MARITIME CONSERVATORY SCHOOL OF MUSIC
Contemporary Showcase Festival
Registration Deadline: October 22, 2025, 11:59pm
Festival Date: Tuesday, November 18, 2025
• Piano Classes – 12:00pm
• Brass, Woodwinds, Voice Classes – 1:10pm
Showcase Concert: Sunday, November 23, 2pm
The Maritime Conservatory of Performing Arts is the East Coast Centre for Contemporary Showcase Festivals Canada.
The Contemporary Showcase Festival was initiated by the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects and is held every year across our country during Canada Music Week.
It is the only festival of its kind, devoted entirely to music by Canadian composers. It is non-competitive in that no marks are awarded, no ranking given, and the adjudications take place in a master class atmosphere designed to be informative and supportive. Outstanding performers are further encouraged through scholarship recognition. Many scholarship recipients of the past festivals have gone on to make their mark in the music world. Notables include Jean Stillwell, Scott St. John, Measha Brueggergosman, Lara St. John, and Stewart Goodyear.
No other organization continues to promote the performance, composition and study of Canadian Contemporary Music. On recommendation of the adjudicators, the Concert Committee will select from the many participants, a selection of students to perform at the Showcase Concert. Outstanding performances may be nominated for ACNMP’s National Performance Awards.
About the Contemporary Showcase Festival
There are no age restrictions in any of the classes. Many classes are structured to accommodate differences between conservatories. (Eg.: Class 103, Grades 3-4) In most classes, students may enter up to two pieces per class; however students may choose to only enter one piece. If there is a piece a student wishes to play that’s not listed in the syllabus, consult your Centre Coordinator or contact the ACNMP Office.
Pieces do not need to be memorized nor completely perfected; however students should have a good understanding of the piece.
Written and verbal adjudication is given along with further demonstration or hands-on work with students according to time allowance. The focus of the festival is to provide helpful commentary about the performance of the music and the composers. Adjudication focuses mainly on the presentation of the music, interpretation, understanding of the music and musicianship.
Centres may choose to award scholarships on the adjudicators’ recommendations and present these at the Showcase Concert.
The 2025 Contemporary Showcase Festival Maritimes will be held at the Maritime Conservatory on:
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
• Piano Classes – 12:00pm
• Brass, Woodwinds, Voice Classes – 1:10pm
India Gailey
2025 Adjudicator
India Gailey (she/they) is a Juno-nominated cellist, composer, vocalist, and improviser who appears most often in the realms of classical and experimental music. Named by CBC as one of “30 hot Canadian classical musicians under 30,” India moves fluidly as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborator with various disciplines to create works of exploratory art. She has worked with numerous living composers, including Nicole Lizée, Amy Brandon, Philip Glass, Fjóla Evans, Julia Mermelstein, and Michael Harrison. India’s album to you through (Redshift Records), was praised as “a truly exceptional display of unparalleled talent” (Take Effect) that “flows like poetry” (The Whole Note). She followed this with Problematica, a series of specially commissioned works blurring genre lines (People Places Records, 2024). As a composer, India has written music for concert, film, dance, and theatre, often exploring environmentalism and magical realism in her work. In 2022 she composed music for Symphony Nova Scotia to illustrate Mi’kmaw poet Rebecca Thomas’s children’s book I’m Finding My Talk. In 2024 she premiered her own cello concerto Butterfly Lightning Shakes the Earth (Redshift Records) with Symphony NS and conductor Karl Hirzer, and the recording was nominated for a “Classical Album of the Year” Juno. Another recent work was Music Across the Water at Scotia Festival, a site-specific quasi-theatrical piece involving over twenty musicians stationed in various locations around an oceanic inlet in Halifax. India is the recipient of numerous honours, including awards from Arts Nova Scotia, the Nova Scotia Talent Trust, the Canada Council for the Arts, Upstream Music, and Acadia and McGill Universities. She loves raspberries, large marimbas, and the smell of burning thyme.
Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects