Guitar Students Strike a Chord with Culture Days

Collège Jeanne-Sauvé guitar students are kicking off their school year with a bang – or some might say… a strum – as they prepare for their first performance at Culture Days.

Culture Days is an opportunity to celebrate cultural expression and creativity in our lives as artists, audience, patrons, and participants. It’s an arts festival that takes place across Canada.

Culture Days offers a chance to try something new no matter your age or skill-level. The festivities will include visual arts, heritage, Indigenous arts and traditional practices, cross-cultural activities, educational tours, community street festivals, collective art-making projects, interactive installations, storytelling, avant-garde performance art and more. Culture Days 2023 takes place from September 22 to October 15.

Manitoba’s iteration of Culture Days starts with Student Day at The Forks. There will be a variety of student-centered workshops and performances, which is where Mr. Meunier’s students get involved: they will perform on the stairs of the Johnston Terminal at The Forks. The concert will be a collection of different solos, playing songs of their choosing. It’s the guitar students’ first performance of many performances of the school year.

“Anytime we go outside or perform, they’re excited,” Mr. Meunier told the Winnipeg Free Press.

Mr. Meunier has led the guitar program at CJS for 8 years. Many of his students have been participating for multiple years, with some as early as grade 6. They play a variety of music genres and on different guitar types – Mr. Meunier says they can play what they’re interested in and play in whatever format they like best (acoustic or electric).

You can read more about Mr. Meunier’s class performance and Manitoba’s take on Culture Days in this Winnipeg Free Press article. CJS students will be performing from 12:00 to 12:45 p.m. on September 22.

For more information on Culture Days Manitoba, and what’s happening over the next three weeks, visit their website: https://culturedays.ca/en/mb.