A beloved Winnipeg music teacher is calling it a career after three decades of instruction in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, but not before throwing a momentous concert to celebrate his legacy.
Greg Edwards, the longtime band instructor at Westwood Collegiate, will be the focal point of an alumni gala at the Centennial Concert Hall on June 22. Many of the students that he has taught over the years will be joining forces to celebrate Edwards and to raise funds for Cancer Care Manitoba.
“It’s such an odd experience to kind of get to that point where you’re going to be at the end of something,” reflected Edwards in an interview on Morning Light. “I’ve never been a countdown kind of guy.”
A native British Columbian, Edwards first arrived in Manitoba in 1984 to study music at the then-new music school at Brandon University. “It was like, ‘What an art scene!’” Edwards recalls. “In Vancouver, it was always a three-hour train ride or bus ride to get to the gig. Here, it was everywhere.”
The strength of the province’s musical community will be on full display on Sunday afternoon as former students return to Winnipeg specifically for this concert. People from as far away as New Jersey and Japan will be in attendance to pay tribute to Edwards. During all this, Edwards is focusing on those who inspired him and his musicianship, including Ed Bach, who convinced him to come to Brandon University in the first place, and Jim MacKay who he student taught with at Silver Heights Collegiate.
The world of musical education is not the same one that Edwards entered more than three decades ago. With new threats to music education across the country, Edwards is offering words of encouragement to his successor at Westwood Collegiate and to music teachers facing these challenges.
“We tend to default to academics as being sort of the most important thin in our education system,” Edwards elaborates, “but I often remind people that the original Olympics included music. There’s something we’ve known for a long time – Plato, Socrates, they all knew... it excites the brain in a way that nothing – and I repeat, nothing – else does.”
As he contemplates the next chapter of his life, Edwards is not planning on slowing down anytime soon. “I’m a bit of a Tigger,” he chuckles, “so sitting still isn’t necessarily in my future.” He has already been tapped to lead workshops and clinics for band programs across western Canada. “I’ll start doing more and more of that kind of stuff and using the little bit of knowledge that I have that’s very unique and going out and hopefully helping more and more students just get better and better at making music.”
The Greg Edwards Alumni Gala takes place at 2 p.m. at the Centennial Concert Hall on June 22. Tickets are $25 with all proceeds going to Cancer Care Manitoba. For more information, patrons can visit the concert's website.
