by Carol Baldwin
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wakaw Recorder
Sask Valley Music Festival is well into planning for its annual festival of music and spoken word to be held in Rosthern from March 13-20, 2024, with an Awards Concert on Friday, March 22.
All competitors are welcome to enter, but only those living within or studying with a teacher from within the Sask Valley Music Festival boundaries are eligible for the awards and scholarships which includes anyone from the Warman/Martensville area and north to Duck Lake and Blaine Lake. The festival organizers would like to especially invite entries from the neighbouring communities of Wakaw, Cudworth, Domremy, and Bellevue to participate.
The plan is to utilize space at the Rosthern Mennonite Church, Station Arts Centre, and RJC High School as venues. The adjudicators will hear piano students from Wednesday, March 13 through to Friday, March 15. Voice and spoken word entries will be heard on Monday, March 18, and Tuesday, March 19. Bands will perform on Wednesday, March 20.
Saskatchewan Music Festival Association, the provincial organization, is offering a refund of entry fees to choral speech classes who attend. For teachers who may be concerned about how they could fit this into their year plan, entering and preparing for classroom entries fulfills some of the English curricular requirements and could give the classes a fun way to gain confidence in public speaking.
The Sask Valley Music Festival organizers say they would be “over the moon to have so many entries that we need to keep our adjudicator another day.”
Spoken word classes include Solo Poetry, Choral Speech, Sacred Reading, Canadian Poetry, Saskatchewan Poetry, Public Speaking, Prose, and Storytelling.
The Sask Valley Music Festival has its own Facebook page to check for some basic information and for further help and information interested individuals should refer to the SVMF website www.saskvalleymusicfestival.com.
The deadline for entries is January 27, 2024. For answers to any questions, contact saskvalleymusicfestival@gmail.com
Hopefully, many entries will be submitted and the adjudicators will have full schedules every day of the festival three months from now.
