CLHS gets over $10,000 in funding to replace aging musical instruments

Cold Lake High School will be upgrading their musical instruments and equipment thanks to a national grant.

The $11,500 grant comes from CARAT, the same group that is involved with the Juno Awards, and CLHS received the money last Friday.

The grant is open to any school in Canada and looks to expand music classes or replace aging equipment.

Now, CLHS music teacher Doug Sirant will look to upgrade on some of the aging instruments he’s had in his class since 1990.

“The guys in Toronto put us on a very tight timeline,” said Sirant. 

“I have to get my quotes into them by next Tuesday. And I think purchasing is going to be happening shortly after that. So I’m kind of hoping that I’ll have some of this stuff on hand for the rest of the school year.” 

The instrumental music class is a standard five-credit course.

Sirant said they have the standard high school concert band instruments, with wind instruments like flute, saxophone, and trumpet, bass guitar and bass strings, and various percussion instruments.

“The beautiful part about that is that is pretty much left up to me what I wanted to do, so I had to kind of submit an inventory of what I had, why I was trying to apply for this grant… to replace because it might last some of my stuff I bought when I first started teaching yourself 30 plus years old.

“I wanted to replace my drum kit, which was one of the first things I ever bought when I moved up here,” he said.

“My electronics and my amplifiers, my bass guitar, which again were a few of the few things when I started working up here, and a few of the instruments that are just starting to age.” 

The class has seen a couple of talented musicians this semester already.

Bass clarinet player Colton Young and flutist Shayla Roger are among over 100 musicians in Alberta to learn from professionals at the U of A for a three-day course and build their skills.

“I am so happy. The hard part with especially in the high school setting. I don’t have a lot of time to get into things like music composition and music theory. I do a little bit of theory, I do a little bit of history. I can’t get into a lot of the really in-depth things because my thing is I want these kids to be able to play.

“And performances are starting in a couple of weeks and it’s going to pretty much be our performance every couple of weeks between the middle of March until the middle of June till we’re done”

This was the first time Sirant had applied for the grant.