Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Québec

The Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Québec (CMQQ) is a music conservatory located in Quebec City, Quebec. Founded by the Quebec government in 1944, it became the second North American music institution of higher learning to be entirely state-subsidized. The conservatoire is part of a network of 7 conservatories in Quebec, the Conservatoire de musique et d'art dramatique du Québec (CMADQ), and was the second school in the CMADQ network to be established. Orchestra conductor Wilfrid Pelletier served as the school's first director from 1944 through 1946. The current director is Louis Dallaire.

At its founding, the CMQQ was located on Langelier Blvd, moving in 1950 to larger premises on Saint Denis Street near the Citadelle of Quebec. In October 1972 the CMQQ moved to its current home inside the Grand Théâtre de Québec. In 1991, the complex housed 49 classrooms, 70 teaching and practice studios, a multi-media centre with a recording studio and electroacoustic lab, and the performance space of the theatre itself. The complex is also home to an impressive library which in 1991 included more than 60,000 documents of books, scores, monographs, periodicals, and recordings in various media formats.

The CMQQ has a strong commitment to performance, and in addition to holding public concerts at the Grand Théâtre they also perform regularly at the nearby Salle Louis-Fréchette and Salle Octave-Crémazie performance halls, the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur museum, and the Institut canadien de Québec. Both students and faculty regularly present public recitals in these venues, in addition to the many public concerts given by the school's orchestra, chamber orchestra, jazz band, wind ensemble, opera program, choirs, and other performance groups. The school offers courses in well over 50 areas of study, ranging from early music performance studies to electroacoustic music techniques, to chamber music, to ethnomusicology, and opera and jazz studies among many others. The school also regularly brings in guest instructors for master classes which are also open to the music students of Laval University.