The sounds of trumpets, trombones, and tubas will drown out the crickets on Sunday evening in Cookshire’s Parc des Braves during the town’s second Concert Apéro of the summer. Using the park’s gazebo as a stage, the Copper Quintuple will perform a series of classical and folk songs to an open air audience to the backdrop of a setting sun.
2020 marks the fifth year the professional musicians of the Sherbrooke Symphony Orchestra have come to Cookshire. According to the concert organizer and head of the John Henry Pope cultural building Manon Carrier, last year the “Copper Quintuple” managed to pull a crowd of 150 to the park.
“Music doesn’t have a language,” Carrier said. In a time where we’re forced to stay physically apart, music can bring us together, she explained. This year, the concert audience will be given enough space so that everyone will be able to keep a safe two metres apart. If the weather makes an outdoor showing impossible, the musicians are prepared to move into the nearby Victoria hall to continue the concert at a limited audience capacity.
Rather than take place at lunchtime like in past years, this summer’s concerts were moved to begin at 5 p.m. Concert-goers are invited to bring their dinner with them and have a picnic on the park grass, or to pick something up at the nearby IGA or one of the town’s restaurants.
The concert will be absolutely free to any and all who show up, thanks to collaborative funding by the IGA of Cookshire and the John Henry Pope building. Voluntary donations will be taken by representatives of the cultural centre to help pay for the concerts and other exhibitions in the future.
Your front row seat is a park bench
By Matthew Sylvester, Special to the Record
