Thompson Music Teachers and Friends Concert

The Thompson Music Teachers and Friends Concert is one of the musical highlights of the year every spring in a city that rightly prides itself on its fine musicians, many of whom come out of R.D. Parker Collegiate's junior and senior bands, or the senior Adrenaline Jazz Ensemble, with some of the students, such as drummer Becky Pritchard, going on to Brandon University’s acclaimed music program before later returning home and playing perhaps in the Thompson Community Band, conducted in recent years by music teachers Kevin Lewis and Sarah Lewis, who were preceded by RDPC principal Wally Itson, who still sits in with the band to play his clarinet occasionally, as he did May 31. The Thompson Music Teachers and Friends Concert has been going for more than 30 years and is a “showcase of music teachers and talented local musicians in a variety of genres," says Bruce Krentz, the BRHA's regional health promotion co-ordinator, who is a flutist and percussionist in the Thompson Community Band. Among those taking to the stage for this year's concert were BRHA nurse Betsy Wrana, manager of Northern Spirit Manor, and one of the finest pianists in Thompson; Lisa Larocque, the best known harpist in Thompson; Danny Morris, owner of Mystery Lake Body Shop Auto Glass and Wheel Alignment Ltd. who plays the euphonium in Thompson Community Band; fiddle player and teacher Jennilee Martineau; Russell Peters, a music therapist, who plays guitar and piano, Burntwood Elementary School teacher Matthew Allard, who played some of his recorded music for the new stop-motion animation movie The River Inside, directed and produced by Al Oldfield, which premiered May 20 at Deckchair Cinema on the waterfront in Darwin, Australia; R.D. Parker alumnus bass player Dan Pegus, a 2011 NorMan Jazz Festival clinician; and Edith Smith, a music student at Brandon University who is living in Thompson for the summer, who played "The Prayer" on the marimba.