Shanti Nachtergaele
Assistant Professor: Music
Shanti Nachtergaele is a scholar-performer whose work centers on the interplay between musical practice and research. As a musicologist, she investigates the history of the double bass using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates the study of material culture, reception and identity, musical institutions, and historical performance practices. Her work has been published in Early Music, Music and the Moving Image, and The Oxford Handbook of Arrangement Studies, among other publications, and she has articles forthcoming in Early Music and The Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society. Her current book project examines the sociomaterial history of the double bass in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As a performer, Shanti specializes in historical performance practices and plays several varieties of historical double bass and violone. She has performed with period instrument ensembles across Canada, including Tafelmusik in Toronto and Arion in Montreal, and is a member of the Calgary-based orchestra Rosa Barocca. Shanti has taught historical double bass at the Festival de Música de Santa Catarina (Brazil) and Pass Early Music Festival (Canada).
Shanti completed her PhD in musicology at McGill University, where she was awarded a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. She also holds an MA in music theory and history from Penn State University, an MM in violone performance from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, and a BM in double bass performance from Shenandoah Conservatory.