The Youth Showcase has been an important feature of Hillside’s summer and winter festivals for ten years, giving young people a chance to perform before a large and appreciative audience, to work with festival staff and volunteers, to learn about backstage protocols with technical production and stage management teams, and to experience first-hand the reason why you should remember to bring extra guitar strings, sunglasses, capos, picks, and good-luck charms to every performance. Throughout ten years of staging the youth showcase, we have partnered and collaborated with JAM School, the local music education centre that is unique for its emphasis on performance. With talented teachers in everything from bass and bagpipes to vocals and violin, JAM School has created a groundswell of interest in music, taking youth performances out of private studios and recital venues and into restaurants and cafés, large halls and big festivals. Our local music scene is better for it. To Robert Leader and Dan Drysdale, and all the teachers at JAM School: thank you for enriching the lives of your students, our city, and our region; thank you for changing the life trajectories of so many young people and for sharing their talents with Hillsiders.
This year’s Hillside Inside showcases students who have been taking online classes at JAM School.
Click on names below to find out more about the performers and to view videos during the Hillside Inside weekend.
JamSchool is a performance-based music education centre with two locations in Guelph, Ontario. We offer private music instruction and contemporary band classes, both in-person and online. Our focus is on creating an environment to learn and interact with other students through regularly scheduled performances, allowing our students to take the stage with their peers. We believe that live performance is key to developing a life-long love of music. Whether you are six or sixty years young, we have a program for you. Please visit our website for further details: JamSchool.com