{"id":8234,"date":"2017-12-13T13:53:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T18:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=8234"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:47:33","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:47:33","slug":"music-department-turns-50","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/music-department-turns-50\/","title":{"rendered":"Carleton Music Department Celebrates 50 Years of Sweet Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Carleton Music Department Celebrates 50 Years of Sweet Sound\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

The applause lasted a full five minutes. Kellylee Evans, Juno Award winner and artist-in-residence for Carleton University\u2019s Music Department<\/a>, had stepped back from the mike and the last exuberant, sweet notes of her performance were replaced by whoops and cheers from the audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a Music Department celebrates its 50th anniversary, a blow out gala concert is probably inevitable. The line-up on a November evening at Kailash Mital Theatre featured a mix of current students, graduates, faculty members and guest artists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was an unforgettable evening ,\u201d remembers James Wright, professor and supervisor of performance studies, \u201cwith outstanding performances of all kinds of jazz, fusion and funk\u2014a real smorgasbord of what\u2019s happening in the jazz side of our program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton
James Wright, professor and supervisor of performance studies<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The concert closed a week\u2019s worth of anniversary celebrations that included a competition, CD launch, choir recital and scholarly symposium\u2014events that reflected the department\u2019s range and its history of innovation, openness and diversity.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cWe teach courses in music and culture to hundreds of students enrolled in Bachelor of Arts programs across the university,\u201d says Department Chair Paul Th\u00e9berge, \u201cincluding courses in classical, jazz, popular and world music.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Bachelor of Music and Master\u2019s of Music and Culture programs are mid-sized, with a total student population of about 200.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know all of our students,\u201d says John Higney, long-time instructor and performance logistics co-ordinator. \u201cWe know their names and where they\u2019re at in their development, and that contributes to the strong sense of community you find here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Carleton<\/figure>\n\n\n

Carleton\u2019s Music Department
\nTakes a Different Approach<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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While most music schools teach classical or jazz or both and little else, Carleton has always taken a different approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA student can work with essentially any instrument for their undergraduate degree in music,\u201d says Higney, \u201cas long as we can engage high-quality professional instruction for that instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This means that regular Friday afternoon recitals can serve up an eclectic mix, with a classical pianist followed by a bagpiper, Middle Eastern instrumentalist or musical theatre performer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton
A Carleton music student performs during MusikOttawa in November 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s exciting that we offer performance streams that you can\u2019t find anywhere else in Canada, like Celtic instrument studies and carillon and world music,\u201d Wright reports. \u201cBut the magic is that all these students come together in one place, and the impact of this is huge. It expands their musicianship and their understanding of what music-making is. Whatever they go on to do, whether teaching, performing or working in arts administration, it shapes their appreciation of the world, and of music and culture in particular.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had this model in place for a long time,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cAnd now other schools are trying to catch up and figure out how to be as contemporary and relevant to 21st-century music culture as we are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The department blazed a trail with its singer-songwriter performance stream, fostered by legendary Canadian folk singer Ian Tamblyn while he was artist-in-residence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The singer-songwriter students have an opportunity to participate in MusikOttawa, an annual competition adjudicated by concert promoters and recording industry reps. This year\u2019s winner was  Leigha Robinson, who left Nashville\u2014known stateside as \u201cMusic City\u201d\u2014to study at Carleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robinson can be heard on the anniversary CD The Carleton Collective,<\/em> released by the department\u2019s recording label Carleton Sound. Tamblyn curated the collection of tracks from 18 artists who have been through the singer-songwriter stream, many of whom he mentored in his song writing course. Listen here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Carleton<\/figure>\n\n\n

More than Performance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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The music program is about more than performance, however. A wide range of courses, like those about the music industry, music and gender, and computer music, give students an awareness of the role of music in society. Musicology shared the anniversary spotlight in a two-day symposium honouring the work of John Shepherd. Shepherd was one of the music program\u2019s first graduates and eventually became Carleton\u2019s first vice-provost and associate vice-president (Academic); in between he became an international leader in the field of popular music studies and co-authored standard reference texts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJohn had the final word at the symposium,\u201d says Th\u00e9berge. \u201cHe talked about coming back to teach here in the early days of the music program and of how there was an openness that allowed him to do things that he couldn\u2019t have done elsewhere. His comments tied it all together: openness has defined our 50-year trajectory and helped us grow and evolve in a special way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future looks bright for the department. A new research chair for music in Canada is in the works, endowed by Elaine Keillor. A professor emeritus and distinguished research professor, Keillor was named to the Order of Canada for her pioneering work teaching Indigenous music at Carleton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carleton
Elaine Keillor, a professor emeritus and distinguished research professor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A major game-changer is Carleton’s recent announcement that it will begin negotiations to purchase Dominion-Chalmers United Church<\/a>, a popular 1,000-seat venue in downtown Ottawa that serves as a concert hall and offers spaces for teaching and community outreach, as well as the possibility of building a recording studio.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cThe purchase, if it goes through as we hope it will, will really open up exciting new directions for us,\u201d says Th\u00e9berge.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cFifty is a wonderful milestone, but the department still feels young. We\u2019ve inherited a legacy of openness, so that doesn\u2019t come to us as a weight; together with the possibilities offered by Dominion-Chalmers, it feels like a new day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\"Carleton<\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carleton University’s Music Department celebrated its 50th anniversary with a blow out gala concert with Kellylee Evans in December 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":410,"featured_media":8250,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[1592],"cu_story_tag":[1920],"class_list":["post-8234","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-teaching-learning","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-arts-and-social-sciences"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":"blueprint"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/410"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97548,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/8234\/revisions\/97548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=8234"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=8234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}