This event will run from 1-2:30pm on Saturday, June 22nd and will feature readings by local poets Olivia Ows, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, & Kingston Poet Laureate Jason Heroux; and a live musical interlude provided by 2 Kingston Symphony violinists: Julia McFarlane and Erika Sloos.
Skeleton Park Arts Festival and Kingston WritersFest co-present this third annual poetry and music event, which is sponsored again this year by Novel Idea Bookstore. KWF will be on hand to greet guests as they arrive at the park, and will have information about the eleventh annual five-day Kingston WritersFest in September. Novel Idea Bookstore will be on site with books written by the event’s participants for sale.
Olivia Ows is a Gr. 11 student at Regiopolis-Notre Dame. Last year she won 1st prize at her school’s annual poetry contest. She also earned the Junior Visual Art Award at CAPPA (Creative and Practical Performing Arts) at RND. Apart from poetry and art, her other interests include books, photography, anime, interior design, and Broadway musicals.
Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang is the author of the poetry books “Status Update” (2013), which was nominated for the Pat Lowther Award, and “Sweet Devilry” (2011), winner of the Gerald Lampert. Her work has been featured in anthologies such as “Best of the Best Canadian Poetry”, and been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize. She is also the editor of the anthology “Desperately Seeking Susans”.
Jason Heroux is the author of four poetry collections: “Memoirs of an Alias”, “Emergency Hallelujah”, “Natural Capital”, and “Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines”. His most recent books are the novel “Amusement Park of Constant Sorrow” (Mansfield Press, 2018) and “The Book of Blessings”, a poetry chapbook published by Puddles of Sky Press. He’s currently the Poet Laureate for the city of Kingston, Ontario.
Danielle Lennon, Violin
Danielle Lennon grew up in Hamilton, ON where she began her musical studies on the recorder at the age of four and has been making music ever since. In 1999 she moved to Kingston where she completed a Bachelor of Music degree on the violin at Queen’s University. She spent her summers playing on a dinner cruise on the Grand River where fiddling became a big part of her repertoire. In addition to playing in The Limestone Trio, Danielle teaches violin privately, plays second violin with the Kingston Symphony, directs The Kingston A-Strings and Youth Strings and plays with various bands in and around the area doing guest spots and studio work. She is a member of Calamity Janes, an all-female folk-rock quartet and she can be heard on recordings by Kasador, Chris Koster, Choir of Ghosts, The Swamp Ward Orchestra, Kyra and Tully, Ianspotting, Kris and Dee, and Megan Hamilton. She also released her own album of original music, String Theory, in 2015 and currently has another composing project in the works.
Julia McFarlane, Violin
Equally at home as a performer and educator, Julia McFarlane has held the position of Principal Second Violin of the Kingston Symphony since 2014 and is on faculty at the Canta Arya School for Strings and the National Music Camp. Julia began to study violin at age five and went on to earn performance degrees from McGill University and the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore. Before moving back to her hometown of Kingston, Julia was the principal second violinist of the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra and co-director of the baroque chamber orchestra Prairie Virtuosi. Julia was concertmaster of the NYCO Symphony Orchestra for ten years and has been a guest clinician and adjudicator at workshops and festivals across Canada.
Erika Sloos, Violin
Erika Sloos, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received her Master of Music degree in 2015 from the Eastman School of Music where she attended as a recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation’s Graduate Arts Award and studied under Juliana Athayde. She stayed in Rochester for several years after completing her degree, and served as the violin and viola instructor at Our Lady of Mercy School for Young Women, substituted regularly with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, taught private lessons in both violin and piano, and was the organist and choir director at Penfield United Methodist Church in Penfield, New York. Prior to Eastman, Erika completed her Bachelor of Music degree at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, as a student of Dr. Carolyn Huebl. Erika moved to Kingston last fall, and currently serves as the Assistant Concertmaster of the Kingston Symphony Orchestra and as a teaching artist for Sistema Kingston.
Jeff Hamacher, Cello
Since 2005, Jeff Hamacher has been active in and around Kingston both as a busy private music teacher and as a freelance musician. He is cellist for the Limestone Trio and the Kingston Symphony. He plays cello, viola da gamba, oud, and sings with Melos Choir and Period Instruments. He serves regularly with the music ministry at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish. He has performed on an occasional basis playing cello with the Kingston Chamber Choir and for various music theatre productions at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. His playing has appeared on recordings for a variety of projects. He has performed as a cast member in four productions of Once – The Musical. In addition to having served as orchestra librarian with the Kingston Symphony between 2012 and 2014, he rounds out his employment activities with music preparation tasks such as arranging and transcribing.
Date: Saturday June 22nd, 1PM
Where: Hillside Stage