Stories
Bringing CMU choruses ‘Bach’ together this festive season
The Canadian Mennonite University Festival Chorus presents J.S. Bach's magnificent Christmas Oratorio, Weihnachtsoratorium, BWV 248 — a musical telling of the nativity story and the major feast days celebrated as part of the 12 days of Christmas.
"This oratorio is, in fact, six cantatas in one," says Dr. Janet Brenneman, Associate Professor of Music and conductor of the performance. "You get the whole Christmas story."
Assembled in 1734, Bach's Nativity-to-Epiphany cycle draws on pre-existing sources — including three secular cantatas — and was composed as part of his duties for two Leipzig churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas.
"Performing Bach is a breath of fresh air," says tenor soloist and CMU alumnus Nolan Kehler. A versatile and varied singer, the music also marks a return to his roots in more ways than one.
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MCC peace contest winner builds on food generosity
The winning speech in the C. Henry Smith Peace Oratorical Contest says food can be a tool for peacebuilding if Jesus' invitation to join the feast is accepted.
Danika Warkentin, a student at Canadian Mennonite University, won the binational intercollegiate contest for students at Anabaptist colleges and universities that is administered by Mennonite Central Committee U.S.
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CMU biology major co-authors paper published in landmark science journal
Levi Klassen's (CMU '22) second week working at the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) changed abruptly and without warning, pitching him into an expedited project running from May to November researching and analyzing treatments for the recent outbreak of mpox (the disease formerly known as monkeypox).
A summer of what he thought would be spent organizing files and aiding with odd jobs relating to research ended up leading to publishing a report in the landmark journal Science Translational Medicine in November. Because of his valuable contributions, Klassen, in affiliation with Canadian Mennonite University (CMU), received co-first authorship on the report.
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New MSC research project studies historic letters written by Inuit Elders
From the boundless territory of Nunavut come fragile and carefully kept documents that changed the history of not only northern Canada but the entire country.
A new research project at Menno Simons College (MSC), funded by a grant from the Government of Nunavut's Department of Culture and Heritage, will be translating and analyzing over three dozen letters that were handwritten in Inuktitut syllabics by Nunavut Elders in the 1960s and 1970s.
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Faculty-alumni collaboration explores decolonizing music education in the classroom
Studying music education means learning scales and chord progressions, practicing how to move your hands while conducting, and planning out class schedules. But sometimes it also involves examining and re-evaluating the entire education system at its core.
This is what a group of CMU students did every week last semester, when they gathered for one of CMU's newest courses: Decolonizing Music Education, guided by Associate Professor of Music Janet Brenneman. Through listening, reading, discussing, and creating, students learned about the history and current forms of colonialism present in Canadian music education classrooms, and explored how to put the concepts of decolonization and indigenization into action.
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