New Appointment in Musicology
The Desautels Faculty of Music is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Colette Simonot as Assistant Professor of Musicology.
Dr. Colette Simonot joined the Desautels Faculty of Music on July 1, 2018, after serving on the faculty of Brandon University’s School of Music since 2011. She brings to the position an impressive history of leadership, teaching and research.
Simonot’s research focuses primarily on music with text, especially opera, of the 20th and 21st centuries. She examines both the cultural context of the music and how the composer engages with themes such as gender, politics, religion and mental health in the music itself. Simonot has written a series of articles on the operas of 20th century French composer, Francis Poulenc, that emerged from her dissertation work. More recently, she has turned her attention to Canadian music and decolonization by studying musical works on the subject of Louis Riel. In her forthcoming article, “Decolonizing Riel,” she compares the representation of Riel in recent compositions by Indigenous composers with Harry Somers’ controversial 1967 opera, Louis Riel.
Simonot’s articles and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Intersections, The University of Toronto Quarterly, Notes, Les Cahiers de la Société québecoise de recherche en musique and Grove Dictionary of American Music.
She has presented her research at international conferences in Canada, the United States and Europe, including meetings of the American Musicological Society, MusCan (the Canadian University Music Society) and Feminist Theory and Music. As an active member of the Manitoba arts community, Simonot has given lectures and written program notes for organizations such as Manitoba Opera, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra (Brandon series) and the Brandon Chamber Players.
While at Brandon University, Simonot chaired the music research department and established the BU School of Music Out of Bounds Lecture Series. She was also an affiliate member of the gender and women’s studies department.
Simonot holds a BMus in Clarinet Performance from the University of Saskatchewan and an MA in Ethnomusicology from York University, where she studied with Beverley Diamond. She completed her PhD in Musicology at McGill University in 2011 under the supervision of Steven Huebner and Lloyd Whitesell.