The first week of June was a memorable one for McKenzie Warriner of Alameda.
The daughter of Foster and Anita Warriner, she graduated from the University of Manitoba’s classical voice performance program on Wednesday.
And a few days earlier, she competed at the Saskatchewan Music Festival Association’s provincial finals in Saskatoon from June 1 to 3. During the final day, Warriner, a soprano, was selected to be Saskatchewan’s vocal representative for the National Music Festival in Sackville, N.B., from Aug. 12 to 16.
“I’m very excited,” Warriner said in an interview with Lifestyles. “It’s starting to sink in. I’ve never been to the East Coast before. The furthest east I’ve gotten in Canada is Quebec. So I’m really excited to see that part of the world and meet other musicians, and performing at that level is really, really cool.”
She believes it will be great to see and hear what people in other provinces are doing with their music, and to get feedback from national adjudicators, which she believes will help with her development.
Warriner has spoken to people from Saskatchewan who have gone to nationals in the past regarding what to expect.
“They said it’s a really cool experience,” said Warriner. “You get to meet all sorts of other musicians, and also I’ve heard the Saskatchewan team is very close-knit. I’ll be going with other people from Saskatchewan who are going for strings and piano and woodwinds. They make it a policy that we go see each other’s performances, so I’ve heard it’s really great, and it’s just like a big family going and cheering each other on.”
The provincial music festival was a great weekend for Warriner. In the classical voice, which she compared to opera, she was in three provincial level classes on June 2, and won the Canadian song class, the French song class and the concert group class. That night, she was invited to be part of the grand awards competition, although she didn’t win there.
“I’ve been working pretty hard on technique and how I performed at university the last four years, so I guess it paid off,” she said.
In the classes on June 2, the adjudicator told Warriner she did a good job of communicating through song, which wasn’t easy, because she had to sing in French for the one category.
Warriner is no stranger to local music watchers. She started competing at the Carnduff and District Music and Arts Festival when she was four years old.
When she was 10, she shifted to the Estevan and District Music Festival, after she started taking piano lessons in Estevan. Warriner competed in piano and voice in Estevan’s festival until she graduated high school. She didn’t compete locally for most of her time in university.
“This spring was my first year coming back, because I wanted to try for nationals,” said Warriner.
She has also competed in Regina’s festival.
Warriner has competed at provincials previously, and has won classes in the past, but this was the first time she has tried for nationals.
All of the festival experience helped her develop as a singer.
“It’s always good, as a musician, to have more performance opportunities, to just practise singing in front of other people, and to get feedback from people who know what they’re listening for,” said Warriner. “We’re really lucky at the Saskatchewan music festival system to have a lot of scholarship money. Not every provincial system has that.”
While Warriner has finished her studies at the University of Manitoba, she hasn’t finished her schooling. She will be moving to Rochester, N.Y., for her masters of music at the prestigious Eastman School of Music.
Her goal is to have a career in the performing arts, but if not, she would like to wind up teaching music, or maybe working at a university.
“I just want to have some of a career that involves music,” said Warriner.
