Olivia Rowse sits in her house, her dog Lucy in her lap, playing her ukulele.
It’s a scene that the two — girl and dog — can often be found in.
Rowse, 12, is prepping for the Cariboo Festival, an arts festival in which students around the community show off their talents in music, speaking or vocals to adjudicators, who assess their work.
The festival has four main categories: Vocal/Choral, Speech Arts, Piano and Band/Instrumental.
Rowse herself has entered four selections into the Cariboo Festival this year: two played on fiddle, one narrative poem in Speech Arts, and, a new class to the vocal section this year: an original vocal composition, a song written by Rowse herself.
The song, When You’re Gone, was written by Rowse about her dog, and she accompanies it on the ukulele, a skill she taught herself.
“I’ve been singing my entire life so I’ve always randomly thought out words,” says Rowse. After watching Grace Vanderwaal, a singer-songwriter who won America’s Got Talent singing her original songs accompanied by ukulele, Rowse was inspired.
“I’ve never really been able to actually write down music or write the words but about a month after I got my ukulele I started actually sitting down and I wrote a song. It took me a couple days.”
She says she started with the words and then added chords to the song.
It’s not the only song Rowse has written, but it was her first.
“I have a song called Fifth Grade and it’s about my friend and I drifting apart. Different songs are about different things.”
Rowse is no stranger to the Cariboo Festival, having performed in it since she was six, but she’s never performed an original song.
“I’m pretty nervous actually, but I am excited to push my boundaries and perform this song.”
Preparing for the festival takes a lot of time, she says.
“I practice a lot. I practice every day and I stagger things; some days I’ll work really hard on the fiddle, some days I work really hard on my song, some days I work really hard on a poem.”
It’s hard to sit down and practice every day, she says.
“I have commitment issues,” she laughs. “Once I am doing it I am OK, but the whole sitting down and working on it takes dedication.”
When it comes time to perform in front of an adjudicator, Rowse says she’s always anxious to see how she’s done.
The biggest thing she’s learned is that you’re not always going to get perfect, she says.
“When I did my first year I got silver. I got silver for the first three years,” she says.
“I remember every single time I would sit in the chair waiting. I would count the medals to see how many there were to see if they were going to distribute between all of us. The first year I got a gold medal I sat down in disbelief, I just couldn’t believe it — and now I’ve got like five or six upstairs.”
Every year and every adjudicator is different, she says.
“Each year I learn something,” Rowse says. “One year I fidgeted with my dress, so they told me to stop doing that, one year they were teaching me vibrato in violin, so there are just different things with different instructors.”
Her goal, she says, is to make it to the Honours Concert.
While registration has closed for the Cariboo Festival, the full schedule for this year’s performances will be available online at cariboofestival.ca.
April 9-11 will see the Vocal and Choral section performed at the Evangelical Free Church, and April 12 will showcase Speech Arts at the same venue. Both will be adjudicated by Norene Morrow. April 16-18 will see piano performed at the Cavalry Church adjudicated by Alan Crane and April 18-19 will see Band and Instrumental performed at the United Church, adjudicated by Alan Matheson.
As for why Rowse goes every year:
“I just like being able to showcase what I’ve done so I’m not just doing it for myself. I know it’s going somewhere.”