This year, the Cultural Activities Director Professor Micheline White is thrilled to once again offer our students in-person cultural activities in Ottawa and beyond.  See below for events we held last year and stay tuned for things we have planned for this year!

2025/2026 Cultural Activities

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Wednesday February 25th, 2026 at 7:30 p.m at the NAC
**Stay tuned for an email about signing up for this event in the new year. Tickets will be only $5 each!**

“A gripping, intensely athletic, and visually enchanting dance interpretation of… Hamlet!” Margaret Atwood

Two of Canada’s foremost dance and theatre creators team up to tackle the tale of one of classical literature’s most emotionally complex protagonists. Choreographer Guillaume Côté and stage director Robert Lepage’s reimagination of Shakespeare’s Hamlet employs the language of movement and music to portray the play’s pivotal moments and universal struggles. Performed by nine dancers, including Côté in the leading role, the production immerses the viewer into a metaphorical world of betrayal and trickery, one where ghosts and humans coexist. This virtuosic dance dramatization imparts an entirely new dimension to Hamlet’s melancholy and inner conflict, offering access to a wide range of audiences.

Expanding on their shared love for Shakespeare and the triumph of their previous collaboration (Frame by Frame), Côté and Lepage’s The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is an evocative retelling. The artists’ respective and singular talents for refined athleticism and poetic theatricality beautifully coalesce with the dramatic score by composer John Gzowski. Inventive set and lighting design use light and shadows to propel the tragic narrative. Ophelia’s drowning scene, for one, is simply astonishing.

Jan Lisiecki: Preludes Recital (Great Performers Series)

Presented by the Janice & Earle O’Born Fund for Artistic Excellence

Monday November 17th, 2025
7:30 PM EST
 Southam Hall at the NAC


Three things to know:

  1. Delight in a potpourri of preludes—short works of heartfelt musical poetry—in a mesmerizing recital by Canadian superstar pianist Jan Lisiecki.
  2. From moments of Baroque splendour to the fiery modernism of the 20th century, Lisiecki’s program explores preludes written over the course of 250 years.
  3. Lisiecki returns to Southam Hall for the first time since his powerhouse performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto in 2023.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the musical form known as the prelude was just that: a prelude, or introduction, to a larger piece of music. But in the hands of the 19th-century composer Frédéric Chopin, the prelude blossomed into a work that could stand on its own—a sonic poem capable of expressing profound emotions.

In this one-night-only recital, Juno Award–winning pianist Jan Lisiecki—“a musician of extraordinary refinement and imagination” (Boston Globe)—presents a program of beauty, drama, and ecstasy devoted exclusively to the prelude. From the Baroque grace of J. S. Bach to the melancholy expression of Chopin’s 24 Preludes and modernist takes from Karol Szymanowski and Olivier Messiaen, Lisiecki’s program travels through time to explore how the prelude form sparked each composer’s imagination.

October 2025 Upper Year Trip to Quebec City

The College of the Humanities has organized a cultural trip to Quebec City for Upper-Year Bachelor of Humanities students this coming fall. The trip will take place over the Fall Break (October 20th to 24th) and will allow students to learn about Quebec City’s rich history, visit some of its most amazing cultural institutions and landmarks, and admire the beauty of Old Quebec (a UNESCO World Heritage Site).

The group will travel by train and stay at the Auberge Internationale de Québec (in the heart of the Old City) in dorm rooms of 6 to 8 that will be exclusively for members of the group. Activities will include visits of the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, the Musée de la civilisation, and guided tours of the Plains of Abraham (by General Wolfe himself!) and the Citadelle of Quebec.

September 2025 First Year Trip to Montreal

The College of the Humanities supports a program of music, theatre, and opera to supplement your course work. First year students are invited to participate in the annual First Year Field Trip to Montreal on Saturday September 27th. The bus will leave Dunton Tower around 7:45 am and will depart from Montreal at 8:00 PM.

This trip includes transportation to and from Montreal, a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and tickets to see The AURA Experience at the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal.  Students will also have plenty of time to explore the city.

Thanks to the generous support of the College of the Humanities the price is only seventy dollars, but sign up soon, spots are limited with 30 seats.  The trip usually sells out well before Labour Day.

2024/2025 Cultural Activities

First Year Trip to Montreal

The College of the Humanities supports a program of music, theatre, and opera to supplement your course work. First year students participated in the annual First Year Field Trip to Montreal on Saturday September 14th, 2024.

This trip included transportation to and from Montreal, a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and tickets to see The AURA Experience at the Notre-Dame Basilica of Montreal.  Students will also had plenty of time to explore the city.

A Performance by Ballet BC: BOLERO X + Silent Tides + Chamber

Thursday Oct 17th  2024  The National Arts Centre

In this remarkable triple bill program, the NAC Orchestra accompanies Chamber, one of artistic director Medhi Walerski’s most acclaimed and elegant ballets, and BOLERO X, created by Shahar Binyamini for the company in 2023, a masterful reading of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero.

For Medhi Walerski, the rhythmic momentum and discordant tensions in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring make it one of the most vibrant compositions of all time, and he describes the creation of Chamber as an echo of what the score provokes in his imagination. Performed to original music by the eminent British composer Joby Talbot, Walerski centralizes the performers in a ritualistic dance that seeks to strike a balance between order and chaos, charging the theatre space with a darkened, absorbing energy. Magnificent and absolutely riveting.

Silent Tides is an intimate work for two dancers that reflects our relationship to one another and to ourselves—the infinite gates where our bodies receive nourishment and otherness, vibration and energy. Touch, time, eternity, love, death, infinity, low tides, high tides.

Shelley, Strauss & Goosby’s Debut

Thursday January 16th, 2025
7:00 PM
The National Arts Centre

Before the performance, Humanities music professor James Wright gave a 25-minute talk about the works and composers featured on the program, including the story of the practical-joking medieval European folk-hero, Til Eulenspiegel, and an account of the remarkable life and work of the first African-American woman to be recognized as an accomplished composer, Florence Price (1887-1953).

Tales of rebellion and forgiveness take centre stage in a pair of cinematic works by Richard Strauss: Till Eulenspiegel follows the hilarious hijinks of Germany’s beloved folk hero, while the Rosenkavalier Suite evokes an operatic saga of love and renewal set in 18th-century Vienna. As part of the NAC Orchestra’s Strauss Reimagined series, these works are paired with freshly inked compositions from Juno Award–winning Canadian composers Alexina Louie and John Estacio, each one resonating with the spirit and sounds of Strauss’s lushly Romantic orchestral showpieces.

With a soulful performance style that elicits a “catharsis of joy” (New York Times) wherever he performs, American violinist Randall Goosby makes his NAC Orchestra debut with Florence Price‘s rhapsodic Second Violin Concerto. Discovered more than 50 years after the composer’s death, Price’s work for solo violin and orchestra overflows with memorable melodies that merge the hallmarks of European Romanticism with jazz, spirituals, and Chicago blues.

Music for a Sunday Afternoon: Winter Edition

Featuring violinist Karen Gomyo

Sunday March 9th, 2025
3:00 p.m.
Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre (355 Cooper Street, Ottawa)

In honour of International Women’s Day, the first half of this special concert features pieces celebrating the musical achievements of three extraordinary women artists from three different musical eras – contemporary Chinese American composer Chen Yi, 20th century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz, and 19th century Venezuelan Teresa Carreño.

Nearly 300 years after they were written, the Goldberg Variations still calm the troubled soul. The story goes that illness and anxiety kept German Count Kaiserling of Saxony from relaxing at night, so he called on J.S. Bach to write something that would soothe his sleepless evenings. Enter virtuoso musician Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, who was the first to perform Bach’s variations on a theme written for the Count—thus the name “Goldberg Variations.”

Tokyo-born violinist Karen Gomyo studied in Montreal and New York. Now, she regularly performs with the best international orchestras and musicians in North America, Europe, and Australasia. NACO is delighted to have her for International Women’s Day, where she’ll perform Bach’s famous Goldberg Variations with our orchestral members, as reconceived for strings.

2023/2024 Cultural Activities

Guided Tour of the Renaissance Galleries

A guided tour with Professor Klebanoff at the National Gallery of Canada on Thursday February 8th at 6:30 p.m.

There is no admission charge to the gallery on Thursday evenings.

Professor Klebanoff teaches HUMS 2101 and 2102 in the College of the Humanities.

The group will meet at 6:30 in Gallery C201 on the second floor, first gallery opposite the stairs and elevator.
Floor plan and meeting spot.

Storgårds, Mozart & Shostakovich’s 5th Featuring Jessica Linnebach at the NAC

Thursday April 4th. 8:00 PM

National Arts Center Southam Hall

The lark is a small ground-nesting bird with an extravagant song that English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams captured in his The Lark Ascending, just as World War I began. NACO’s own Associate Concertmaster, violinist Jessica Linnebach, tenderly conveys the lark’s almost impossibly beautiful call in this masterwork.

Dmitri Shostakovich composed his Symphony No. 5 “in an atmosphere of heart-stopping terror” (cambridgelive.org.uk), a time when the mercurial moods of Josef Stalin changed like the wind and an artist’s work could be celebrated one day and be cause for exile or worse the next. Under the baton of Principal Guest Conductor John Storgårds, the NAC Orchestra captures the emotion of this Stalin-approved work that might have saved Shostakovich’s life but never sacrificed his artistry.

The year 1788 was a dark one for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—his decline in fortunes had begun, the bills were piling up, and his infant daughter had just died. It’s probably not surprising, then, that he began to embrace the artistic movement called Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) in his beautiful Symphony No. 40, one of only two he wrote in a minor key.

Tour of Carleton Art Gallery (CUAG) on November 10th 2023

Norval Morrisseau: Medicine Currents

Students had a guided tour of this special exhibit.

Through his innovative visual language, Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau gifted viewers a vision of our interconnected world expressed as a sense of balanced motion at play, understood as Mino Bimaadiziwin in Anishinaabemowin.

Montreal Trip

This year the annual First Year Field Trip to Montreal was on Saturday September 23rd and was partially subsidized by the College. This trip included transportation to and from Montreal, a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and concert tickets to see works by Prokofiev and Mahler performed by the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Students also had plenty of time to explore the city.

Maddy, one of the participants had this to say:

From roaming the Museum of Fine Arts to hearing the beautiful music at the Maison Symphonique, Humanities students who attended the trip to Montreal were offered an opportunity to delight in artwork of many kinds. 

Trip to NYC (Fall Break)

This year the College has negotiated group rates, super bargains, AND a generous subsidy to allow 3rd and 4th year students to go to New York during the fall break, the most vibrant city on the planet, for four nights (Sat Oct 21 – Wed Oct 25 2023).  The small group will take a bus to Syracuse and the take the train down the Hudson river valley to Penn Station and their hotel in is Mid-town. There will be one planned activity per non travel day, (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Cloisters). Students will also have plenty of time to explore the City.

2022/2023 Cultural Activities

As You Like It: A Radical Retelling

 As You Like It: A Radical Retelling

Date: 2:00 p.m. Sunday January 22nd, 2023
Cost:  $ 5.00
Where: GCTC
Map to GCTC 

From Cliff Cardinal, creator of Huff, Stitch, and CBC Special, comes a new realization of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Known for his cutting humour, Cardinal’s take on the Bard’s classic brings renewed energy to this twisting comedy about the trials of love and mistaken identity in the lush Forest of Arden. Cardinal’s unpredictability is in full force in this new adaptation. You’ve never seen Shakespeare like this.

Logistics for sign up and payment: Please look at your work and course schedules and be sure that you will be free on the afternoon of January 22. Tickets are limited so students who buy a ticket but do not show up will not be allowed to reserve spots at future cultural events (unless the student is sick or has an emergency).

  1. Payment. First come, first serve. Thanks to the generous support of the College of the Humanities, the price for a ticket is only 5.00.  Please send the five dollars via interac to Micheline.white@carleton.ca
  2. Email Andrea to let her know you’ve sent the money transfer.

Download, complete and sign ONE of the forms depending on your age (under or over 18) and send to andrea.mcintyre@carleton.ca right away.  If you are under 18 at the time of the trip, a parent needs to sign and you need to coordinate with them well in advance. No one can attend without having filled out the form by the deadline (no exceptions).

As You Like It A Radical Retelling Jan 22nd 2023 at the GCTC Informed Consent Under 18

As You Like It A Radical Retelling Jan 22nd 2023 at the GCTC Over 18 Waiver

Hilary Hahn Plays Dvořák & Alexander Shelley conducts Beethoven’s 5th

We have 9 tickets Hilary Hahn Plays Dvorak & Alexander Shelley Conducts Beethoven’s 5th

Date:  Wednesday January 18th 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
Cost:  $ 5.00
Where:  National Arts Center, Southam Hall

The NAC Orchestra is delighted to welcome violinist Hilary Hahn, one of her generation’s finest musicians, back to Southam Hall to perform Antonín Dvořák’s Violin Concerto, a work that has charmed performers and audiences around the world since its first performance. Hahn’s virtuosity is almost supernatural as she moves effortlessly between moments of tension and tenderness in this abidingly beautiful concerto.

Logistics for sign up and payment: Please look at your work and course schedules and be sure that you will be free on the evening of January 18th. Tickets are limited so students who buy a ticket but do not show up will not be allowed to reserve spots at future cultural events (unless the student is sick or has an emergency). There are 3 steps:

  1. Payment. First come, first serve. Thanks to the generous support of the College of the Humanities, the price for a ticket is only 5.00.  Please send the five dollars via interac to Micheline.white@carleton.ca
  2. Email Andrea to let her know you’ve sent the money transfer.
  3. Download, complete and sign ONE of the forms depending on your age (under or over 18) and send to andrea.mcintyre@carleton.ca by Monday January 16th at the latest. If you are under 18 at the time of the trip, a parent needs to sign and you need to coordinate with them well in advance. No one can attend without having filled out the form by the deadline (no exceptions). The forms can are below.

Hilary Hahn NAC Jan 18 2023 Over 18 Waiver

Hilary Hahn NAC Jan 18 Informed Consent Under 18

Music & Mythology, Ottawa Symphony Orchestra & Guests

The Ottawa Symphony Orchestra has kindly made free tickets available for HUMS students to attend their season-opening concert:

“Music & Mythology,” Ottawa Symphony Orchestra & Guests

Sunday, November 20th, 3:30 pm
Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre

Among other things, this inspiring program features three major 20th-century masterworks: the Stravinsky Firebird, Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, and Gabriel Faure’s tone poem Pelléas et Mélisande, as well as the World Premiere performance of Canadian composer Andrew MacDonald’s Double Concerto No. 2: The Triumph of Saraswati.

Apart from the orchestra’s 70 musicians, featured artists onstage will include Tania Miller (conductor); Shawn Mativetsky (tabla); and Catherine Meunier (marimba).

Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of “The Handmaid’s Tale

Friday 28 Oct. 2022. 8:00 PM
$ 5
National Arts Center (Southam Hall)

A bold retelling of Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s award-winning novel The Handmaid’s Tale brought to life as a contemporary ballet by choreographer Lila York. A dystopian tale set in a futuristic society that erases human rights—particularly women’s rights— the work tells the story of Offred, the “scarlet handmaid” (concubine) of the Commander, master of a hierarchical and theocratic dictatorship. This darkly romantic, edgy dance drama —performed on pointe —is a tour de force by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Everything about this ballet is entrancing: the dancers’ extraordinary athleticism, impressive costumes by Liz Vandal, ingenious sets, and the stirring music of James MacMillan and Arvo Pärt. Atwood’s penetrating message shines through in York’s finely honed world.

Sign-up and payment:

Payment. First come, first serve. Thanks to the generous support of the College of the Humanities, the price for a ticket is only 5.00.  Please send the five dollars via interac to Micheline.white@carleton.ca

Download, complete and sign ONE of the forms below depending on your age (under or over 18) and send to andrea.mcintyre@carleton.ca no later than Wed. 26 Oct. If you are under 18 at the time of the trip, a parent needs to sign and you need to coordinate with them well in advance. No one can attend without having filled out the form by the deadline (no exceptions).

Ballet Field Trip Oct 28- Informed Consent Under 18
Ballet Field Trip Oct 28-Over 18 Waiver

Trip to Montreal

The College supports a program of music, theatre, and opera to supplement your course work. First year students are invited to participate in the annual First Year Field Trip to Montreal on Saturday September 24th. The bus will leave Dunton Tower at 7:45 am and will leave Montreal at 8:15 pm.

This trip includes transportation to and from Montreal, a visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and concert tickets to see J.S. Bach’s Cantatas performed by the Chamber choir of the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal. Students will also have of time to explore the city.

Thanks to the generous support of the College of the Humanities the price is only sixty dollars, but sign up soon, spots are limited and the trip usually sells out. To guarantee a spot, please send a cheque for 60 dollars made out to “Carleton University”.  Please make sure your student number and name are both written on the cheque. If you cannot provide a cheque, please contact Prof. White at micheline.white@carleton.ca to arrange an email money transfer.

Waiver Forms to be returned by email no later than Monday Sept 19th to:  andrea.mcintyre@carleton.ca
Download, complete and sign ONE of these forms depending on your age (under or over 18).
If you are under 18 at the time of the trip, a parent needs to sign and you need to coordinate with them well in advance.  No one will get on the bus without having filled out the form by the deadline (no exceptions).

Under 18 Years Old Bus Trip Montreal Sept 24 2022

Adult Waiver Bus Trip Montreal Sept 24 2022

Rashid Johnson Capsule at the National Gallery

What:  Personal introduction to the Rashid Johnson Capsule at the National Gallery.
Tour by Kwende Kefentse, former Humanities student, DJ, Creative Director of TIMEKODE and Executive Director of CKCU-FM.

Where:  Under the spider (Maman) at the Main entrance to the National Gallery. 380 Sussex Drive. National Gallery of Canada 

Date and Time: Thursday, September 8, 2022

Meet with Kwende Kefentse, from 4:30-5:30 for personal tour
Gallery Talk: 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm

Cost: Free.  Please sign up using the link below so I know how many students to expect:

Talk Title: Why DIY? The Future of DIY Club Culture

Description: Join Rachel Weldon, Executive Director of Debaser, as she speaks about DIY club culture with Michael Caffrey, from Ghetto Blast Sound System; Kwende Kefentse, Creative Director of TIMEKODE and Executive Director of CKCU-FM; and Seiiizi, Ottawa Musician, DJ, and Events Technician.

2021/2022 Cultural Activities

Gallery Tours

Two wonderful art experts provided groups of Humanities students with four guided tours of two of Ottawa’s special galleries on September 24th. Catherine Sinclair led the tour of the Ottawa Art Gallery and Professor Randi Klebanoff the National Gallery.
Under the supervision of the Maman Statue (the giant spider), the students were treated to pizza before the tours.

BC Ballet

On  November 26th, Bachelor of Humanities students attended a performance of BC Ballet at the National Arts Center.

This spectacular program from Ballet BC, under the new artistic direction of Medhi Walerski, featured three distinct contemporary works by acclaimed Canadian and international choreographers Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar, Crystal Pite, and Medhi Walerski himself.

Talks Featuring Two of Canada’s Most Important Indigenous Authors

On February 10th, Professor White broadcasted a zoom talk from our Lecture Hall.  Students were able to attend in person and also had the option to watch it remotely. The College purchased several copies of Richard Van Camp’s collection of short stories: Moccasin Square Gardens and left for students to read prior to the talk.

The talk:  The 2022 Avie Bennett Annual lecture series is pleased to present Katherena Vermette (Red River Métis – Michif) on “Storymaking” and Richard Van Camp (Tłı̨chǫ Dene) on “Storytelling.”  Their talks will be followed by a dialogue with each other hosted and moderated by Dr. Smaro Kamboureli, the Avie Bennett Chair in Canadian Literature in the Department of English University of Toronto.

The Scribe

The College of the Humanities was thrilled to present The Scribe on March 2, 2022.  A one-man play by Jesse Bernstein that imagined the Bible’s origins in the hands of a simple scribe at a pivotal time in the 5th century BCE. Confronting questions and scholarship about how the Bible came to be, Bernstein combined fact and fiction, research, creativity, and a deep understanding of humanity, to bring this central moment in world history to life.

At the end of his performance, Bernstein answered audience questions and chat with biblical scholars Dr. Shawna Dolansky and Sarah Cook about the scholarship behind the performance.

Carleton University Art Gallery Tours

On March 11th, 2022 The College of the Humanities were offered free in-person tours of a special exhibit at the Carleton University Art Gallery called Drift: Art and Dark Matter which explores the connections between physics and art.

Drift:  Art and Dark Matter is a residency and exhibition project generated by Agnes Etherington Art Centre, the Arthur B. McDonald Canadian Astroparticle Physics Research Institute and SNOLAB.

Symphony at the NAC

On April 13th, 2022 BHUM students had the opportunity to attend Truth in Our Time  at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. It was the Ottawa premiere of the NAC Orchestra commission of Philip Glass on the theme of Truth In Our Time in tribute to Canadian journalist Peter Jennings.