A former Steinbach resident has come home to be the senior piano adjudicator at the Southeastern Manitoba Festival. Madeline Hildebrand is a performer and teacher now based in Winnipeg, with a masters degree from the University of British Columbia.

"I went to Winnipeg and I went to school at the (University of) Manitoba. After some successes with a few competitions, I went to UBC to study with Jane Coop, and then I came back to Winnipeg and, after a few competition successes, from there I've gone on to play the concert series that I grew up attending. So, for example, the Virtuosi Concert Series, the Brandon Chamber Players and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. I just played with Philip Glass a few Sundays ago and would have never thought I would be saying that when I was 18."

Hildebrand says she is blessed to have a career in piano and music but is quick to add it's not easy. She is both a piano performer and teacher with students as young as five and six years old. Hildebrand says people often ask why she accepts such young students.

"First of all, it's incredibly enjoyable, but secondly, it's completely necessary to be teaching children, adults, university students, accompanying choirs, everything from first-class choirs to children's choirs, to saying yes to any sort of concert opportunity or accompanying experience that comes your way. I really think that I'm at where I'm at right now because I don't say no. This is how I've got to where I am. My network is incredible, it's vast and I'm so thankful for that."

Hildebrand says she takes her responsibility as an adjudicator very seriously and hopes to impart some important things to participants.

"I hope that they walk away understanding that they are incredibly important ambassadors of this music and of these composers and that they have such a gift and a skill that not everybody has."