Neepawa to host national piano exams

Details

Published on Tuesday, May 24, 2016

By Kira Paterson

Neepawa Banner/Neepawa Press

This year, a few local piano students are in for a new experience, taking a piano exam in their home community. Belinda Critchlow and Remi Bouchard, two piano teachers in Neepawa, have been preparing their students for a piano exam since September. The exam is scheduled to take place on Sunday, May 29. 

The exam is based on a curriculum from the Canadian National Conservatory of Music (CNCM) and they have designated examiners each year who travel to communities in which there are a lot of students taking that specific curriculum. “I guess they decided that since there were more here taking [the CNCM curriculum], that they should have an examiner here,” said Bouchard. 

There will be eight kids participating and this will be each one’s first time doing a piano exam like this. Two of the students are Bouchard’s and the other six are Critchlow’s students. 

Bouchard, who has been teaching piano in Neepawa for about 60 years, said this is the first time a piano exam will take place in Neepawa since he was a student. Previously, if a student wanted to take the exam, they would have to travel to Boissevain, as that was the closest place that the examiners visited. 

The CNCM examiner coming out this year is from Saskatchewan, Laurel Teichroeb. 

Bouchard said that the CNCM has been operating for about 15 years and the number of people using their curriculum has been steadily growing. He said last year in Manitoba, there were only exams taking place in Boissevain and Winnipeg, but because it’s grown this year, there will be five or six communities in the province hosting the examiner. 

One student does the exam at a time. They will each play four songs, all in one genre or by one composer, with the students in lower levels playing for 10 minutes and the higher levels playing for 15 minutes. 

This exam is open to more styles of music, whereas many of the older ones only focus on classical. Bouchard said that one of the students is doing all jazz pieces, but with other curriculums, that wouldn’t be allowed. “When this new thing [CNCM curriculum] started, I thought, ‘Oh this is exciting,’ because there’s more variety,” noted Bouchard. The four pieces need to have variety in tempo and other components to prove that the student is able to perform more than just slow-paced songs or only songs that move fast. 

Bouchard said that his students have been working on their four pieces since September in preparation for the exam. He also said that Critchlow actually took the exam to help her know how to prepare her students for it. 

The results of the exam will be sent to the students a few weeks afterwards. The purpose of the exam is to see if the student is doing well enough to move on to the next level of the curriculum. 

Bouchard said that the examiners will probably come here every year as long as there are still enough students taking the CNCM curriculum.