In the News
June 13, 2025: Grad Profile: From criminology to the Berlin opera, Sophia Maskine (DalNews)
Sophia Maskine as the Fairy Godmother, with Karina Matys as Cinderella in DalOpera's Cinderella and the Box Office | Set Designer: Katrin Whitehead, Costume Designer: Diego Cavedon Dias, Lighting Designer: Bruce MacLennan (Kate Hayter photo)
"“I loved my fairy godmother costume, I never wanted to take it off,” says Sophia. “I wanted to go get sushi in it on breaks.”
June 10, 2025: Grad profile: Around the world and back (DalNews)
Like many kids growing up in Nova Scotia, Liam Oko was into hockey. But his mom was also active in community theater at the Bauer Theater in Antigonish. After hockey practice, Liam would sneak over and watch her rehearsals from the theatre’s balcony.
This summer he’ll be acting on the same stage his mom was in Theatre Antigonish’s For Love Nor Money.
Check out acting graduate Liam Oko’s story at Dal News
May 21, 2025 Soprano receives ECMA for Classical Release of the Year for song composed by Dal faculty member
Congratulations to Fountain School of Performing Arts composition professor Jérôme Blais, whose 2024 JUNO-nominated album “mouvance” has been honoured with a 2025 ECMA award to soprano Suzie LeBlanc in the category Classical Release of the year, for the song “pour une Amérique engloutie”. Congratulations also to part-time instructor in the Fountain School Eileen Walsh, who plays clarinets on the album.
April 10, 2025: Students channel 1875, a year when body shaping still ruled the fashion world (DalNews)
"On Monday evening, history stepped off the page and into the Jospeh Strug Concert Hall as five graduating Costume Studies students showcased 1875: A Presentation of Historical Dress."
March 25, 2025: Three Sisters reflects human desire to hope in the face of dissappointment(DalNews)
“One of my favourite things about being the stage manager is seeing the show come together piece by piece,” says Veronica Jollimore, who is graduating this spring. “I always enjoy seeing how these artists can be given a design or an idea and make it into a real-life object.”
March 18, 2025: Musical collaboration breathes life into DalSymphony's 2025 Concerto Night (DalNews)
The interplay between the soloist and the orchestra allows performances to become a collaboration between all musicians and composers represented on stage.
Oct. 20, 2024: ¡Ay, Caramba! It’s the Apocalypse in Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play(TWISI: the way I see it)
Check out theatre and music blogger Amanda Campbell's review of DalTheatre's first production of the Fountain School's 2024-2025 season.
July 5, 2024: Alum Sophie Jacome returns (Dal Alumni Spotlights)
This past academic year, Jacome (BA'19) returned to the Dalhousie's Sir James Dunn Theatre, where she spent so many hours as a student. This time it was as a playwright to work with Fountain School students on the stage production of Jacome's play Euripidaristophanize – a project that allowed her to tie in elements from her arts degree.
July 5, 2024 24 hours: Jack Bennett (Dal News)
Learn how Dal alum Jack Bennet (BA’17, JD’23) goes from articling by day to arranging songs at night in a new “24 hours” feature in Dal Magazine:
May 29, 2024 Dress code, flexible: A presidential robe reimagined in time for Convocation (Dal News)
"I was looking through Dal archives at past presidents and there was so much variety between each one," says Julia Sommerville, a Costume Studies student who created a new Dal presidential robe design this year as part of her honour's project.
May 28, 2024 Grad profile: Grad profile: Embracing her twin passions (DalNews)
Louisa called her Mama and said, “I think I’m transferring to Dal and moving across the country to Halifax.” Her mom replied, “Well yeah, it’s Costume Studies, you have to do that.” Together, they then enjoyed a back-to-school shopping trip to Fabricland while the reality of this big change set in.
May 28, 2024 Grad profile: A dramatic awakening (DalNews)
Daniel Nwobi graduates from Dal this week with a honours degree in theatre, which may seem a stretch from his interest in science and robotics while in high school in Nigeria.
April 17, 2024 Waltzing through the Victorian era with Dalhousie’s Costume Studies program (DalNews)
Graduating students from Dalhousie's Costume Studies program transported guests back to Victorian England last Tuesday during 1837: A Presentation of Historical Dress
March 26, 2024 The Fountain School’s latest stage production asks big questions (DalNews)
The name may be long and the characters thousands of years old, but Euripidaristophanize is as modern and relatable a tale as they come.
March 12, 2024 Concerto Night showcases the Fountain School at its finest — working together to bring classics to life (DalNews)
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.
Feb. 9, 2024 Two Dalhousie faculty members receive Juno Awards nominations(Dal News)
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.
Feb. 6, 2024 Theatre students take technology to task in latest group‑devised production (Dal News)
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.
Dec. 5, 2023 Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra finds a measure of meaning in the music (Dal News)
Shanti Sivarulrasa, a violinist with the Dalhousie Symphony Orchestra, will perform a piece honouring Amanda Todd at this year's concert on Dec. 5
Nov. 30, 2023 DalOpera’s Mese Mariano/La Chanson de Fortunio double bill showcases opposing forms and enduring themes (Dal News)
Fountain School's opera extravaganza runs Nov. 30-Dec.3
Nov. 29, 2023 Jazzin' it up with a classic ensemble repertoire — and the next generation (Dal News)
Jazz Ensemble performs tonight with Halifax Regional Arts Jazz Band
Oct. 17, 2023 Middletown (Dal News)
Everyday life reimagined in Fountain School season opener Middletown
September 21, 2023 Grad profile: The human connection (Dal News)
How Fountain School Costume Studies Student Eleanor Sawchuck spent her summer!
June 6, 2023 Grad profile: The human connection (Dal News)
Check out this great Fountain School grad profile of Sophie Wilcott!
April 12, 2023 Students channel vibrant music hall era with lavishly crafted garments (Dal News)
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.
March 28, 2023 DalTheatre caps season with new adaptation of landmark Ibsen epic (Dal News)
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.
March 23, 2023 Dal Wind Ensemble's latest show devoted to marginalized music (Dal News)
“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.
March 20, 2023 Fountain School's EDIA advisor helps open doors and challenge stigmas (Dal News)
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.
March 20, 2023 Fountain School's best and brightest set to shine at Concerto Night (Dal News)
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.
March 15, 2023 $1.25 million gift “produces” opportunities for Dalhousie and NSCC music students
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)
Feb. 11, 2023 "Why are we facinated by the Oscar-nominated 'Tár (The Conversation)
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.
Feb. 7, 2023 DalTheatre's latest imagines what happens when a group of students create their own pandemic rules (Dal News)
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.
Feb. 2, 2023 Alum’s new play tells the story of an abducted journalist in Ukraine
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.
February 2023 Dalhousie's new Joseph Strug Concert Hall six years in the making (CBC)
New concert hall at the Fountain School of Performing Arts promises to give the ultimate acoustic experience for artists.
Feb. 2, 2023 Young fox takes centre stage in DalOpera’s The Cunning Little Vixen ( Dal News)
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.”
Jan. 30, 2023 Dr. Jennifer Bain quoted in The New Yorker Magazine
“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.”
Nov. 29, 2023 Morris Panych’s Canadian classic 7 Stories performed by DalTheatre (Dal News)
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.
Oct. 11, 2023 Happily ever after? Tradition fights novelty in first Fountain School show of the season (Dal News)
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.
Casting Workbook Announces List of Top 20 Canadian Acting Schools 2021
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.
May 4, 2020: 18-year-old cellist will be youngest person to perform with Symphony Nova Scotia (CBC News)
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.