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ST. ANDREWS – Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” floated over Passamaquoddy Bay on Saturday afternoon as people by the hundreds, maybe thousands, flocked to Kingsbrae Garden in St. Andrews.
About 100 youngsters from six to 12 in the Sistema Moncton Children’s Orchestra made the music under the baton of Maestro Antonio Delgado on an outdoor stage on a gorgeous June day.
The other children and their parents, taking advantage of the free admission all day, provided the laughter and general gaiety across the 27-acre Kingsbrae Garden.
The Sistema Moncton concert and free admission Saturday was a highlight of the ARTrageous Festival, which started Thursday afternoon with naming the winners of the Canadian Sculpture Competition.
Kingsbrae Garden general manager Andreas Haun had a very busy day Saturday, stopping barely long enough to agree that the grass had finally dried out. It was still wet on Thursday, the day after a downpour.
Sistema New Brunswick started in Moncton in 2009, founder Ken MacLeod, president and chief executive officer of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, explained in an interview following the Saturday concert.
Today, 400 children devote three hours a day, five days a week, through the school year, to the Sistema program in Moncton, Saint John and Richibucto. Sistema NB will announce a fourth location in about two weeks, bringing the total to 600 young musicians.
Sistema started 35 years ago in Venezuela as an after-school music program to create social change. MacLeod said. Today, 400,000 youngsters, many from the slums and barrios in the South American country take part, he said.
The movement has spread to 60 countries including 90 programs in the United States, 12 in Canada starting with Sistema New Brunswick in 2009.
That year, he and two NBYO board members visited Caracas, Venezuela, to check out Sistema.
They started with four schools in Moncton in 2009. Saint John is in its second year, Richibucto in its first.
“The whole idea, it’s all about social change and social development through the orchestras. The kids, we think, get in the orchestra what they often don’t get in their life, and that is, you can’t play like that unless you’re focused and you have discipline,” he said.
They can start in Grade 1. There are no auditions or requirements “other than they have to commit to come every day and be part of the orchestra.”
There are no fees. In New Brunswick, the government funds half the budget, private donations the rest.
Each centre schedules four concerts per year. “This week we had our finale concert on Tuesday night in Saint John, Thursday night in Moncton, Friday night Richibucto, and here in St. Andrews. Moncton on Thursday there were 1,400 people at that concert.”
Total attendance came to 8,000, he said. “We keep our concerts free so they are accessible to our parents and their families.”
The orchestra performed several pieces on Saturday, Rossini’s “William Tell Overture,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and what sounded like the fiddle tune “Joys of Quebec” among them.
They saved the “1812 Overture” for the finale. The children worked hard on this piece and looked forward to performing it, Delgado said before they started it.
Delgado graduated from Sistema in Venezuela, MacLeod said. Sistema NB employs 25 staff including teaching musicians, most of whom give private lessons, perform in the New Brunswick Symphony Orchestra, or find other musical outlets.
Kingsbrae Garden was busy everywhere on Saturday, with children checking out the playhouses and visiting the animals, their parents admiring the flowers, the mechanically minded figuring out how the windmill works, the artistically inclined stopping at the sculptures.
Market vendors set up shop at the garden. The café did a steady business.
Chainsaw carver Joel Palmer with Swamp Bear Art of Prince Williams worked on turning a pine log into two herons, his grinder providing a counterpoint to the Sistema concert. A donor bought this piece, so it will stay at Kingsbrae Garden, Palmer said.
Kingsbrae Garden is open daily, holidays included, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. to Oct. 12.
