Pre-Festival Workshops will be held in Jr. Piano, Sr. Piano, Classical Voice, Strings and Musical Theatre between February 25th and March 17th. These will provide an opportunity for students to perform pieces or sections of pieces they are preparing for the Barrie Kiwanis Music Festival and receive feedback from an adjudicator in a MasterClass setting.
- Students who have registered for the Barrie Kiwanis Music Festival in any of the disciplines listed by February 8th will be invited to register for the corresponding workshop. Families will receive an email with a link to the registration.
- Each workshop has a limited number of spots, based on the time available and will be filled on a first come, first served basis.
- Each workshop will be a maximum of 4 hours in length and each student will attend for approximately 2.5 hours. The schedule will be
o Group A arrives – MasterClass (approx. 1.25 – 1.5 hours)
o Group B arrives – Adjudicator does presentation/demonstration to both Group A & B together (approx. 45 min – 1 hr)
o Social time / snacks for students (approx. 20 min)
o Group A departs, Group B – MasterClass (approx. 1.25 – 1.5 hours)
- Detailed schedules will be sent out to each participant for their workshop once registration closes and the specific schedule is finalized
- Adjudicators will be choosing the topics of their presentation/demonstration, but they will be choosing topics of relevance and interest to the students based on ages and levels.
- We are thrilled to have received significant funding from the Kiwanis Club of Barrie, specifically to support these workshops. This has allowed us to keep the costs exceptionally reasonable for students - $25 for Levels 5 and below, $35 for Levels 6 and above
- Most workshops will see the return of our 2023 Adjudicators.
- This will allow them to use the body of knowledge they developed last spring about how our Barrie area teachers work, to be able to dive into repertoire with students and provide lots of guidance to help with preparations for the upcoming Festival performances.
- Students are encouraged to perform whatever they would like feedback on to help them in their Festival preparations. This may be a complete piece, or segments from one or two pieces. Students will want to consider balancing their playing time with time left for the adjudicator to work with them. Final schedules will be released shortly following the close of registration, which will also indicate to students the time that they have been allocated.
- Accompaniment is required for Classical Voice, Musical Theatre and Strings. Students are welcome to bring their own accompanist if they would like. Katie Pergau has also agreed to make herself available for any students who need her services and is providing a special workshop rate for us, which will include the MasterClass and one rehearsal. More information will be posted here as details are confirmed with Katie.
- For the piano workshops the plan is for the Senior Workshop to be levels 7 and up and the Junior Workshop to be levels 6 and below, but this may be adjusted to maximize the number of students that can participate. Please sign up based on these splits and if we need to shift you, we will contact you first to confirm the change.
- We were able to offer one workshop last year and participants in that workshop were a great demonstration of how much these opportunities benefit our students. All participants showed improvements as suggested by the adjudicator and the workshop, had highly successful performances at the Barrie Kiwanis Music Festival, were recommended on to OMFA Provincials and received recognition at the Provincial level!