But that didn’t stop Moose Jaw’s Presley McLeod from winning a provincial championship when the Saskatchewan Music Festival Association awards were presented this past week.
Presley, a Grade 9 student at Central Collegiate, took first place in the Junior Musical Theatre class for her performance of ‘Not for the Life of Me’ from the 1967 film and 2005 stage musical Thoroughly Modern Millie.
“It was a lot of weeks of going to lessons and just practicing the same song over and over again, but it was really enjoyable the whole time,” McLeod said. “It was all really different and I’m really happy I was able to win.”
In a normal year, the Saskatchewan Music Festival would have been held in a large theatre under the bright lights with stands full of competitors and patrons taking in the performances.
The pandemic changed literally everything involved — from lessons over Zoom, to sending in recordings of your performances from home and just practicing and refining your performance on your own, what was already an individual activity became that much more isolated.
“It’s a little bit different, I thought it was kind of like practicing into a mirror, but you aren’t looking at yourself, you’re looking into a camera or whoever is adjudicating,” McLeod explained. “And instead of their faces or the light in front of you, I just tried to picture myself instead of all the non-existent people in the audience.”
Not having that crowd to perform for added to the unusual aspect.
“Part of the experience is you feed off the audience when you’re performing, especially with musical theatre songs or any song that uses a lot of emotion,” McLeod said. “You have your audience and you can tell how you need to react to your song based on how they’re reacting to you.”
In the end, though, the months of work with teacher Stella Salido-Porter paid off and despite the strangeness of it all, McLeod was able to pull off the song — music by Jeanine Tesori, lyrics by Dick Scanlan — without a hitch, with Salido-Porter on piano and camerawork by Tristan Allain.
Having her teacher right there playing live played a part in the final performance going so well.
“It’s definitely easier as a performer to do it with a live accompanist, because they follow you,” McLeod explained. “I could sing whatever tempo and she could alter her speed to match mine, so that’s really helpful. And as a teacher, having her right there helps me remember all the things she told me to do.”
From there, it was time to wait. The awards were announced on June 5, and McLeod was watching from home.
“I was sort of shocked at first when they announced it, they announced the song first and my first reaction was ‘okay, who else did this song’,” McLeod said with a laugh. “Then when they said my name and it was like ‘oh wow, I won out of 18 other people’. That was kind of a weird feeling to have that happen, that (the adjudicator) thought I was that good.”
You can check out Presley’s winning performance and those of her competition by clicking right here.
