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L’Écho de Frontenac,
Friday,
August 5th, 2011
Midsummer
Music Dream Festival gains popularity
The
6th ediditon of Midsummer Music Dream Festival started last Monday
in the Maison du Granit amphitheatre.
The free concert, given at 1pm, gave a generous foretaste of the variety
of shows offered until Sunday, in many venues of the Granit region. Happiness for the soul in an enchanting
scenery.
By Claudia Collard / Translation by
Valérie Bélanger
Classical and
contemporary melodies brilliantly interpreted by students of the Midsummer
Music School displayed opera, guitar and flute under a sky sometimes
threatening but that only wept little raindrops. Sun won above the audience as well as on the
stage.
Among the
artists who played in the inaugural concert, artistic director of the Festival,
Harris Becker, interpreted Christian Gottlieb Scheidler’s Sonata in D on his
guitar, accompanied by flautist Laura Patterson. Becker fell in love with the region during
Summer vacations and he decided to give students the occasion to benefit from
the assets of the area, creating a Summer music school. “In addition to the classes, the event meets
two objectives: to give a chance to the
students to perfom in concerts and to allow the people from the community to
have access to a variety of musical styles”, explained Becker.
This year, 35
students applied to the Festival Summer School, many of them to the invite of
their regular music teacher, such as guitarist Alan Hirsch and classical singer
Thomas Goodheart. Including the Faculty
members, there are more than 50 participants.
Most of them come from outside the Granit and Beauce regions and are
housed at the Maison Familiale Rurale in St-Romain.
At the beginning
of the week, the 6th edition of the Midsummer Music Dream Festival
already had reached a record attendance.
“83 people came to the Moulin Bernier show on Monday night, the usual
attendance being of about 50 people. I
even had to go get some extra chairs!” happily shares Pauline Jobin, director
of the Festival.
Shows, all at
8:00pm are presented until Sunday. On
August 4th, works from Bach to Shostakovitch were interpreted by
violins and other strings at the St-Hilaire-de-Dorset church. Opera as well as chamber music, featuring
Lambton-born soprano Valérie Bélanger, will be offered on August 5th
at St-Noël-Chabanel Chapel in Lambton.
The icing on the cake: the choir concert, on August 6th in
Lambton church, will bring together about 50 choristers and soloists, among
them, about twenty of them from St-Georges-de-Beauce.
For more
information on the Festival programming:
www.midsummermusiquebec.com
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