Peace River North Performing Arts Festival to feature 500+ performers

FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. — A local performing arts festival has approximately 600 participants competing towards a final showcase. 

The Peace River North Performing Arts Festival is an annual event that runs from April 10th to April 19th, with a final honours concert – Best of The Fest – held on Sunday, April 19th at the North Peace Cultural Centre located on 100th Avenue at 6.30 p.m.

Margaret May, president of the Peace River North Festival Association, called it a performing arts festival that includes classes in bands, piano, strings, vocal choirs, dance, and a speech category. 

She said: “I would say probably 90 per cent of the participants who enter the festival are young people from the ages of about six to 18, although there are adult classes as well.” 

May noted that the entire festival is a competition culminating in a final honours concert. 

“We have different formats for different sections of the festival, but they all play in front of a professional adjudicator, who gives them advice and critiques their performances,” she added. “There are awards given out throughout the festival for top performers in each category.” 

For the finale concert, May said, top performers from all disciplines are selected to perform that evening. 

“I always tell people, if you’re going to one performance at the festival, go to the honours concert, because that’s a selection of everything…[from all] disciplines and all the kinds of the best performances,” she added.  

The festival, May noted, has been happening for a long time, but in different formats. She believes the current format has been in place for more than 40 years. 

When asked how she was involved in the festival, she said: “[Growing up], I played piano in the festival. I got involved in the organizational side because my children were involved in the festival, my daughter was in dance and my son played in the band.” 

May estimates that approximately 600 people are participating this year and the festival keeps growing. 

“Especially on the dance side, we’re having a hard time squeezing in all the people that want to participate in the time that we have,” she added. “But one thing we have added to the dance side is that we’ve kind of gone to kind of a digital format in terms of our adjudication.”

The festival, she explained, is a “great showcase of the talent this region and beyond has.”  

“It is also a great learning experience, even for kids that [do] not necessarily want to be musicians or dancers, but the skills that they learn at the festival, they carry through their lives,” May noted. 

The prize top performers receive will come in the form of $8,000 in scholarships. 

“We get a lot of very generous sponsors around the community, so because of that, we’re able to give out scholarships to the kids,” she noted 

When asked if May has a message for the community, “First of all, you’d be very impressed to see what kind of talent we have,” she said. “Come to the honour show on Sunday night at 6:30 p.m. because then you’ll see a little bit of every discipline and you’ll see the very best the tutor adjudicators selected through the week.” 

Prices for the honours show are $15 for children and seniors and $20 for adults, she said. 

Tickets for concerts can be bought by clicking here.