115-year-old newspaper pushes digital envelope

The Vankleek Hill Review is organizing a fundraising event designed to help local high school music students take a trip of a lifetime to Austria. The unique fundraising initiative is a webcast of the school’s Christmas concert to be carried “live” on The Review’s website. The webcast will make the home town high school concert available to anyone, anywhere around the world who has access to a high speed internet connection and will come complete with PBS-style invitations to “call in now with your financial pledges.”

As is the case every year, this year's annual Christmas Concert by Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (VCI) music students will be an important fund raiser for a music department project – this year, the concert is a fund raiser for the school band's 2009 performing tour of the musical capital of the western world: Austria.

But this year is also very different from previous years in that for the first time ever, audio from the concert will be carried live on the Internet so that family members and friends around the world will be able to listen in and better still, offer financial support to the music students and their endeavours.

The driving force behind the school band’s trip to Austria this year, is VCI music teacher Kathy Fraser Collins. She says she has taken groups to Austria in the past, “and to be able to perform in the cathedrals (of Vienna) was just an unbelievable experience. And so I had the idea that that would be a great thing to do . . . many of these students have never been overseas, many of them have never flown before so the entire experience is going to be a brilliant one,” says Fraser Collins.

The Vankleek Hill Review- a 115-old newspaper - is organizing this landmark event in collaboration with well-known local musician Bobby Lalonde.

Using audio equipment supplied by Bobby Lalonde Music in Vankleek Hill, Review staff, with the help of Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (VCI) student volunteers like Jamie Miller, will capture VCI's Christmas Concert words and music and live-stream them onto the Review's website; www.thereview.on.ca.

"What a wonderful opportunity," says Bobby Lalonde. "Here we are in Vankleek Hill, Ontario, and I know that some people might be on a military base in Germany, listening to this live, as it's being played on the stage at VCI. So that just a great, great thing and we're definitely very happy to be a part of it."

VCI Principal Jeff Campbell has embraced the concept from the beginning. “It’s just wonderful to know that many of our alumnae students who have participated in the school band will be able to tune in from wherever they are. Many family members, parents, cousins, grandparents can check out what’s happening wherever they are in the world, I presume, so this will be a great occasion for students and probably a first for VCI and so we’re very excited, ” states Campbell.

By following simple instructions posted on the website, web surfers from across the country and around the world will be able to listen to every word of introduction and every note of music taking place in the VCI auditorium on that evening.

Online listeners will also hear invitations from various teachers and students and school board officials to pick up the telephone and call in a financial pledge to support the band's trip to Austria. Music parent volunteers will be ready to take your pledges when you call the school at 613-678-2023 during the December 17 concert.

Sending season's greetings around the globe

During intermission, people attending the concert at VCI will have the opportunity to add their own personal messages to the special broadcast. For a toonie, concert goers will have the chance to step up to the microphone and give a short holiday greeting to friends and loved ones who might be listening to the concert via The Review's website.

An interactive blog of the event on The Review's website will carry still photos of the event as it unfolds in the VCI auditorium on the evening of December 17. This blog will also allow listeners across the country and around the world to give their feedback to the event in the form of comments and holiday wishes to the folks back home here in Vankleek Hill.

Visit this website before 7 p.m on December 17 to see how you can enjoy the concert and maybe even to make a contribution to the students’ trip to Austria.