Talent excels at annual Perth festival
Kinvara (8) and Jemima Gow (7), Craigclowan, took part in the Bible reading and verse speaking classes Perform in Perth celebrates the county’s music, dance, speech and drama and sees the area’s talented youngsters step up to compete in earnest this month.
The competition, staged at six Perth venues, began on March 3 and will continue until Saturday 17.
The 2018 event sees the musical festival mark nearly a century of performing talent, this is the 94th time Perform in Perth has been run.
The first classes began on Saturday last with piano solos in the assembly hall of North Inch Community Campus.
Since then there has been poetry, prepared reading, Bible extracts and Scots poetry in the AK Bell Library’s Soutar Theatre on Monday, Tuesday andWednesday.
This moved onto music solos in drumming, xylophone and timpani all day yesterday also in the Soutar Theatre.
Over the weekend the contested classes will be pipe band related, with practice chanter, bagpipes, stick and pad and solo snare drum at Glenearn Community Campus. There are also musical games for teams in the campus games hall on Saturday.
Next week from Monday it will be the turn of the choirs and orchestras to make a big noise. The competition moves to the main auditorium of Perth Concert Hall, the city’s premier performance venue, for chamber music, wind bands, orchestras and duets.
Over the course of the following days every imaginable musical instrument gets a showcase and on Thursday there is even a slot for Guides to sing campfire songs in St Leonard’sin-the-Fields Church.
Opera singers are up next and the classes even encompass Edwardian music hall style singing.
Perform in Perth culminates with the championship classes for solo vocalists and large instrumental classes and solo players on the night of Saturday, March 17 in St Leonard’s Church. Special awards are presented after this.
President of Perform in Perth, Eileen Waterston finished her letter introducing the 2018 festival with a quote from H Walford Davies:“The object is not to defeat a rival, but to pace each other on the road to excellence.”