2024/2025 MUSIC SUNDAYS

The concerts will take place for the 2024/25 season at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre Café.

Registration is now open for performers for the Fall concerts in October and November. The deadline for signing up is the Sunday before the concert. Any late registrations, or if the concert is already fully subscribed, will be signed up for the next concert.

These are the planned dates of the concerts being held this season. Performances are always subject to changes by the museum administration owing to special events, renovations or changes to the status of the café.
October 20th, 2024
November 24th, 2024
December - no concert
January 26th, 2025
February 23rd, 2025
March 16th, 2025
April 6th,, 2025
April 27th, 2025
May, 25th, 2025

general information

How to sign up to perform

To perform in these concerts you need to be a member or a student of a member of MTA-NWT. We encourage members of MTA-NWT to have their students sign up to perform at these concerts on a first come first served basis. To sign up for a concert, or if you or your students would like more information about participating in these low stress, friendly performance opportunities, please email us at MTAmusicsundays@gmail.com. The deadline for registration is the Sunday before each concert, but earlier submissions are always welcome. Please have the parent or guardian of each student complete a registration form and submit it by the deadline. If you or your child are an NWT resident but take lessons online from a teacher outside the NWT, either the parent or the student may join MTA as a ‘Friend of the Society’ for the student to be eligible to participate, or their teacher may join the society as a Full or an Associate Member.

Please note, if you are performing with an accompanist, your accompanist will need to complete this form.

Expectations

There are no auditions, however, these are not jam sessions. The expectation is that all pieces or songs will be well prepared and ready for a public performance at whatever stage a musician is in his/her learning journey. Students should only sign up on the recommendation of their teachers. Teachers are welcome to submit students for up to a maximum of 20 minutes total playing time per studio. Exceptions may be made by the organizer when appropriate.
No individual or ensemble performance should exceed 10 minutes.
For dates when there is high demand for performance opportunities, individual performances will be limited, at the discretion of the organizer and depending on the performance level, to one selection and the time per performer limited in order to accommodate the maximum number of performers. This means that very young beginners receive less than a minute and those at a more advanced level in their musical journey are granted a longer performance time per selection of up to 10 minutes.

AUDIENCE

We put up a few posters in strategic spots and on social media, but the rest is up to you! Post on Social Media, promote yourself! While there are always a few people who happen to be in the Museum who sit down to listen, and in the pre-COVID past had some regular audience members not related to the performers or teachers who loved our Sunday afternoon concerts, having an audience to play for is, as always, up to the performers! If you would like an audience when you or your students perform, invite your family and friends to come to the concert!

volunteers

In order that music students may continue to take part in these wonderful performance opportunities we need some adult volunteers. Please consider volunteering for one or two of our concerts each season in order to keep this MTA-NWT program viable.

We do not currently know of anyone able to commit to taking overall charge of organizing these concerts and being present as the ‘responsible adult’ representing MTA-NWT at our performances. Would you be interested in taking on this rôle? If so, please contact Sue.

In the meantime:
The Board requests that each adult members of MTA-NWT who runs a private studio and is resident in Yellowknife, sign up to be present and take on the role of MTA representative responsible for at least one of the 8 concerts scheduled this season. You will need to identify and introduce yourself at the start of the concert, but acting as MC is optional. We have an enthusiastic student teacher, Élise Auld, who is happy to perform this function as needed and all but the youngest of the performers are encouraged to practice introducing themselves.

Currently
Sue Epp is continuing to fill in as organizer behind the scenes, but is no longer able to attend most of the concerts and would like to pass her responsibilities on to someone else.
Kirsty Ketchum, mother of an ex-performer at our concerts who is currently at university studying music, has kindly undertaken to attend all our performances from 2:30 to 4:30pm this season and stage manage set up and take down.
Mona Bouchard has volunteered to continue recording the performances of students whose teachers are out of town and unable to attend.
Élise Auld, a student teacher, has volunteered to look after the young performers during performances, show them where to sit, what to do and help them if needed to introduce their piece.
Parents. We also need people to assist with setting up and taking down for every concert! We need to move tables, chairs and a grand piano. The parents whose students are performing sign up to volunteer for this on the registration form and do a great job.

Thank you to these committed volunteers!