2024 AIBF Calgary Festival

Welcome to the Calgary Alberta International Band Festival 2024 - "Where young Albertans learn to play, and play to learn." We're excited to announce that we are celebrating our 53rd year!

The Alberta International Band Festivals (Northern Alberta and Southern Alberta) are run by volunteers. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing a performance platform for junior high/middle school, high school, and community bands. The Festivals are held each year in Calgary and Edmonton. Organizers are committed to providing participants with a valuable and stimulating educational experience in a non-competitive atmosphere as either a concert band or a jazz ensemble.

All bands are adjudicated against a standard performance rubric established by the Festival Committee. Bands receive "Superior", "Excellent" or "Satisfactory" ratings from each of adjudicators based on their performance, along with written or recorded feedback. The Festival also makes an archival recording for each band with no adjudicator's comments. After their performance, the ensemble will have the opportunity to work with one of the adjudicators in an educational workshop setting with the adjudicator providing specific feedback directly to the band.

2024 Calgary Festival Dates

REGISTRATION WILL OPEN OCTOBER 2nd, 2023. PLEASE CHECK BACK HERE AT THAT TIME.

Concert Bands (Grades 1-6): Wednesday, February 21st through Tuesday, February 27th, 2024 at the Eckhardt-Grammatte Hall, Rozsa Centre (University of Calgary)

• 2 adjudicators providing feedback
• 1 archival recording of your performance
• a 25 minute clinic session immediately following your performance with one of the adjudicators

Jazz Band & Combos (All Levels): Tuesday, March 5th through Friday, March 8th, 2024 at the Polaris Centre.

• 3 adjudicators providing feedback
• 1 archival recording of your performance
• a 25 minute clinic session immediately following your performance with one of the adjudicators

Guest Conductor Workshops (All Levels - Concert Band or Jazz):Monday March 11th - Friday, March 15th, 2024

• A clinician will come to your schools/rehearsal facility to work with your group for a 75 minute clinic session. The focus will be on taking your ensemble from where they are at the time and working on a few specific concepts to help them get to the next level. Ensembles are not expected to be "polished" performance ready.

We hope to be able to start sharing our adjudicators and clinicians with you beginning October 15th, 2023.

Please note that our Concert Band Festival does run over a weekend period. If that presents a problem for your school, please be sure to note that in the space provided on the Registration form.

With that being said, if you looking for a way to save money, if your group is scheduled on the weekend you may be able to reduce costs by asking parents to drive instead of dealing with buses. (And then you have a built-in audience as well!)

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SPECIAL NOTE: Some of you will realize that we have had to increase our fees for this year's festival. This is not a decision that was made lightly. As with everything else from food to gas prices, we have experienced increases in our venue costs, tech time, travel expenses for adjudicators and other items required to run the festival. The increases allow us to simply break even.

While we do seek out sponsorship and donations to help combat some of the rising costs, we have also found many organizations have had to reduce and limit their sponsorship dollars.

We recognize that as a result of the rising costs some of you may not be able to have all of your groups participate in the traditional music festival experience as in past years, but hope that you will consider our guest conductor workshop experience instead.

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The Festivals are funded by grants, corporate sponsorship, donations, entry fees and ticket sales. We invite organizations, foundations and individuals interested in supporting the Festivals to contact our Sponsorship Coordinators - Cathy MacRae and Ryan Hancock at [email protected].

For additional information about or questions concerning the Alberta International Band Festival - Calgary, please contact Director of Operations - Cathy MacRae at: [email protected].