Two Grade 12 students from the Peter Skene Ogden Secondary School (PSO) put on a concert at the 100 Mile Evangelical Free Church on Nov. 23.
The concert, organized by Joelle Kuyek and Claire Kreschuk, was named Canadian Music Week Recital and had been named for the same week, which celebrates the importance of Canadian music and performers.
Around 100 people showed up to the church to attend the concert, which saw Kuyek perform A Moonlit Night in the Spring River by Edward Han Jang and Ode to Vivian by Patrick Watson, while Kreschuk performed Early Spring - a Maritime folk song and River by Joni Mitchell. Others also joined, including vocalist Nicole Weir, pianists Grace Yang, Emma Yang and Edward Yang, fiddler Tomas Grey, vocalists Maria Bonciu and Maria Boncie and the Eclectica Community Choir.
"It's an opportunity for small communities such as ourselves, or big, to bring light to Canadian composers and Canadian performers, just to have the opportunity to enjoy music written by Canadian people," Kreschuk explained.
As for how they managed to get so many performers, Kreschuk said many of them were their friends, such as Grey, and they advertised the concert through social media and posters. She added their teachers at PSO also helped them find musicians.
"It was, whoever kind of wanted to come out and perform," Kreschuk remarked.
The concert was held as part of Kreschuk and Kuyek's Capstone project, which is a passion project a Grade 12 student develops as part of the mandatory Career Life Connections 12 course.
People could get into the concert via donation to the 100 Mile Food Bank: around $500 was raised, as well as several food cans were donated. Kreschuk said that both she and Kuyek came up with the idea for the concert while brainstorming ideas for their capstone project.
"We were just spitballing ideas, and then it was 'hey, we both like music. We're both performers, Why don't we put on a recital? And so we did a little bit more research, and we looked into and then we found out what Canadian Music Week was - and what it stood for, and we really liked the idea," Kreschuk explained.
Kreschuk said that she became attracted to music when she was a child, having begun singing when she was five years old at the Festival of the Arts.
"So that puts me at about 12 years of performing now, and it's always been something that I've been super passionate about," Kreschuk said, adding that she always loved to sing. As for Kuyek, she also got into music at a young age with a desire to learn the piano.
"For my seventh birthday, I got a piano from my parents, and it came along with piano lessons going through the conservatory Canada levels. So that's been where I started, and since then, I've just loved performing and the music community in our small town - and it's been so welcoming and inviting," Kuyek said.
One of the people who mentored Kuyek and Kreschuk was Lynda Lipsett, who has a degree in music from the University of Toronto. Lipsett had been approached by the organizers and asked to become their mentor.
They'd met with me, and we talked things, and we put the program together," Lipsett said. "There was a lot of tremendous, beautiful Canadian music, and all the performances were fabulous."
As for what Kreschuk and Kuyek plan to do when they graduate, Kuyek said she is going to be applying to the University of British Columbia (UBC) for its Environmental Engineering program - her goal being to work with the mining industry against waste and pollution in the environment. Kreschuk, on the other hand, is planning to go to Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, where she will be pursuing a Bachelor of Science, with a focus in biology. Neither, however, plan to neglect their love for music.
"I'm hoping to maybe take some private lessons in university just to keep playing and keep playing," Kuyek said, with Kreschuk echoing similar sentiments.
