Professor, Desautels Faculty of Music
Room 223 Taché Hall
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry Campus)
150 Dafoe Road
Winnipeg, MB. R3T 2N2
Phone: 204-474-8774
Mel.Braun@umanitoba.ca
Mel Braun
Mel Braun heads up the Desautels Faculty of Music's vocal program, which is renowned for its collaborative and holistic approach to training singers. He has seen many of his students go on to significant careers as performers and teachers. Braun also acts as music director for the operatic ensembles at UM and coordinates the Faculty’s Contemporary Opera Lab projects.
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In the faculty
- Professor
- Voice Area Head
- Opera Theatre Ensembles Coordinator
Education
- BMus, University of Toronto
- MMus, University of Toronto
- Church Music Degree, Canadian Mennonite Bible College
Students come first. Our job is to mentor them, giving them the tools that they need to grow and move forward, ultimately becoming their own teachers. When we work together as Faculty and find all kinds of creative ways of collaborating, we survive and flourish. Collaboration is the way that people on the prairies have always survived and passing this ethos on to our students is a gift that will prepare them for fruitful ongoing lives as human beings and creators in their own right.
Mel Braun
Professor, Desautels Faculty of Music
Performance highlights
In addition to many performances and broadcasts of early music with Tafelmusik and Opera Atelier, Mel has performed new music premieres with the Banff Centre, Winnipeg’s Groundswell, Winnipeg New Music Festival, Kitchener’s Sound in the Land Festival, and numerous others. He has been heard across Canada in the masterworks of Bach and Handel, appearing with Tafelmusik, the Calgary Bach Festival, Symphony Nova Scotia, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Manitoba Chamber Orchestra, and Pro Coro Edmonton. He has also made many appearances with Manitoba Opera.
His discography includes solo albums Pilgrim Songs (Mennonite Hymns) and By the Red (Red River songs), both with collaborative pianist Laura Loewen. During his time as Co-Director of Winnipeg Singers, the choir recorded two albums, O Praise ye the Lord and Prairie Voices. An upcoming recording of Andrew Balfour’s Notinikew with Dead of Winter will be released in the 2025/26 season.
Ongoing research and creative works
Ongoing projects include Braun’s work as Co-Artistic Director and Conductor with Dead of Winter (formerly Camerata Nova), a choir devoted to exploring new approaches to choral music-making. He works closely with well-known Cree composer Andrew Balfour, co-curating and conducting concerts that are a response to the truth and reconciliation initiatives. Taken, Notinikew, Captive, and Nestaweya are among the works premiered under Braun’s direction in the last few years, several of which have made their way to Podium in Toronto and the Montreal New Music Festival.
As a composer/arranger, Mel also contributes to Dead of Winter’s choral canon with works like Ode to the Red River Cart, The Curler’s Lexicon (A cantata in 10 ends), Bavarian Purity Law (The history of Beer), and Tree of Life (A Boreal motet).
Braun works to find new ways of presenting art song, and his collaborative work with pianist Laura Loewen has allowed him to explore all kinds of possibilities. These collaborations include a concert pairing songs from Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang with the songs of Gordon Lightfoot, John Greer’s “A Prairie Boy’s Life”, and a re-imagining of Schubert’s Die Winterreise that blends his iconic melodies with contemporary poetry and pop music.
Braun is an in-demand adjudicator and choral clinician, and also enjoys teaching many of the young rock singers that make up Winnipeg’s burgeoning Indie Music scene. You’ll find him wherever young singers need mentoring. Recently, Braun helped launch the Micro-Certificate in Songmaking, a new University program that trains pop musicians in Songwriting, Music Production, and the Business of Music. Now in its second year, this program reaches out to both University and community pop musicians, with leading members of Winnipeg’s pop music scene mentoring the students.