementary schools, and that has been unchanging for a long time."
In 2007, School District 46 trustees voted $150,000 towards the arts, particularly music, in schools for the forthcoming year - a move that allowed the school district to hire Brunson part-time to organize purchasing and distribution of instruments. Since some instruments, such as the French horn, are expensive to rent, the new instruments brought a new breath of life.
At the time, superintendent Deborah Palmer expressed her pleasure at the board decision and said she would rather find the funds than see schools cut music. This year, Palmer confirmed her commitment to music programs. The funds are there, but finding a specialized music educator who can work part-time around the schedules of all the schools has made it difficult to put an elementary school band program into practice.
Nonetheless, Coast youth appear to be seeking out their musical educations and doing quite well at it. Brunson's Choralations is a lot smaller this year with 14 members.
The schools no longer give credit to choir members following Brunson's retirement when the choir moved out of the school system. "That could be why the numbers are down, but these 14 are the ones committed to music," Brunson said.
Registration in the SC Festival of the Performing Arts was up for 2008. For this competition, music students of all ages have a chance to perform in front of an audience and be evaluated by an adjudicator.
President Sue Milne attributes the growth to the expanding horizons of musical kids.
"They've branched out," Milne said. "I've known lots of kids who play the fiddle who are now learning cello or bass. The partnership with SD46 has been really vital to this process."
She points out that the Coast is one of the few small communities to retain music professionals in schools. She credits such teachers as Mitchell with starting many more students on the path to Festival competition. With the introduction of more instruments, the students have more opportunities to combine them in new ways, in new ensembles or to move from classical formal training into folk or rock. "There's much more experimentation," Milne said. "The kids are ready to try new things."
