Music students from across the friendly city have a busy week as the annual Moose Jaw Music Festival returns for its ninth year.

"Its something that we work all year towards and I'm also a music teacher so I'm working to get my students ready and I know as are teachers throughout the city an we're really excited about it," said Jeri Ryba, President of the Festival. "Its a great experience for kids to go out and perform and show what they got and to learn, you know, get some feed back."

Students get to show their skills off in a variety of different areas. Including Vocal, Musical Theatre, Piano, Strings and Band.

Student put a lot of work into the Festival, preparing and practicing numerous songs for a perfect performance. One of Ryba's students, Sydney Sperling, has tons of songs ready to go.

"I'm preparing nine songs, yeah there's a lot. I'm doing two duets. One with Matthew Flegel and one with Riley Harkness," Sperling said. "So the other seven are solos, two are musical theatre songs and there's a whole bunch like contemporary and ballads and there's just a lot of everything."

The Festival also has a number of adjudicators to mark the performers and help them improve in any way they can.

Along with the adjudicating and feedback, students can also earn mini awards and significant scholarships to help further their music education.

Various performances take place at the Peacock Auditorium, St. Aidens, Zion Church and the Museum/Art Gallery stage.

You can find more info about the week and schedules on the Festival's Facebook page.