Guildhall School of Music & Drama
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Guildhall School news Spring/Summer 2010 Daniel Evans in the director’s chair p4 CYM becomes part of the family p8 Technical Theatre rings the changes p18 Iain Burnside on Lads in their Hundreds GUILDHALL SCHOOL NEWS • SPRING / SUMMER 2010 1 . Forthcoming Events The Conspiracy Music Masterclasses 7 May Thursday 29 April • 2pm/6pm The year’s cross-School event will be an exploration into the world of film and music. The audience Friday 30 April • 10am/2pm will be taken through the black and white era to today’s technicolour splendour visiting various film genres along the way. John O’Conor Piano Masterclass Summerfolk Wednesday 5 May • 3pm 24 – 27 May Marisa Robles Maxim Gorky’s Summerfolk spotlights the hopes and anxieties of a cross-section Harp Masterclass of Russia’s new middle class as they congregate in their holiday dachas. Monday 10 May • 6pm Richard Goode Piano Masterclass Junior Guildhall Lutine Prize 29 May Tuesday 11 May • 2.30pm Takács Quartet Junior Guildhall’s most prestigious award, The Lutine Prize, holds its final at Chamber Music Masterclass the end of May with a showcase of young talent. Previous winners include Thomas Adès, Tom Poster and Annabel Thwaite, and the standard of this year’s Friday 21 May • 10am competition promises to be as exceptional as ever. Gareth Davies Flute Masterclass Albert Herring 9 –16 June Monday 24 May • 10am Edith Wiens Britten’s brilliantly witty and successful comic opera is far more than a cosy Voice Masterclass picture of a vanished way of life in rural Suffolk. Monday 24 May • 10am & 2pm Emma Kirkby Curtains Voice Masterclass 6 – 14 July Monday 24 May • 3pm Curtains is a spoof murder mystery set in Boston, Massachusetts, during the late Håkan Hardenberger 1950s. Curtains was the last musical written by Kander and Ebb. Their skilful Trumpet Masterclass and tuneful score includes the beautiful and moving “I Miss the Music”. Friday 28 May • 10am Summer Gala performance Isabelle Perrin Harp Masterclass 13 July Celebrate the end of the School’s artistic year in style at the Guildhall Admission Free School Summer Gala on Tuesday 13 July. Guests are invited to a drinks reception and supper in the beautiful surroundings of the Barbican’s For dates and further details see Conservatory and Garden Room, followed by a performance of Curtains. www.gsmd.ac.uk/events . For further information about any Guildhall School event, please go to www.gsmd.ac.uk/events 2 GUILDHALL SCHOOL NEWS • SPRING / SUMMER 2010 Contents Editorial FEATURES NEWS Welcome to the Spring/Summer 6 It’s all work in 4 Centre for Young issue of Guildhall School News. progress! Musicians Two jazz students talk The newest member of about their courses and the Guildhall family In this issue we look at the planned Makeover their hopes for the future 5 Getting it Right? for the Technical Theatre Programme in 8 Technical Theatre Guildhall hosts more detail; Irene Serra and Joshua Jaswon talk Makeover contemporary music Introducing the BA(Hons) conference about life as students in the Jazz Department; Technical Theatre Arts the new artistic director of Sheffield Theatres, 10 Dramatis personae Three important new Daniel Evans, tells us about the new direction staff appointments his career has taken and how his Guildhall 13 The Guildhall training has helped him in his new role; and 1880 Society Professor Barry Ife talks to Iain Burnside 26 Obituaries about the learning processes involved in ALUMNI PAGES creating a ‘show’ like Lads in their Hundreds. 20 Welcome back! In the Alumni Pages we welcome back several 11 Drumroll please Junior Guildhall alumni who have visited the School in recent percussion successes months to share their experiences both at the 14 Taking a new direction School and in their careers. They also include Daniel Evans on his latest role our regular Over To You and Class Notes sections along with a report of a recent reunion and dates for Reunions that are coming up. 21 o Over T You Messages from our alumni For more regular news and information from 24 Reunions the School you can sign up to the Alumni Ezine Recent and Coming Up by emailing [email protected], become a Facebook Fan or follow us on Twitter (see p.17 for details)! 18 Putting on a show Iain Burnside talks to Barry Ife about creating Lads in If you have something that you would like us their Hundreds 24 Class Notes to include in the next issue, Autumn/Winter Alumni news 2010, email your news (and pictures please) to us at [email protected] by 18 June 2010. Best wishes, Editorial Group Rachel Dyson (Editor), Alumni Relations Manager Deborah MacCallum, Director of Corporate & Student Affairs Rachel Dyson Editor Jo Hutchinson, Marketing & Communications Manager Duncan Barker, Head of Development Phylip Harries & Richard Grosse, Falconbury Ltd Contact: [email protected] The Guildhall School (Please note, we cannot of Music & Drama is guarantee to include everything provided by the City of that we receive and we reserve the right to edit submissions.) London Corporation 3 GUILDHALL SCHOOL NEWS • SPRING / SUMMER 2010 News Centre for Young Musicians and the London Schools Symphony Orchestra join the Guildhall School Last September everyone at the School was in a state of high excitement when, after much negotiation between Westminster City Facts & Figures about Council and the City of London Corporation, the Centre for Young Centre for Young Musicians Musicians became a division of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. • Known as CYM – founded by ILEA in 1970 Why, might you ask, should a School that already has one thriving as inner London’s instrumental/vocal centre Junior Department, want to acquire another? for the talented from state schools and from The answer lies in the potential of combining the junior provision socially deprived backgrounds at the School with the resources of the LINK Alliance (the Barbican • Comprises Saturday Centre (430 students Centre, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Guildhall School aged 7–19) and Holiday Courses including of Music & Drama). This combination of organisations and their the London Schools Symphony Orchestra, resources offer us an opportunity to create and develop an incredibly the London Youth Wind Band, Open Access powerful network of pan-London organisations delivering end to courses and GCSE level support (300 end provision and life long learning. The major outcome will be a students aged 7–19) sustained, structured and targeted range of opportunities for students embracing the grass root novice, through the advanced performer, • Includes 13 affiliated Junior Centres across to the life long learner. I believe that the level of expertise and quality the capital that is made possible when all these resources come together will • 33% of students come from economically give us a provision unique in the world. disadvantaged backgrounds Why wouldn’t we be excited? • 40% come from minority communities • 87% come from the State Sector v Jonathan Vaughan director of Music • Main Centre and Junior Centres have created some 25,000 training places since 1990 CENTRE FOR YOUNG MUSICIANS • CYM’s overriding mission is that access is through talent, not the means to pay a division of the Guildhall School Guildhall Reaches Out Across the Seas The Guildhall School continues to seek out the best talent from across the UK and around the world. This year senior staff from the Drama department travelled to Los Angeles to hold auditions before heading on to New York, where they were joined by the Principal and key Music staff. In total 102 applicants were seen in North America. We are very grateful to Steinway Hall for giving us the use of their excellent facilities for our music auditions. Whilst in New York the panel members also played host to the Annual New York Alumni Reunion at Metro 53 (see p23 for pictures). Plans are now afoot to send a group of senior professors and students from the Music department to China this autumn. They will travel as part of the delegation from the Lord Mayor’s Office and visit top conservatoires. 4 GUILDHALL SCHOOL NEWS • SPRING / SUMMER 2010 a little Knight Music including Followers, which was staged of electric guitars, saxophones and in 2007, and a one act chamber opera, drums to the orchestra, while the The Yellow Sofa, premiered in August mystical ethereal world of Myrtle 2009, written for the Jerwood Chorus (Merlin) emerges from more traditional Development Scheme. orchestration. His latest piece for Glyndebourne is As Guy Dammann wrote in The Knight Crew, a youth opera for 14 – Guardian, Julian’s score takes full 19 year olds. A reworking of the King advantage of the project’s mixed cast, Arthur legend in a contemporary city using both “popular and operatic lyric gangland setting, it was performed on idioms in a way that allows seamless the main stage in March 2010 by a cast interaction between professional made up of six professional singers and soloists and chorus. Indeed, part of the Julian Philips, Joint Head of 60 young people from the local area. magic of the music […] is that it allows Composition at the Guildhall School, Julian has described the music as gritty influence to flow from innocence to has also been Composer-in-Residence and magical to represent the different experience as well as vice versa, adding at Glyndebourne Opera since 2007. worlds of the piece: the concrete inner a quality to the solo performances […] In the course of his residency, he has city estate that Art (Arthur) lives on that would have been lacking with a created new works for the chorus is brought to life with the addition more experienced supporting cast.” Getting It Right? Performance practices in contemporary music Julian Anderson, Composer in Residence and Professor of Helmut Lachenmann begins the day with a Keynote speech Composition at the Guildhall School, brings together some (Extended Techniques), then is joined by David Alberman leading lights of contemporary music on Tuesday 27 April and Rolf Hind for a round-table discussion, chaired by for an exploration of performance practice in new music Julian Philips.