The world will be singing in Sackville
The Podium 2008 choral festival returns to Sackville for its 20th anniversary and brings some big names with it
On May 15 to 18, Sackville will be welcoming choral performers and conductors from across Canada and the world as the town hosts the biennial national conference of The Association of Canada Choral Conductors, Podium 2008: Choral Waves - Ondes Chorales.
"We expect between 150 and 200 delegates to come in to the conference," says Podium Chair, Carloyn Nielsen. "In terms of performers, there are around 500 people coming in to perform with the various groups. The group that is traveling the furthest would be Rajaton, which is an a capella group from Finland."
This year's Podium marks a return to the site of the original national conference held in 1988.
"The conference moves around to all the provinces, so we knew it would come back here at some point," says Carolyn. "It wasn't by design, but it is nice that it's here 20 years after the first. I guess they thought we would do a good job if we hosted it again."
The planning of this years Podium has taken several years and the timing worked out very well, as it coincides Sackville being named one of Canada's Cultural Capitals for 2008. With many artistic, dramatic and musical events being planned for the upcoming months, Podium 2008 fits in very well.
"What we were looking at overall when we first saw the proposal come in was developing a music program that touched every genre and as many demographics as we could get in Sackville," says Warren Maddox, Cultural Capital Coordinator. "This conference has a number of cross-over points- it's not just classical music or gospel music, it goes beyond that into a broad spectrum of music. The fact that it's a national conference interested us as well."
"To go see some of the choirs here is a rare opportunity for Sackville and its residents," says Warren. "To see the National Youth Choir, to see Rajaton is something that you could usually only see in Toronto, New York or other major cities.
"To get this kind of caliber was an easy thing for us to look at and get behind. I think that the investment that we made had nothing to do with programming, all of that work was done by Podium. What we did was to provide a certain amount of money to help them do what they wanted to do and it was an easy decision to make."
"Having Sackville named as a Cultural Capital was a wonderful gift for us," says Carolyn. "We've benefitted from their resources for publicity and other areas. The support has been much appreciated. There's still a lot of stress involved, but this has really helped."
The conference will also have a strong local contingent with a number of groups from the area.
"The Hillsborough Alumnae Choir are a group directed by Ruth Schiller who for years had the Hillsborough Choir which was a school aged choir," explains Carolyn. "All members of the Alumnae choir sang with the choir in school and wanted to continue singing so they formed a smaller group. There is another group from Moncton, Les Jeunes Chanteurs d'Acadie who are directed by Nadine Hebert who will be performing during the conference."
Perhaps more importantly for the community, many of the participants from the conference will be taking time during the conference to visit local schools and do other outreach.
"Many of the groups that will be here will be going out into the schools to do concerts and possibly workshops," says Carolyn. "A lot of them will be singing in local churches on Sunday as well. We also have one session that needed a volunteer demonstration choir and we have group of local people that volunteered for that, so they'll get a free workshop for their time."
Tickets for individual concerts for the conference range in price up to $25. For more information on the conference and the performances visit www.nbchoral.org/Podium2008, call 364-2264 or e-mail mcraig@mta.ca.
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