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The Kiwanis Lloydminster and District Music Festival will be live this year for the first time since 2019, but the number of entries is still up in the air.
The deadline for registration is extended to Feb. 3, with the festival itself tentatively set to run from April 23 to May 6, depending on the number of entries and how many days an adjudicator is needed.
That’s the latest news from music festival president, Kerry Taylor, who briefed a recent Lloydminster Lions Club meeting on the revival of a live festival after disruptions from COVID.
“This year we are doing a full live festival. I need to see those little kids all dressed up. These children need to learn to perform in front of somebody to be comfortable with being on a stage,” said Taylor.
“So, I am really looking forward to it.”
Taylor, however, went on to say “this is an iffy year because we don’t know where we stand. We have no idea what we’re going to have for numbers.”
She expects to at least equal the 375 entries that took part last year in a video format.
This year’s festival will include a lot of first-time entries to add to the excitement.
The vocal, piano and instrumentals will take place at Grace United Church, and Vic Juba Community Theatre is rented for three days for the school bands.
“We generally have 25 school bands going back three years ago,” said Taylor.
“It looks like we’re going to have that number again this year. There’s some new bands here in the public school system. I’ve been in contact with them and today, I think they are getting ready to register their bands.”
The Lloydminster public and Catholic school divisions are also donating some of their theatre rental days to the festival.
“It is wonderful that we have that venue where the kids can be on stage with a proper band shell behind them for the sound and the adjudicator can hear them well,” said Taylor.
This year’s festival promises to be a new normal and a relief for organizers to see kids perform in person again.
Taylor said they were set to go live last year when the Omicron variant hit Lloydminster hard prior to the registration deadline in January, so they went back to a video format.
“We found it very difficult to keep our enthusiasm up when we were not meeting as a committee. Everything was by Zoom,” lamented Taylor.
“It was really difficult to not speak with children in person.”
Taylor says it will also be an uphill battle to get back to the 800-plus entries involving about 2,000 children, including group bands and choirs, at the last live festival.
“People got away from it. People weren’t doing lessons. It’s been three years without a live festival, so we’ve got a bit of a challenge ahead of us, but we’ll get there.”
Taylor told Lions they had a tremendous turnout last year compared to the 345 entries for a video format in 2021.
“We had a number of children from Lloydminster who were recommended to nationals and another thing called Western Canadian Finals, which is a variation of the national festival,” said Taylor.
“I believe we had 17 children take part in 30-something classes provincially. We had some provincial winners and we had some take part in the Western Canadians and we had some winners there.”
The provincials and the Western Canadians were held live in Saskatoon in June.
