As the town’s centennial activities got underway last weekend, the 70th-annual Rainy River District Festival of the Performing Arts wrapped up with its traditional highlights concert Sunday afternoon at the Townshend Theatre.
“We had a really good crowd at the highlights concert,” said John Jankiewicz, president of the festival committee. “I was happy with the concert.
“I thought we had some really good entries,” he added.
One complaint was the concert seemed to be a bit long, lasting well over three hours.
“It went a little longer,” said Jankiewicz, trailing off, but then adding, “We had so many award winners, we have to try to put everyone out.
“There’s always a number of outstanding performances that we don’t run in the highlights concert because we don’t have programing time,” he noted, explaining why some participants didn’t get to perform Sunday.
“I apologize that not everybody shows up in the highlights concert.”
Despite the length of the concert, the time seemed to fly by. And the climax of the concert, once again, was the awarding of the Rose Bowl winners for the 2003 festival.
Jaclyn Hart won for piano and also automatically received the Dallman Award, given to encourage young, promising pianists in Rainy River District.
Angela Huntley won the Rose Bowl for drama while Sarah Hallikas won for vocal.
Another touch to the highlights concert was learning the town, because of the centennial year, waived the theatre fees.
The festival, which began March 31, saw good attendance at most performances, said Jankiewicz. However, he did find participation was down in some cases.
He attributed that to the festival’s proximity to the high school’s production of “Oklahoma!”—saying students put their all into that and had nothing left for the festival.
He also indicated instrumental entries suffered a bit because of the musical.
“We’re planning on moving the festival to the end of April, beginning of May [next year],” Jankiewicz said.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
