There have been tears of joy and sorrow, trophies awarded and hearts broken.
It's been a whirlwind 60 years for the Coquitlam District Musical Festival (CDMF), with tens of thousands of competitors performing their best and anxiously hearing the results from some of the best adjudicators in the business.
It all started in 1951 when Beryl MacLeod, a Port Coquitlam music teacher who ran MacLeod Music on Shaughnessy Street, dreamt big. Every year, she would hear about local parents, children and teachers take the long drive or train ride out to Vancouver to compete in the Kiwanis Music Festival and return home - often late at night - bleary eyed from the tedious journey. She suggested PoCo hold an arts festival of its own, an event that would make the municipality a destination for young musicians around the Lower Mainland.
And so, with the help of Velma Manion, one of five music teachers who worked at MacLeod Music, and other volunteers, MacLeod founded the CDMF society whose mandate - according to its constitution - was to "foster music and kindred arts."
With few funds but enthusiastic community support, CDMF officially launched on March 23, 1953, gaining 128 entries in the 60 classes offered. Competitions took place in school gyms, church halls, the Masonic and Elks' halls, the Surf movie theatre (where the Giggle Dam is today) and the Golden Ears Hotel.
Stanley Bligh, a Vancouver Sun music critic and choral music conductor, was one of three adjudicators for the inaugural year.
Three years later, CDMF hired two more adjudicators to handle double the entries and, by 1957, organizers were forced to expand the festival to five days for the numerous piano, vocal, bands, accordion, strings, drama/speech arts, highland dance and ballet entries.
A decade after it started, CDMF boasted 1,100 entries with the Vancouver Sun commenting, "Your standards are to be envied. From a tiny festival 10 years ago, you are now second to none."
Music teachers around the Lower Mainland paid attention to CDMF, which was usually the first festival in the region, as competitors not only excelled but placed at the provincial and national levels.
Dance prevailed so much that it prompted a letter from organizer Helen Thomson who, in 1973, wrote: "The dance section is the hinge on which the balance of the festival swings. Granted it has the greatest number of entries and is the jam on our bread audience-wise, but this situation should not exist."
By the late 1980s, CDMF's dance section generated more than 3,000 entries a year and competitions were so big that they had to move from PoCo to the Shadbolt Theatre for the Arts in Burnaby and, for larger groups, the Massey Theatre in New Westminster. The dance section alone took six weeks to complete, remembered CDMF president Harold Peters.
But the large number of entries and the lack of volunteer support translated to the CDMF board canceling dance, piano and other instrumental categories in 2005. Luckily, piano returned four years later (and resulted that year in a grand national piano champion for CDMF: Andrew Wang, now a piano performance student at University of Michigan); however, dance was cut altogether from the festival. Strings returned in 2010.
Today, CDMF attracts about 700 entries for piano, strings, speech arts and vocal (musical theatre and classical voice) over the month-long event at the Hyde Creek community church on Nova Scotia Avenue.
And it continues to draw top-notch talent, said Thelka Wright, who co-ordinates the strings and speech arts sections and is a board member of Performing Arts BC, the umbrella organization that oversees 32 regional festivals around the province.
Wright told a story about a well-known professor from the United States who, last year during competition, threw his hands up in the air when he heard the pianists play. "I thought, Oh oh. We're in trouble. But he said, 'I don't know what to say. I've never heard such a high standard from such young musicians.' He was just blown away."
Wright points to the success of CDMF competitors over the past 60 years, among them, Canada's first Rockette Betty McHardy; actor Michael J. Fox (Back to the Future); crooner Michael Buble; concert pianist Jon Kumura Parker; and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City), who is quoted in a local newspaper article years back saying, "I got my start at CDMF."
Local stars have also shone brightly in their early years while competing at CDMF, most notably Cori Caulfield (Caulfield School of Dance); Kim Bunka (Undiscovered Theatre Company); and Leanne Koch (Place des Arts vocal trainer) - all of whom will pay tribute to the festival at a 60th anniversary concert next week.
The two-hour show at PoCo's Terry Fox Theatre will be a retrospective of sorts, acknowledging the CDMF pioneers: MacLeod, Manion (now an honourary president) and longtime assistants Reid Anderson (artistic director of Stuttgart Ballet and past CDMF competitor), Perry Ehrlich (Gotta Sing! Gotta Dance! creator) and Henry Waack (music program founder at Douglas College), who are honourary patrons.
Peters said the ups and downs of the competitors, who also glean advice from adjudicators at workshops when the competition ends, will be highlighted. "It's amazing what they have achieved," he said. "Some of them just move you to tears because their performance is so beautiful."
He then cited a quote CDMF often uses from its founder, Beryl MacLeod: "You don't have to ask who was first or who won, for each person wins when their best they have done."
Tickets to the Coquitlam District Music Festival's 60th anniversary celebration concert - happening Thursday, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. at the Terry Fox Theatre (1260 Riverwood Gate, Port Coquitlam) - are $15/$5 at the door or by calling 604-941-6476. To volunteer with next year's festival, email [email protected].
