M茅lanie L茅onard
Assistant Professor
Director, 海角社区 Contemporary Music Ensemble
Born in Montreal, M茅lanie L茅onard is the music director of Symphony New Brunswick. She has also been resident and associate conductor of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and Music Director of the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra.
As a guest conductor, she worked with renowned orchestras including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre M茅tropolitain, Les Violons du Roy, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the National Art Center Orchestra.
In 2014, she founded the Wild West New Music Ensemble in Calgary, for which she was Music Director and Conductor. During the same year, she co-founded the Calgary New Music Festival and served as its Artistic Director until 2016. She was also the founder and conductor of Ensemble Prima, a Montreal-based chamber ensemble dedicated to twentieth and twenty-first century music.
Maestra L茅onard has recorded soundtracks for Aura at Montr茅al鈥檚 Notre-Dame Basilica; Land of Fantasy, a Cirque du Soleil show presented in Hangzhou, China; and Paradise City, an immersive multimedia universe in South Korea.
Ms. L茅onard was the first woman to complete a doctorate in orchestra conducting from the Universit茅 de Montr茅al. She holds a bachelor degree in Music Theory from the same university. She received her Masters of Music in Orchestra Conducting from the Hartt School of Music (Hartford, Connecticut). She studied with Maestri Paolo Bellomia, Jean-Fran莽ois Rivest, and Christopher Zimmerman. She received the Canada Art Council鈥檚 Jean-Marie Beaudet award for orchestral conducting.
