Performance and Conducting

With many opportunities to hone their skills in personalized and professional environments, University of Guelph students have successfully pursued further training in areas as diverse as opera and jazz to Christian popular music performance. Many of our students embrace the opportunity to form their own bands and ensembles while still at Guelph and gain invaluable professional experience mounting concerts in the highly supportive and musically engaged Guelph community at large.

Chris Wattam 

Graduate Student Royal Conservatory of Music, Glenn Gould School, Class of 2013

What I appreciated most about my experience at the University of Guelph was the sheer breadth of music I was exposed to and in which I participated. To have had the opportunity to study and perform rock, jazz, electronic, and contemporary as well as classical music gave me a unique perspective on how to organize sound.

It may seem that free improvisation and classical singing are worlds apart, but the extended techniques I learned in the Contemporary Music Ensemble helped me immensely after I graduated, when I was assigned to sing selections from Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire as part of my Artist Diploma in Voice at The Royal Conservatory's Glenn Gould School. The ability to approach music with an open mind and open ears - that’s what I have taken away from my time at the University of Guelph.