Creativ Music Centre presents Shine – Young Artist Music Showcase, Saturday, June 10, 7 p.m. at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield Ave., North Vancouver. Tickets are $15 and available online at eventbrite.ca/e/shine-young-artist-music-showcase-tickets-34484740788.
Taylor Swift began writing her own songs and learning guitar at 12 years old.
Justin Bieber was 16 when he had a single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Stevie Wonder was just 13 when he accomplished that feat.
Precocious artists with an unmatched sound can pop up out of nowhere.
North Vancouver’s Creativ Music Centre is helping to fuel fantasies of North Shore youth in search of musical stardom, but at the same time, keeping them grounded by showing them exactly what it’s like to pay your dues as an artist.
Some aspiring musicians that come through Creativ’s studio are releasing original songs on iTunes, Apple Music and Spotify. But outside of the online arena, there isn’t an opportunity for underage musicians to play in front of a traditional audience.
“We just found that there wasn’t a lot of venues for minors to perform,” says Jim Kwan, owner of Creativ Music Centre.
So Kwan decided to create a musical outlet for them. It’s called Shine – Young Artist Music Showcase, which will see three aspiring singers – Katrina Becker-Gedge, Anika Mackay and Mia Shanks – take to the stage at Presentation House Theatre June 10.
This showcase of local up and coming young artists with a focus on their original music is a first of its kind for Creativ. While there are many talented singers at Creativ, in choosing who would perform, Kwan says they wanted those who had taken their craft to the next level by writing original songs.
And it’s not something that happens overnight, writing a quality song.
“Some of them come in with ideas more developed than others,” explains Kwan. “Sometimes it’s like a little riff and melody line and then it’s like ‘OK, well, you’ve got an idea there, but just like writing a book we need a plot, we need a middle, we need an ending – we need to develop the story.”’
Fortunately, the students have eight in-house music producers/engineers at their disposal, some of whom were nominated for Junos and Grammys in 2017. One Juno nomination was for an album by bluegrass group High Bar Gang, while the Grammy nod was for Elvis Costello’s audiobook that he recorded at Creativ last summer.
“It was very cool. For sure he’s like the biggest profile person we’ve had in the studio,” says Kwan of Costello.
All three Shine performers fit in the pop genre, but each brings a different slant, says Kwan.
Becker-Gedge, a Grade 9 Handsworth student, is more acoustic guitar influenced, for example. Her Handsworth classmate Mackay, meanwhile, plays guitar and piano.
Last fall, Becker-Gedge performed on the blind auditions for the La voix junior show (The Voice Kids) on Québec’s TVA network. She was one of 85 contestants selected nationwide from over 5,000 entries, to move through to the blind auditions on the French-language program produced in Montréal.
Shanks, a Grade 7 West Bay Elementary student, also strums a guitar, as well as the ukulele.
As for what inspires the lyrics for the teenagers’ songs, Kwan agrees it’s a little in the style of early Taylor Swift.
“I think in all the cases they are taking elements from their life, some may be more literal than other songs are. They can just be about being a teenager. It’s tricky navigating through school nowadays. That’s a huge vulnerability, putting words on paper that are about you.”
For the 90-minute show, each of the artists has prepared six to seven songs, including covers of their favourite songs, which run the gamut from Adele to One Direction to Ed Sheeran.
Kwan, along with the artists, have curated the showcase lineup in such a way that it will keep the audience entertained. In the mix will be some solo intimate performances featuring a ukulele to “full band things where we are fully rocking it out.”
“We can’t put five ballads in a row because people will fall asleep,” says Kwan with a laugh.
There is definitely some nervous excitement on the part of the young singers, going into the show.
“It’s now not just singing that song, it’s you can’t look at your phone for lyrics. You have to live these words. And these are the things we have been working on, to bring it to that next level to entertain the audience,” explains Kwan.
Another side of the show, is learning how to make it as a musician.
“They’re kids, right. They see the Grammys, they see these artists on TV, they see the Junos and part of that process is paying your dues, so to speak. Just being able to put on a show, getting your song performance-ready, working with a band, all the logistics, and probably most importantly, you have to get out there and promote,” says Kwan.
One of the selling points of the Presentation House Theatre is its size. It’s not Centennial Theatre nor the Kay Meek. Presentation House fits the intimacy bill needed to give the show a community feel and not overwhelm the young artists.
At the end of the day, the budding artists are dreaming big.
“I think with kids they dream big when they are kids and they are allowed to do that right now,” says Kwan.
As for what the future holds for them, musically, Kwan says it depends on how realistic the artists are and how hard they want to work for their dreams.
“There’s millions of artists in vans driving across the country doing shows to ten people. And that’s part of that process of refining your act and tweaking it and finding where you fit in the whole thing.”
Given the dedication Becker-Gedge, Mackay and Shanks have demonstrated, anything is possible.
“They are super kids and just so enthusiastic and so talented,” says Kwan.
