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‘Spotlight Celebration' showcases Sarah McLachlan School of Music in Vancouver
Friday was a big night for Canadian songwriting legend Sarah McLachlan and students at her Vancouver music school.
Canadian music legend Sarah McLachlan and her eponymous school of music held their first-ever Spotlight Celebration in Vancouver Friday night.
The event, which showcased some of the school's talented young musicians, was held to celebrate graduating students and the donor community that funds the school.
In an interview with CTV News Vancouver before the concert at the school's Mount Pleasant building, McLachlan highlighted some of the key contributors to the school's mission.
'Part of the reason for the celebration tonight is donor appreciation and, in particular, Dona Wolverton and the Wolverton Foundation, who donated this incredible, 16,000-square-foot space to us, to the music school, for perpetuity, rent free, which is unbelievable,' McLachlan said.
The musician has personally funded the school's administrative costs since it started, allowing for every donor dollar to support the school's free programming for underserved youth.
In September, the school will enter its 24th year of operation. It has been in its current Vancouver location since 2011.
'I have a great sense of pride and joy and love for this place,' McLachlan said, recounting how she founded the organization in response to contracting public school music programs in Canada.
'For me, who grew up in a vibrant school music program and also had parents who could afford to pay for private music lessons, and knowing what music did for me and how it fed me and it saved me in so many ways, the idea of kids not having that opportunity just felt like a travesty to me.'
From a starting point of a few hundred kids taking instrument lessons in a pilot project within the Vancouver-based non-profit Arts Umbrella, The Sarah McLachlan School of Music has grown to provide tuition-free music programs for 1,100 youth in Vancouver, Surrey and Edmonton each year.
McLachlan described the school's current offerings as 'kid-focused' in a way music education sometimes isn't.
'You get to kind of try everything,' she said. 'You get to try all these different instruments and in second year you're already playing in a band and, you know, you're singing with someone else, you're doing songwriting, you're doing beatboxing … It's just an incredibly fun, safe, nurturing environment.'
