Agassiz Observer, March 03, 2016

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THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 2016

2016

BUSINESS

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AWARDS

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NOTARIES PUBLIC

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INSPIRATION

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ILLUSION

Phyllis Stenson was presented the Spirit of Folk award at the Folk Alliance International conference in Kansas City mid-February.

Harrison Festival presents multi-lingual singer Patricia Cano.

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INSIDE

Crime Stats . . . . . . . . . 3 Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Classieds . . . . . . . . . 18

Greg Laychak/ The Observer

‘Pathbreaker’ earns folk music honour Former Harrison Festival director Phyllis Stenson presented ‘Spirit of Folk’ award

By Greg Laychak The Observer

Phyllis Stenson had been to the Folk Alliance International (FAI) conference before, but she didn’t expect to attend this year – she’s been retired from her roles as executive and artistic directors of the Harrison Festival for two years now. The deciding factor though, was a phone call from the FAI executive director telling her she’d won one of the five 2016 Spirit of Folk awards handed out at the event in February. “When he said I'd won the award I couldn't imagine how it had

happened,” Phyllis said. “To be from such a small community was so exciting [for me], and for the festival as well.” The award that Stenson and her husband travelled to Kansas City for her to accept is given every year to those who are actively involved in promoting and preserving folk music through community building and leadership. “What the local community may not all know is the extent to which Phyllis is respected in the broader arts community,” said Stenson’s replacement at the Harrison Festival, Andy Hillhouse. “She was a real pathbreaker in programming

that was culturally diverse and inclusive, and always maintained a strong focus on the local community integrity of the festival.” In this case, that broader arts community is an organization whose conference attracts about 1,800 people annually. During the panel that she participated in while at the conference, Phyllis’s table had festival coordinators from theatres in Los Angeles, New York and Washington D.C., as an example of the scale of the event and the status of her peers. “It's a very important organization, not only to the festival community

but anybody that has anything to do with non-mainstream music,” she said. “Folk music, blues, world music.” She would sometimes go to the FAI event when it came to Toronto to look for artists to book for the Harrison Festival, to find herself immersed in the “spectrum of the industry.” So the return for Phyllis and husband Ed to the event after they both retired from the festival was a revisiting of old friends and a past world for the couple. The pair made a trip out of it, making the journey beside each Continued on Page 2

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