Service Above Self: Rotary Music Festival back for 69th year

By Medicine Hat Rotary Club on February 27, 2024.

Happy 69th birthday, Medicine Hat Rotary Music Festival! Imagine, since 1955, Medicine Hat area youth, some quite young, have taken to the stage to demonstrate their skills in piano, strings, brass, woodwinds, guitar, speech, vocals, musical theatre, choral and ensembles. For some, the festival is the start of a musical career. For others, it is a chance to develop confidence and discipline.

Let’s hear what three festival veterans and observers say:

“I credit a good deal of my personal confidence in speaking in public, in dealing with people and accepting constructive criticism from my experience at the festival. I wasn’t the best musician, but the discipline of preparing to play in front of strangers, the actual performance and hearing the feedback positioned me over the years to grow constructively from those suggestions… to learn from it and be better the next time. I owe a good deal to the Festival for my success in my professional career because of that confidence gained in my youth.” (Famous Anonymous)

From Jason Vaz, who entered his first Festival at age three years: “I owe so much of my current success to my formative years in the Rotary Music Festival. I believe all those years of practising endlessly, balancing multiple activities and dealing with performance pressure set the foundation for me to be able to pursue music, dance, and medicine. Despite transitioning from music, perhaps one of the most valuable things I have gained is the friendships I made throughout my 15 years of the Medicine Hat Rotary Music Festival. Many of the kids from the ‘Cultural Centre Clan’ are still my closest friends today.”

“I have been amazed by the growth and development of some of the young musicians in our community. It seems to be that the festival provides a very small amount of nurturing, but the impact on individuals can be spectacular. Perhaps some of these young people would have gone on to great things without the festival, but it seems that we produce more than our fair share of quality musicians as a community, and I credit their participation in the festival for some of that. It is an enriching developmental experience, and a confidence building exercise… win, lose, or draw,” observes Dave Panabaker.

The Medicine Hat Rotary Music Festival will attract some 800 performers this year. Expanding that to estimate numbers in all 69 years, it’s quite possible that 40,000 or more youth have felt the impact of the festival in their lives.

More festival stories await you in March. In the meantime, save March 3-17 to experience the festival yourself. And especially hold on to March 15 for the Rosebowl competition and March 17 for the Stars performance. See rotarymusicfestival.com for additional details.

This column was contributed by the Medicine Hat Rotary Club