Judy Showalter remembers when the Showalter Music Festival was started 50 years ago by her late husband Victor Showalter, the college’s former professor of music. Back in 1975 the festival had just three rooms for students to perform in and featured band music only; decades later the festival is open to piano and vocal students in fifth through eighth grade to hone their skills.

This year, on Feb. 1, nearly 400 students from around the Big Horn Basin and Montana performed across six rooms.

The festival has been steadily growing since Covid forced it online, said director Zach Paris, Northwest College associate professor of music. In the last couple years festival attendance has been in the low 300s and this year Montana schools like Joliet have reentered the festival. Paris knows the festival well. He has directed the event for the past seven years and is also a former participant and college volunteer.

The Showalter Festival is unique because it has judges in six different rooms all at the same time; most festivals even at the high school level only feature two or three judges, Paris said. 

Care has to be taken by office assistant Kara Peterson to organize the festival in a way that allows the accompanists and teachers to be with each of their students throughout the day across multiple rooms.

“As the students get into high school, they have the opportunity to participate in their high school district’s solo and small ensemble festivals,” Paris said. “But as middle schoolers … the Showalter Festival, for years, has been an opportunity for those students to get that same kind of individual work on solo pieces, but also in small ensembles, and kind of have that performing experience in that setting.”

This was the idea back in the fall of 1974 when the Big Horn Basin band directors at that time got together to discuss possibly putting a festival together for youth in the community to perform and receive positive feedback that would encourage them in music. 

Most of the people in “the music business” want to see the kids have an opportunity to perform, Showalter said. As a piano instructor for the last 55 years who enters students into the festival, she pays attention to what the judges have to say and what they write on the adjudication sheet.

“So it’s a learning process not only for the kids, but it’s a learning process for the teachers, because [the judges] may pick up on something that I missed or they may reinforce something that I’ve been saying … and it didn’t get through,” Showalter said. 

The festival is also about providing a positive and encouraging environment for students, she said. Students are graded on a range of one to three with three being the lowest.

“My husband always said that three is there in case you have somebody that really falls but only in the rarest. He said, ‘We want to keep this positive and we want to encourage and uplift,’” Showalter said. “That was the idea.”

But, she tries to stay out of the way of the festival, she said. Her husband started it and she did “the grunt work”

“I’m still doing it, but I’d rather be with my piano kids and company and helping,” She said. 

The Showalter Festival has lasted so long because it had such a strong foundation in the beginning, Paris said. It has also received help consistently from the Northwest College.

Many of the college’s events are used for recruiting, Paris said, with the age of the students the Showalter Festival is not necessarily a recruiting event but more of an effort to contribute to music education in the community for the younger generation. 

“It really serves a niche that, like I said, those middle school students don’t really have a solo and small ensemble event where they can perform,” Paris said. “And so it really feels like a void that would be there without it.”

Outstanding performers

Following Northwest College’s 50th annual Showalter Festival on Feb. 1, four students from Powell and five other students in the Big Horn Basin were graded as outstanding performers according to information provided to the Tribune by Northwest College.

From Powell, Hayden Peters, Faith Mason and the duet of Zaphira Paul and Lynea Christensen received an outstanding performance out of 19 schools and private studio and 247 entries, both solo and ensemble. 

Oliver Main and Lucy Curell of Cody Middle School and Gage Bair of Lovell Middle School also received an outstanding performance designation.