April 10, 2015

Publication title: viesmag.com, vol. -, Iss. -, pg. –
Place: Unknown
Writer: Daniel W Young

Fumbling Towards Excellency

GGPAA Announcement and Interview with Sarah McLachlan

It is official, the 2015 laureates of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards (GGPAA) for Lifetime Artistic Achievement were announced yesterday and local performing artist, Sarah McLachlan, was among those to receive this recognition.

Events were held in Montreal, Victoria, Toronto, via live stream, and at the Sarah McLachlan School of Music where I was fortunate to join her in celebrating this announcement. After the announcements were made, after the FaceTime questions had been asked, and after The Sun reporter asked Sarah some questions, I was extremely privileged to sit on stage with Sarah and ask her a couple of questions of my own.

Over the years Sarah McLachlan has been honoured with some extremely prestigious awards that include, but are not limited to, the Order of Canada, an Honorary degree from Simon Fraser University, and an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Alberta. I was happy to get to sit down with her and ask her a few questions about this award.

Before the ceremony got underway, there was a joke made that now we would have to call Sarah “Governor Sarah”. Sarah laughed it off and stated that obviously this wasn’t how the award worked. Yes, with her other celebrations we could now call her Doctor Sarah McLachlan, or even Doctor Doctor. Despite how much we may all agree that Sarah is deserving of the awards, and regardless of how many awards Sarah McLachlan has won, she stated:

“I have a good life, a really good life. It was not that I set out to have all of this happen in my life. One thing happened, then another, and life just started to tumble…” Sarah McLachlan

“Fumbling Towards Ecstasy?” Daniel

“Yes, to quote myself, yes” Sarah McLachlan

Back in 1984 there was this young girl in Halifax, Nova Scotia getting her brother to take her to a Twisted Sister and Iron Maiden concert. Not too many years later that same young girl was opening for Moev at Dalhousie University. A little while later this same young girl was signed to Nettwerk and moved to Vancouver. She eventually had a couple of girls of her own, she wrote a ton of songs that we all know, she founded Lilith Fair, she made a School of Music for Children, and she ‘contributed to the Canadian imagination’.

“We are thrilled to honour and celebrate each of these exceptionally talented Canadians who have made an indelible contribution to the Canadian imagination,” said Douglas Knight, Chair of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation (GGPAAF).

There was another quote that day that made me really think, this time from Simon Brault: “The public celebration of our artists’ accomplishments is a wonderful reminder of the value and the importance of the arts for us all!”. The reason this resonated with me became more clear while I was talking to Sarah in the Sarah McLachlan School of Music, which is intended to be a free music school for at-risk youth. While we were talking, Sarah explained that one of her wishes is that the school will go out of business because there was a lack of need for it. She intend this to mean that she hopes that funding will go to the programs that help inspire and that remind us all of the importance of the arts.

I am biased towards music as it is what captures me the most, but even as I write this I have an amazing documentary on in the background and I am reminded that there is more to the performing arts than just music. More importantly, there is more to music than just the super stars that sell-out arena’s night after night, as evidenced by the following…