Stars of the Festival participants to perform classics and original compositions

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After a lot of work, Lethbridge and District Music and Speech Arts Festival general manager Megan Wittig is excited to see this year’s online Stars of the Festival show at 7 p .m., April 16.
Organizers announced the 19 performers last week. But copyright issues narrowed the pool of available performances.

Megan Wittig has put in a lot of work for this years’ online Stars of the Festival concert. Photo by Richard Amery
“We were only able to feature performers performing original compositions or composition from the public domain. So we couldn’t have any bands,” Wittig said.


This year‘s online festival provided extra challenges because the participants not only had to learn their selected pieces, but also had to submit a video of their performances to the adjudicators.
 There are two original compositions, two selections from Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Midsummer Night’s Dream  and selections from Schumann, Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach and Chopin.
Aaron Richardson, Alexandra Morgan and Daniel Kim will be performing in the chamber music category.
David Oler and Masataro Tatsuno will be performing original compositions.

Charlie Eaton, Jena Park, Keitaro Tatsuno and Steven Yang will be performing in the piano category.
Rhiannon Kooy, Celine Man and Kathleen Wu are featured in speech arts.

Jane Eaton, Alayna McNeil, Cincia Secrist perform in the strings category.

The voice category features Tanner Lapointe, Alexandra Morgan, Nathan Morphis, Hannah Orr and Sloan Smith.


Adjudicators Aaron Au, Strings (Edmonton); Alicia Bigras, Contemporary Voice (Medicine Hat); Camille Rogers, Music Composition and Junior Voice (Toronto); Elliot Madore, Senior Voice (Toronto); Jennifer Orr, Speech (Calgary);  Kim Mattice Wanat, Musical Theatre (Edmonton); Kirk Muspratt, Band, Chamber Music, and Instrumental (Chicago, Illinois); Louise Costigan-Kerns, Junior Piano (San Carlo, California) and Magdalena von Eccher, Senior Piano (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island) chose their favourite films for the Stars of the Festival as well as submitted their written feedback to each of the participants.


Wittig is optimistic the Festival will  be a live event next year, though they are prepared to go online again next year if necessary..
“ There are things on the back end that we need to work on, but the participants won’t notice a difference.
 Stars of the Festival will be available on Youtube and Shaw Channel 9 at 7 p.m., Friday, April. 16.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor
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