E-Festival / Festival virtuel

CFMTA COVID-19 Special E-Festival Event an Extraordinary Success!

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing and quarantine protocols enacted across Canada in March 2020, students had to stay away from their weekly in person music lessons, and many annual music festivals were forced to make the difficult decision to cancel.

Since January 2019, the CFMTA has offered virtual music festivals to the students of their members through their E-Festival program and decided to offer a special CFMTA COVID-19 E-Festival event for those students who had been working so diligently toward a festival performance. Just like the local music festival, the virtual festival would allow students to perform their chosen selection and receive a written adjudication. With hope that an E-Festival could provide some extra motivation for students, as well as a performance opportunity that may have otherwise been missed, we were uncertain how many would take this unexpected opportunity.

The CFMTA COVID-19 E-Festival went VIRAL!

The CFMTA COVID-19 E-Festival was truly a NATIONAL E-Festival as entries came in from every Province and Territory that has a Provincial Registered Music Teachers' Association! Thank you to the Provincial Associations for your communications and support to your teachers!

There were approximately 400 entries across multiple disciplines and levels in the 6 days that entries were accepted. Some of the entries included disciplines such as Woodwinds, Strings and Speech Arts in addition to Voice and Piano classes.

There were 34 Bronze Seals, 205 Silver Seals and 150 Gold Seals awarded. Many adjudicators noted that the performances were at an exceptionally high performance level and that the students were very well prepared for their local festival performances.  The CFMTA E-Festival Committee congratulates all the participants on their performances and successes in this special E-Festival event!

The CFMTA E-Festival Committee would also like to thank the adjudicators for investing and sharing their time, energy and knowledge with the participants in this relatively new format. There were over 70 adjudicators registered, and we are grateful that so many Registered Music Teachers from across Canada were interested in helping students continue their musical learning and growth duringthis time of great learning curves.

The next CFMTA E-Festival event is scheduled for Canada Music Week, November 22 to 26, 2020. This Canada Music Week E-Festival will be for Canadian compositions only and we hope that it will provide a short term goal for students returning in the fall to their lessons.

We hope that teachers and students will consider participating in the upcoming E-Festival programs, whether online music lessons and exams are still the norm or not!

Best wishes for safety and wellness to all!
Lorna Wanzel, CFMTA E-Festival Chair
Terri-Lynn McNichol, CFMTA E-Festival Administrator

Gold Seals were awarded to (multiple listing means a Gold Seal was awarded for additional performances adjudicated):