In the News

March 12, 2024 Concerto Night showcases the Fountain School at its finest — working together to bring classics to life (DalNews)

AngelaChu830

Concerto Night is one of the Fountain School’s keystone public performances. The annual concert brings together twelve student soloists and the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra under the directorship of Leonardo Perez and Peter Allen. Alongside music by composers like Haydn, Saint-Saëns, and Gershwin, this year’s concert program includes a premiere written by composition student, Kip Johnson. 

Read more

Feb. 9, 2024 Two Dalhousie faculty members receive Juno Awards nominations(Dal News)

24_01 - Classical Composition of the Year - Amy Brandon

The Juno Awards recognize outstanding achievements in Canada's music industry. This year’s nominees include works by two faculty members in Dalhousie’s Fountain School of Performing Arts.

Read more

Feb. 6, 2024 Theatre students take technology to task in latest group‑devised production (Dal News)

AOdevisedScreens

As artificial intelligence becomes more present in school and in life, third-year acting students in the Fountain School of Performing Arts have come together to create Artificial Oddity — a devised theatre piece that takes a critical look at technology through time.

Read more

Dec. 5, 2023 Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra finds a measure of meaning in the music (Dal News)

Shanti Sivarulrasa

Shanti Sivarulrasa, a violinist with the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra, will perform a piece honouring Amanda Todd at this year's concert on Dec. 5

Read more

Oct. 17, 2023 Middletown (Dal News)

middletown_9

Everyday life reimagined in Fountain School season opener Middletown

Read more

September 21, 2023 Grad profile: The human connection (Dal News)

SawchuckNews

How Fountain School Costume Studies Student Eleanor Sawchuck spent her summer!

Read more

June 6, 2023 Grad profile: The human connection (Dal News)

sophie_wilcott_1

Check out this great Fountain School grad profile of Sophie Wilcott!

Read more

April 12, 2023 Students channel vibrant music hall era with lavishly crafted garments (Dal News)

Historical Dress 2023

Get ready to hop in the wayback machine: It’s that time of year again when Dal’s talented Costume Studies students help transport you back to an earlier era with their hand-crafted creations.

Read more

March 28, 2023 DalTheatre caps season with new adaptation of landmark Ibsen epic (Dal News)

PeerGynt

The production of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, directed by Toronto-based Alistair Newton, encompasses a vast array of characters, time periods, locations, mediums, set pieces and costume changes, providing a fitting conclusion to the DalTheatre season.

The play follows a man named Peer Gynt throughout his life as he seeks to become a “Great Man of History,” often harming others in the process. The shift in scenes between realistic and fantastical have made the play notoriously difficult to stage, but Newton’s new adaptation keeps the vastness while zeroing in on important themes.

Read more

March 23, 2023 Dal Wind Ensemble's latest show devoted to marginalized music (Dal News)

HighRes041WindEnsOnStage2023

“There’s going to be a trombone mouthpiece in your saxophone,” explained Jacob Caines “That’s our solution.” 

The problem the director of the Dalhousie Wind Ensemble was in need of solving was how to create the guttural growl necessary to bring Inti Figgis-Vizueta’s New Cosmologies to life. The experimental soundscape is just one of many inventive and innovative pieces on the program of Litmus Blue, the ensemble’s co-production with Nova Scotia-based, artist-led ensemble, Alkali Collective.

Read more

March 20, 2023 Fountain School's EDIA advisor helps open doors and challenge stigmas (Dal News)

Nicole_Jordan_4

Singer and scholar Nicole Jordan is one of just a few Black artists currently teaching singing at a Canadian university. (Danny Abriel photos)

Throughout her career as a singer and music scholar, Dr. Nicole Jordan has often leaned into her performance and artistic work to express and uphold her values around diversity.

Read more

March 20, 2023 Fountain School's best and brightest set to shine at Concerto Night (Dal News)

Concerto

Ten student soloists will take the stage in the Rebecca Cohn Auditorium Tuesday (March 21) to perform alongside the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra — the biggest close-up of their lives for many of the young performers.

The featured soloists were selected from a pool of 35 students who competed in an audition process last October for a chance to perform at Concerto Night, the Fountain School of Performing Arts’s most popular annual concert.

 

Read more

March 15, 2023 $1.25 million gift “produces” opportunities for Dalhousie and NSCC music students

CostelloMentoring

An enthusiastic crowd packed the Joseph Strug Concert Hall at the Dalhousie Arts Centre as Costelo, a renowned artist, songwriter and producer, shared her expertise in recording production with students from Dalhousie’s Fountain School of Performing Arts and NSCC. The class was free and open to the public, attracting students, faculty, music professionals and music-loving community members.

Above: Producer Erin Costelo works with Fountain School of Performing Arts students Maddie Maitzen, Mackenzie Rodgers and Naomi Sney on their back-up vocals for fellow student Chloé Dionne’s original song recording. Photo by Emma Lomas, NSCC (@emmalomasmedia)

Read more

Feb. 11, 2023 "Why are we facinated by the Oscar-nominated 'Tár (The Conversation)

FSPApurpleFAVICONsparkle2

Published in "The Conversation", check out this great discussion on the challenges of working in the ultraconservative world of classical music authored by Fountain School faculty Jacqueline Warwick and Jacob Caines.

Read more

Feb. 7, 2023 DalTheatre's latest imagines what happens when a group of students create their own pandemic rules (Dal News)

Devised

Nearly three years since the pandemic forced Dalhousie students to leave campus and face an uncertain future, the Fountain School’s third-year acting class has imagined an alternate lockdown through their devised theatre piece: Not Now, Not Yet.

Taking inspiration from Chaucer’s Decameron, the play is about a group of theatre students who decide to lock down and live within their own acting studio when the pandemic hit rather than evacuate the campus. Fittingly, the play will be performed in an acting studio, using a space often used for traditional theatre in a site-specific way instead.

Read more

Feb. 2, 2023 Alum’s new play tells the story of an abducted journalist in Ukraine

Ballad-Motherland_AV

Playwright, director, dramaturge and Dalhousie Theatre Studies’ graduate Annie Valentina (BA’04) started writing the first draft of her most recent play, Ballad of the Motherland, in 2014, soon after the eruption of violence in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Though at that point, the North American media were not covering the situation there in as much detail as they do right now, Valentina was intrigued by the true story of a Russian-born US journalist reporting from the ground who was abducted by separatist forces.

Read more

February 2023 Dalhousie's new Joseph Strug Concert Hall six years in the making (CBC)

Screen Shot 2023-04-11 at 2.21.12 PM

New concert hall at the Fountain School of Performing Arts promises to give the ultimate acoustic experience for artists.

Read more

Feb. 2, 2023 Young fox takes centre stage in DalOpera’s The Cunning Little Vixen ( Dal News)

vixen

You don’t need to be a classical music connoisseur to enjoy The Cunning Little Vixen, DalOpera's latest production.

The folktale follows the adventures of an irrepressible young fox — the Vixen, also known as Sharp Ears — who outwits her human captors to rebuild her life with her forest friends. Her free, unapologetic self-knowledge starkly contrasts the hypocrisies of the human world she escapes.

Filled with animal characters (a rarity in opera) and loaded with humour, there’s something reminiscent of childhood in the story.

“It's a charming and beautiful show," says Betty Allison, the opera's music director. "I think it’s nice to give people things they don’t see all the time. Every time I see it, I love it.”

Read more

Jan. 30, 2023 Dr. Jennifer Bain quoted in The New Yorker Magazine

FSPApurpleFAVICONsparkle2

“The climactic pitch G also occurs at a critical moment in the text when Hildegard makes the connection between heaven, the saints, and the humans who are singing their praises.” 

Read more

Nov. 29, 2023 Morris Panych’s Canadian classic 7 Stories performed by DalTheatre (Dal News)

7stories_5

Morris Panych’s classic of Canadian theatre takes place entirely on the ledge of an apartment building seven stories off the ground. The main character, called only “Man,” stands on the ledge, contemplating their next move. 

As Man interacts with the various neighbours whose windows look out on the ledge, the play brings out questions of identity and perception through this both terrifying and whimsical premise.

Read more

Oct. 11, 2023 Happily ever after? Tradition fights novelty in first Fountain School show of the season (Dal News)

TamerTamed

Join the Fountain School of Performing Arts in this world where harpsichords play Lil Nas X, where wine barrels and kegs bring life to the party, and where weddings turn into rebellions. Bride fights groom, daughter fights father, and tradition fights novelty during the quest for authentic happily ever afters!

Director Luciana Silvestre Fernandes holds a Master of Fine arts in Directing from University of British Columbia and a Theatre Studies and English degree from Dalhousie University. Luciana joined Neptune Theatre in 2018-19 for the Chrysalis project as a Director and is now working with 2b theatre as their emerging artist in residency. 

Read more

Casting Workbook Announces List of Top 20 Canadian Acting Schools 2021

2161581207

The Fountain School of Performing Arts made the list! Schools were selected based on an extensive review of curriculum information, public ratings & surveys, media analysis and private industry-expert consultation.

 

Read more

May 4, 2020: 18-year-old cellist will be youngest person to perform with Symphony Nova Scotia (CBC News)

priscilla_lee-579

 

An 18-year-old cellist in Bedford, N.S., is now the youngest musician to win an apprenticeship with Symphony Nova Scotia. 

Priscilla Lee, a third-year bachelor of music student majoring in cello performance at Dalhousie's Fountain School of Performance Art, was offered the apprenticeship in early April.

 

Read more

April 9, 2020: "Sew what can we do to help?": Costume Studies stitches facemasks for students on campus

Anneke and Mask

Costume Studies instructor Anneke Henderson models one of the homemade facemasks that Costume Studies students, faculty and staff have been making. (Provided photos)

Anneke Henderson likely didn’t ever imagine that as a senior instructor in Dalhousie’s Costume Studies program she would find herself stitching together face masks to protect against a spreading virus.

Read More