The adjudicators are in place for assessing the performances of students for the 59th annual Weyburn Rotary Festival, set to run from March 6 to 17 at various venues around Weyburn.
This year’s adjudicator for piano is Heather Blakley, a registered music teacher with many years of experience playing and teaching music in Saskatoon.
She received her Bachelor of Music from Brandon University, and teaches a large private studio of piano and theory students. She is the music director at St. James Anglican Church, is an early childhood music teacher and is conductor for the children’s choir, Fanfare.
She is also the program director for The Refinery, Arts and Spirits Cultural Center in Saskatoon.
She examines for a national conservatory and adjudicates music festival across Western Canada, and is chair of the CFMTA National Piano Competition.
For the band and instrumental categories, the adjudicator is Janie Fries of Moose Jaw, where she is a member of both the Moose Jaw Music Festival and the Moose Jaw Band and Choral Festival committees.
She has taught from Pre-K up to university music education classes, including band, strings, choral and classroom music, and taught for many years in Moose Jaw Catholic schools.
She has been actively involved in writing, advising and actualizing the arts education curriculum in Saskatchewan for the past 20 years, and has written lessons for the National Arts Centre’s “Music Alive Program”, providing lessons for non-specialist music teachers in Saskatchewan schools.
She is a sessional lecturer at the University of Regina, teaching Orff Levels I and II during the summer. Janie currently plays the viola in the Moose Jaw Community String Orchestra, plays horn in community productions and sings in her church choir.
The adjudicator for the vocal competition will be Terri-Lynn Mitchell, a soprano who is a graduate of the University of Ottawa with a Masters of Music in Voice Performance. She teaches from her private studio in the Ottawa region, offering lessons in voice, piano, trombone, music theory and history. She also collaborates with the Nunavut Sivuniksavut College, bringing music lessons to youth in Northern Canada.
As a performer, Terri-Lynn has studied in Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the U.S., and is currently a soprano soloist and section lead at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church with music director Thomas Annand.
She also enjoys studying languages and is a painter, with projects that explore the relationship between music and painting.
The Weyburn Music Festival will start with the piano competition from March 6-9, followed by the vocal classes on March 13-15, and the instrumental classes on March 16-17. The Stars of the Festival will be held on Wednesday, March 22, at the Cugnet Centre, starting at 7 p.m.
