UNITY — Both Unity Music Festival Association and Prairie Sunset Music Festival Association had performers quality for the Saskatchewan Music Festival provincial competition.
Willem Hoogstad, Steyn Hoogstad, and Liné Linde represented Prairie Sunset Music Festival at the Saskatchewan Music Festival provincial finals held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from June 2 - 5. All three competitors offered great performances.
Willem Hoogstad, a Grade 8 student at Unity Composite High School, was the winner of both the Spoken Word Poetry and the Spoken Word Prose Scholarship for 14 years and under. Willem was also the runner-up in the Canada West Speech Arts and Drama Scholarship Class in the 17 years and underage group.
Steyn Hoogstad is the winner of the Spoken World Concert Group for 17 years and under and was awarded the Doris Bircham Memorial Scholarship. He is the winner in the Canada West Speech Arts and Drama Scholarship Class in the 17 years and under age group. Steyn is a Grade 10 student at Unity Composite High School.
Both Steyn and Willem advance to the Canada West Performing Arts Festival. It will be held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from July 21 to July 23. At this festival, the top music and speech arts performers from Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia will compete against each other. (For more info, see https://www.canadawestfestival.ca)
For the Canada West Performing Arts Festival, competitors are expected to perform a well-rounded program, from memory, which comprises works by different authors representing assorted styles and periods.
Steyn will perform Edmund's soliloquy from William Shakespeare's King Lear and the part of Jim from John Patrick Shanley's contemporary play Prodigal Son, as well as the poem "A Musical Instrument" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the prose piece, "I Like Words" by Robert Pirosh.
Willem will perform an excerpt from Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach and a sonnet sequence consisting of Siegfried Sassoon's "Glory of Women" and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Grief.” He will also perform the part of the wild and beast-like Caliban in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Unity Music Festival participants at the 2022 provincials included River Thompson, Mayla Williams, Mateo Rutley, Dallan Kuhn, Avyne McLean, Erin Squires and Molly Orobko. This was a back-to-back provincial appearance for Dallan Kuhn.
Mateo Rutley was the runner up for the Dorothy Seibold Memorial Musical Theatre Up-tempo Classic/Modern 14 and under scholarship.
