Rachael wins the Rose Bowl!
Monday, March 19, 2001
If you were to see a copy of today's edition of the Winnipeg Free Press, there on the front cover (and again in a large article in the Entertainment section) you would see our daughter, Rachael, holding a trophy in her arms. The Rose Bowl – an award signifying the best vocalist in the Winnipeg Music Competition festival.
She achieved this award on Saturday, March 17, singing before a large crowd at the Pantages Theatre, as one of several extraordinarily gifted young singers.
We are very proud of her.
Perhaps I can simply quote the newspaper report, and include a scanned copy of the picture:
Rose Bowl winner follows her calling
by Morley Walker
There seem to be three acceptable career paths in Winnipeg’s Harwood-Jones household: the Anglican priesthood, law and music.
Rachael Harwood-Jones, this year’s Rose Bowl winner for senior vocalist at the Winnipeg Music Competition Festival, is headed down path No. 3.
“I honestly believe that singing is my calling,” says Harwood-Jones, 23, a third year vocal performance student at the University of Manitoba.
“It feels wonderful to think of having a career in something I absolutely love.”
Harwood-Jones says she has received complete support in her operatic and oratorio singing ambitions from her father Tony, an Anglican priest, and her mother, Heather Dixon, a lawyer.
“Music is held in high esteem in our family,” says Harwood-Jones, whose older sister, Ariel, is a singer in Toronto and older brother Troy, now a law student, was the frontman for local rock band The Human Condition. Another older brother, Chris, is an Anglican priest in B.C.
“I’ve been listening to Bach and Duke Ellington since birth.”
Harwood-Jones won the Rose Bowl Saturday night at the Pantages Playhouse, largely on the strength of her performance of Laurie’s Song from Aaron Copland’s opera The Tenderland.
Last year’s Rose Bowl runner-up, she entered six categories in all this year, winning two: senior oratorio and senior French art song.
Her vocal teacher is Winnipeg-based opera singer Tracy Dahl. When Dahl is out of town, she takes lessons from another vocal stalwart, Charlene Pauls.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do next March,” says Harwood-Jones, who has been a music fest regular since she was 11.
“The reality of it hasn’t sunk in.”
Rose Bowl runner-up this year is Nikki Einfeld. Winner of the Tudor Bowl, for Grade B vocalist, is Andriana Churchman.
The 83rd annual music festival, which attracted 25,000 participants, wound up thee weeks of competitions at 10 venues on Saturday.
Beginning at 7 p.m. tomorrow night at the Pantages, there will be a concert of the festival’s most outstanding choirs.
The gala closing concert, featuring performances from the festival’s most outstanding instrumental and vocal performers, is slated for 7 p.m. Wednesday.
On March 10, painist Darryl Friesen won the Aikins Memorial Trophy for the festival’s top senior instrumentalist.
