Kaye Dimock Pottie

Kaye Dimock (Frances) Pottie (b King). Soprano, educator, b Avonport, near Kentville, NS, 3 Aug 1937; B MUS (Acadia) 1964, M MUS (Western Ontario) 1980.

Pottie, Kaye Dimock

Kaye Dimock (Frances) Pottie (b King). Soprano, educator, b Avonport, near Kentville, NS, 3 Aug 1937; B MUS (Acadia) 1964, M MUS (Western Ontario) 1980. She studied music at Acadia University, the Maritime Conservatory of Music, Dalhousie University, Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of Western Ontario, and (in 1975) in Esztergom, Hungary. In 1954 she began teaching in Nova Scotia public schools. She has been a teacher, a supervisor, and the director of music teacher training at Dalhousie University, a director of continuing-education choral classes in Halifax, and an adjudicator at various festivals. She has acted as consultant to the Halifax City School Board and has designed the pre-high-school music curriculum adopted for use by Halifax in 1969 and by other parts of Nova Scotia in 1973, and in 1981 issued a work book series, Come Alive with Music, for use in Halifax schools. In 1984 she became a supervisor in the Halifax District School Board. She was choral conductor 1975-91 of the Chebucto Community Singers; choir director 1975-6 and 1981-2 of St Andrew's United Church Choirs, Halifax; and, beginning in 1990, choir director of St Matthias Church Choir, Halifax. She founded the Youth Honour Choir system in the Halifax schools in 1976, and was president 1979-80 of the Nova Scotia Choral Federation. She has sung on the CBC and has appeared as a soloist with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra, the Dalhousie Chorale, the Atlantic Chamber Ensemble, and NOVA MUSIC in performances of works such as Haydn's Theresa Mass, the Requiems of Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré, Handel's Messiah, Schafer'sRequiems for the Party Girl, Vanity's aria from Schafer's Loving, and Stephen Pedersen's Three Haiku. In 1974 she performed folksongs on a lecture-tour with Helen Creighton and sang at the Canadian Music Council convention in Halifax. In 1975 she sang at the second International Kodály Symposium in Hungary. She was secretary 1973-7 of the Kodály Institute of Canada and co-chairman of the third International Kodály Symposium in 1977 at Acadia University. She is a member of the founding board of the Helen Creighton Folklore Festival of Dartmouth, NS, formed in 1989, and co-authored in 1991 a publication of folk songs from the Creighton Collection. Her study of the application of the Kodály method in the Halifax school system was published by the International Kodály Society in 1986.