“We are recognized as one of the top institutions for training western classical music,” says Jean Louis Bleau, Program Administrator, General and Orchestral Programs at MRU Conservatory.

The MRU Conservatory is broadening their offering in a few different directions by adding new cultural music genres, digital music and dance to their already extensive repertoire.

Bleau states his reasons for the scope expansion, “When we first moved into this building and it’s called the Taylor Centre for the Performing Arts. We do Music and Speech Arts very well, but we don’t do Theatre and Dance.” He continues, “Noting that we have dance theatres at our disposal and venues that are capable of holding more than music, it seemed like a good time.”

The introduction of dance seems like a logical step. “This grows from our Music with Your Baby class, where they use music and movement,” Bleau states, “now the students will be able to continue in both directions.” With Creative Dance courses offered by Jennifer Mahood for ages 4-5 yrs and 5-6 yrs, students can take their next ‘step-touches’ to grow as dancers. The Creative Dance Youth and Adults programs are poised to be a fitting continuation for the successfully trained younger dancers.

Bleau beams. “We’re expanding beyond just music as a performing art with a course called ‘Imagination in Motion’. It’s being taught by 2015 Enbridge Emerging Artist Recipient Mark Ikeda.” Students will range in their artisitic diciplines. It’s being described as an ‘Arts Incubation’ where, “a collection of artists will come together as an ensemble to create an art piece that could involve music, theatre and dance.”

Culturally, the new horizon is facing east. With Chinese classical musical offerings like Erhu (Chinese fiddle), Dizi (Chinese flute) and Guzhen (Chinese zither) along with (Chinese) voice classes under the direction of Shana Yang, who also directs the Calgary Zhi-Yin Choir.

Students can also be exposed to different sonic scales in the Indian musical traditions of Raga music.  The East Indian tradition of Kathak Dance will be introduced, alongside the Indigenous Dance classes whose roots are from right here in the Canadian prairies.

Finally, MRU Conservatory explores the art of digital performance recording and production with courses in Garage Band, the Fundamentals of Sound, Introduction to Film Music and Podcasting.  These courses aim to give instrumentalists the tools they need to compose, record and produce material to further their careers and potentially earn a Sound and Technology Certificate of Completion.

“It’s about all performing arts.” Jean Louis Bleau summarizes. “Canada is a multicultural place. Calgary is a multicultural place. For me, it’s a passion to listen to different types of music and to be inspired by that. There’s such a great variety of music and if we focus on one, we don’t actually get to enjoy and benefit from the others.

Bleau concludes, “We are recognized as one of the top institutions for training western classical music. We’re the place that should be known for doing that for all types of music.”

Interested in any of these styles of music?

Contact the MRU Conservatory.

• by JLove