The Moose Jaw Band and Choral Festival will be celebrating its 70th year in May 2019, and they’ve already exceeded their expectations.

Band registrations are up, and the festival is expecting up to 4,300 visitors between the ages of 12 and 18 to Moose Jaw next spring.

The increase in registrations meant another venue – St. Andrew’s United Church – needed to be added.

Janie Fries, who’s with the Band and Choral Festival, said, “It is wonderful news. We were so excited. Registrations opened up at the end of September. Within thirty six hours, we were full with concert bands, and starting a wait list. We realized we had to do something, because the wait list could have been up to twenty bands.”

Fries said, “...we put our heads together”, noting they wanted to have a venue that was still “walk-able” downtown. “St. Andrew’s Church was glad to have us. It will be a great location, a great venue, for our groups.”

Fries also said that for the past eight to ten years, they’ve had to extend some part of the festival. “It tends to be concert bands. That’s the most popular part of the festival. The jazz bands and the concert choirs have stayed fairly steady, but concert band just looms.”

Fries added that this may partly be due to the fact the festival committee is made up mostly of music teachers or retired music teachers, whose area of expertise is “music education.” This means, Fries said, that directors and school administrators are in favour of supporting this festival. “They get good bang for their buck.”

St. Andrew’s Church joins Peacock Centennial Auditorium, Mae Wilson Theatre, St. Aidan Anglican Church, and Zion United Church as a performance locale.

The festival runs May 13th – 16th, 2019.