Songwriting Competition Winner!

The Bent River Records Songwriting Competition has come to a close and the winner has been selected!

Congratulations to the winner Cynthia Hamar, who won first place with their song, “Where Your Love Lives”

2nd place to Kael Sauerborn for “Whatever Comes”

Honourable Mention to Mari Alice Conrad for “Coyotes”

Thank you to everyone who submitted their original music! There were such high-quality submissions that were a pleasure to listen to!

Also, a thank you to our jurors, Emilie LeBel, Jacob Toop, Kent Sangster, Jaycee Meneen, and Olivia Street for dedicating their time to decide upon a winner!

Note: The adjudication process was done anonymously; judges were not made aware of the identity of the composers they were evaluating.

Celebrating Western Canadian Music

For the next month, the Western Canadian Music Alliance is accepting applications for their WCMA awards. The Western Canadian Music Alliance is a group formed from the Music Industry Associations of Western Canada which includes British Colombia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, The Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory. This organization sets out to promote and celebrate music from Western Canadian Artists and is integral component to the Canadian music industry as a whole. The awards are divided into three main categories being: Artistic awards which offers different awards for each genre Artists of the Year, Specialty Awards which offers awards such as Classical Composer of the Year, Producer of the Year and Global Artist of the Year among others, and Industry Awards which offers awards in Music Marketing, and Live Music and the like. The winners are announced at the four-day music conference/festival called Breakout West which is held this year in Winnipeg Manitoba from October 13 – 17, 2021.

Catching Up with Kate Blechinger

Kate Blechinger is a talented, award-winning Edmonton based vocalist, arranger and composer. Blechinger released her debut album, Under a Dancing Sky, on Bent River Records In November 2018. Since then, she has been finding a unique place in Western Canada’s music scene with her innovative fusion of Jazz and folk and commandingly smooth vocal deliveries. Today we reached out to Kate for an update and had insightful conversations about her musical background, inspirations and living life as an artist during Covid-19.

Nowadays, between her job teaching music to toddlers and babies, Kate finds herself back in the learning environment herself studying developmental psychology through online courses. She says, “It’s really fascinating actually, and It’s been in the back of my mind for a while now.” As she adapts to the difficulties of teaching young children online, she imagines a surplus of psychological research to come out of these times.

Although Kate is best known as a vocal performer, she is also familiar with many instruments. Her early childhood experiences with classical piano became one of her biggest strengths as an artist today. She is more often than not conceptualizing her detailed musical compositions on the piano stool. She finds inspiration in acts such as Esperanza Spalding and Kristin Korb’s to continue her passion for the upright bass to this day after taking lessons at 13 to join a community Big Band. She speaks on some of the unique advantages and insights of multi-instrumentalism: “Even if I tend to write a little beyond my ability, familiarity with instruments does help with arranging and conceptualizing different ideas.” Nowadays, Kate finds herself to be a musical chameleon playing a range of different styles.

Kate has a very personal style of writing reminiscent of the confessional styles of folk music. Talking about her music brought back some of her early influences and opinions on Canada and Edmonton’s musical identity.  Earlier in life, she felt empowered by Canadian acts such as Broken Social Scene, Feist and Metric. “The collaborative nature of the early 2000 era Canadian indie acts started to really make me want to be a musician”.  These early influences moved her to get involved in folk festivals and more local concerts, which only fueled her fascination and love for all music and opened her eyes to what’s possible in life.

“I’ve always been drawn, no matter the genre, to the music that moves me, sometimes regardless of technicality.”

Album Design Competition Winner selected for ROYA’s Breath and Being: Congratulations Jay Berg!

The three sections of Constanza Pacher’s Typography II classes were split into two groups to create concepts for the cover and album packaging design for upcoming Bent River Records releases: Breath and Being by ROYA, and Going Down Slow by Kevin Dean. Each artist then made the difficult decision of picking a winner to receive an honorarium and work with Bent River to have their designs sent to press.

This is always an exciting collaboration with very impressive work from the second-year Design students, made possible by the generous support of our Provost, Dr. Craig Monk.

We are very pleased to announce the second of this year’s two winners:

Winner: Jay Berg

ROYA – Breath and Being
Winner: Jay Berg
Runner-Up: Alejandra Hernandez
Third Place: August Schaffler
Honourable Mentions (in order)
Dana Kozak
Cézanne Trodden
Grace Zimmel
Rochelle Kriewaldt
Sachin Aheer
Ashley Le
Carolina Odashima

Congratulations to Jay, and to all the students who participated in this year’s album design competition!

Album Design Competition Winner selected for Kevin Dean’s ‘Going Down Slow’: Congratulations Sohee Kim!

Each year, Design students from Constanza Pacher’s Typography II classes pitch their concepts for the cover and album packaging design for upcoming Bent River Records releases. This year’s projects were Breath & Being by ROYA, and Going Down Slow by Kevin Dean.

It is always amazing to see the variety and originality of concepts that the students come up with, and it is no easy task for the artists to choose the respective winners who will each receive an honorarium and work with Bent River to have their designs sent to press. We are very pleased to announce the first of this year’s two winners:

Winner: Sohee Kim

Kevin Dean – Going Down Slow
Winner: Sohee Kim
Runner-Up: Kiera Elkins
Third Place: Vik Chu
Honourable Mentions
Anthea Pou
Xenab Azam

Congratulations to Sohee, and to all the students who participated in this year’s album design competition! Thank you also to our Provost, Dr. Craig Monk, whose generosity and support makes it possible for this project to continue!

We’ll be announcing the winning design for ROYA’s album very soon!