News

Kate Steiner, Associate Professor of Music, is a coinvestigator on a successful SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis Grant titled "Cultural Transformation and Societal Need: Chant and Religious Music in Canada and the eastern USA 1600-1950." She is also head of the team responsible for the cataloguing chant manuscripts and fragments in Eastern and Central Canada in the “Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission” (DACT) project, which includes 25 teams, more than 50 co-investigators, collaborators, and scholars around the world. These projects are complementary to each other and create opportunities for teams of undergraduate Research Assistants to contribute.

A group of 16 UWaterloo students and Community Gamelan players traveled to Bali, Indonesia in May 2026 as part of a Music and Culture course.

We are proud to have another music student, Josiah Ropp, present his solo tenor performance this Sunday April 19 at 4:30pm at Grebel. 

Together with the Grand River Opera and the University Choir, the Orchestra@UWaterloo presented a stunning showcase of opera classics.

Research areas: Ethnomusicology; comparative musicology; music, performance, and identity; collective music practices; music, ritual, and spirituality; music, emotion, and meaning; theory and analysis; variations & improvisation; music, health, and wellbeing; music and the diaspora; music in Morocco and Bali.

Research areas: Compositions that explore her Métis and Manitoba heritage; the sounds of the Canadian wilderness; women’s voices in electroacoustic music; women, girls and media images

Research areas: Performance of choral music. Fall 2025 performances include Beethoven’s Missa Selemnis, Handel’s Messiah with the Grand Philharmonic Choir and the Duruflé Requiem, John Shepard’s Media Vita, and Herbert Howells’ Take him, earth, for cherishing, with The Elora Singers.

Dr. Kathryn Ladano (BA 1999) began her academic studies in Music at Conrad Grebel University College and the University of Waterloo with a clear vision. Drawn to Grebel because of the flexible program that allowed her to study bass clarinet, she shaped her degree according to her interests. Today she is considered a visionary Canadian bass clarinetist who has redefined the instrument through a blend of traditional techniques with experimental soundscapes, expanding the instrument's horizons.

Research areas: Liturgical music; chant; early medieval polyphony; liturgical theology

Research areas: Jean Sibelius; early twentieth-century British music criticism; The British Symphony