It has been a great run at the East Kootenay Performing Arts Festival and there’s one more big event.
The Festival Showcase, 6:30 pm Wednesday March 11 at Cranbrook’s Key City Theatre, will celebrate glorious achievement at the 2020 East Kootenay Performing Arts Festival (EKPAF). Admission is by donation. A grand program of Voice, Piano, Dance, Strings, and Speech Arts will present some of this region’s finest performers.
On the program roster are Mozart, Debussy, the great Russian composer Prokofiev, and more including two duets: Leo Delibes’ famous Flower Song for female voices, and the first movement of Beethoven’s towering Fifth Symphony arranged for two pianists. The Speech Arts division will present Robert Munsch and a passage from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Strings division will offer solos and ensembles such as The Infant Paganini and Saturday Night Stomp.
The Dance division, with 150 entries at the Key City Theatre, will wind up on Wednesday – barely 2 hours before the Showcase begins. Fiona Lao Stuart, the Dance Co-ordinator, wrote: “Dancers will get to demonstrate their physical and artistic performances for what promises to be entertaining and captivating.” Dance will begin and end the Showcase program, bookending the evening with considerable pizzazz!
Adult performers have a place - in the Showcase and in EKPAF as a whole. This is the first known festival of its kind that not only includes adult entrants, but honours each one. The Bud Abbott Award, named for our late, beloved icon of the arts and more, especially celebrates Bud’s passionate focus on lifelong learning. Bud entered EKPAF for decades in Voice, Speech Arts - and Trombone, which he began learning at age 72. The Bud Abbott certificate is given to every adult participant in EKPAF. According to Strings Co-ordinater Penny Long: “(our Secretary) did a great job of explaining the significance of the certificate and how it honors the adult performer. I could see, (and have heard separately) how very much the awarding of this certificate meant…”
The Showcase cannot possibly present every worthy, even award-winning performance from a festival fast becoming known for the quality of teaching and learning presented - that may create a concert lasting til the wee hours of the morning. As well, space and time are needed for presenting of many awards, then announcement of the entrants chosen to proceed to the Performing Arts BC Provincial Festival (to be held this year in Cranbrook, June 2 to 6). Competitive entrants and alternates are chosen in each division; also a separate category, Merited Participants, recognizes those who seem on the way to entering the main festival in the future.
The EKPAF Showcase will offer “an evening of our own” with something for everyone.