Sturgeon Composite High School is revving up for their annual Festival Concert at the Arden Theatre on Monday, March 10.
The 90-minute concert showcases four school groups: the 55-member concert band, the 55-member choir, the 18-member jazz band and the vocal jazz choir.
The music festival season is swinging into high gear within the next two months and music students from Sturgeon are hosting this concert as a test for upcoming competitions such as Choral Fest, Alberta International Band Fest and Rotary Music Festival.
Music director Darwin Krips has incorporated some of the suggestions the Alberta Band Association syllabus suggests.
“I pick one benchmark piece of music and I also pick music that interests the musicians,” he explained.
For instance, the concert band plays Mountain Time, a well-known romantic ballad, whereas the choir sings the Portuguese Ja vem a primavera, a beautiful song that Krips describes as an ode to spring and the scent of jasmine.
“It’s beautifully lush and lyrical. It’s a gentle piece. It’s short with only 36 measures, but in that time there’s so much going on.”
Since the jazz band purchased a fluegelhorn, more tunes have shown up to feature that particular piece of brass. During the festival concert, it is featured in When We Were Together, a chart that requires a mellow sound.
And the vocal jazz group is singing a jazzy arrangement of Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion.
“It’s interesting to see a work by Paul Simon in the jazz realm. Normally you wouldn’t think to hear Paul Simon in vocal jazz but this arrangement employs a reggae feel.
The concert starts at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 and are available at the door or by calling the school at 780-973-3301.
Artists Emerge, Edmonton’s premiere street dance competition surfaces once again. The final showdown is Saturday, March 8 at 5:30 p.m. at the Jube.
And this year some of the hottest judging talent is scouting the area. Buddha Stretch and Candace Brown have been invited to the panel.
One of the competitors at this high-performance hip-hop match is St. Albert’s own Josh Beauchamp. Born to dance, the Grade 8 V.J. Maloney student was the 2013 grand prize recipient of K-Days Talent Search.
Beauchamp is competing in eight dances, down from 15 entries last year. Studying primarily at The Kore, he has worked diligently with Carlo Atienza at an advanced level.
Displaying a diversity of hip-hop dancing characters, Beauchamp dances solos, in a duet and with a crew. One of his most colourful dances is Superhero where a nerd type character enters a phone booth several times and pops back out as Iron Man, Hulk, Batman and finally Wonder Woman.
Day passes are $5 and weekend passes are $15. They are available through www.eacanada.ca.
