Our red carpet town

 

Of the many photos I took at last Thursday night's Brockville and Area Music and Performing Arts Hall of Fame gala, I am fondest of this one.

Consider for a moment everything this photo says about Brockville.

At left is Lisa Leroux, retired teacher and community theatre performer extraordinaire, while at right is Bruce Wylie (who is no more retired from radio than Brockville is considering an underwater condo complex...). They are interviewing local piano virtuosas Kathryn Jonker, left, and Christine Bi on the red carpet at the Brockville Arts Centre before a hall of fame induction ceremony that will include, among other worthy and talented folks, the girls' piano teacher, Loretta U'Ren-Kivinen. The girls are being interviewed on TV Cogeco.

What this says is that, despite all the downsizings, rationalizations and reductions this community has suffered, it still has people (Wylie being among the most active and dedicated) who will go to the trouble of decking out the arts centre for a red carpet do. It still has a community television station on which to broadcast a red carpet interview. And it still has people worth honouring on the red carpet: people who teach music, perform music, put on plays, act in plays, make it possible for others to act in plays or otherwise contribute to that unquantifiable activity we call "the arts."

It also says we have young people eager to carry this on. I am struck by the joyful expressions on these girls' faces, but not as much as I was struck by their performances.

Friends and colleagues who tolerate my passion for classical music tell me it is in danger of extinction because it mainly serves an older demographic. These kids suggest something better in store. Christine performed Yoshinao Nakada's Etude Allegro, while Kathryn played Felix Mendelssohn's Andante and Rondo Capriccioso, and I can assure you both girls "got" those pieces. I dare say these girls understood the music a lot better than many of their elders in the crowd.

What this picture says about Brockville is that, as I said at the start of my story, it still has the arts to put the "quality" in "quality of life."

With music education currently in decline, and a worldview on the ascendant in which everything must be measured against a financial result, it is important to remember that, while we need a strong economy to keep living, we need something more to make that life worth living.

We must defend Brockville's red carpet values.

Surely, if we are to lure more people to Brockville as our city leaders hope to do, one of the things that will bring those people here is the quality of life a vibrant artistic scene provides -- and the intangible value of a community that puts its children on the red carpet so they can honour their teachers.