On Sunday 16 November, a large gathering of family and friends came together at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens to celebrate the life of Delia Ruhm who died in September at the age of 89. Delia was a much-admired flautist whose early career included playing for the Boyd Neel Orchestra, Chelsea Opera Group (under Colin Davis),
It was a real pleasure to return to Budapest on 13 – 15 November for the AEC Congress. In uncommonly mild weather, the city was looking beautiful as was the newly refurbished Frans Liszt Academy. We were hosted most generously by Andrea Vigh, Beáta Furka and former President and AEC Council member, András Batta. The
Looking back over the past thirty years of working in three conservatoires (Royal Academy of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire and Codarts Rotterdam) I get much pleasure from thinking about the influence that composition and new music has had on these institutions in this time. The exceptional series of composer concerts that Paul Patterson organised for the
This week is the autumn Project Week at Codarts, a time when the normal curriculum in the Bachelor is suspended to allow for other activities to be pursued. There are two Project Weeks each year and the first is generally carried out within each department, whilst the spring Project Week is managed across all departments. In Codarts Classical Music we have designed these autumn weeks to explore issues of professional development and entrepreneurship. In the past four years our themes have been:
2011 Personal development and entrepreneurship
Beginning with an inspirational address from Dame Janet Ritterman, former Director of The Royal College of Music, the week held a series of instrumental and vocal workshops that looked at opportunities for individual specialisation. General workshops on entrepreneurship and orchestral playing were also presented by Neil Wallace (Programme Director, De Doelen), Henk Swinnen (Artistic Manager, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra) and other speakers. Each day began with physical warm-up exercises taken by Robert Hlatky and a choir rehearsal with Wiecher Mandemaker which resulted in a sing-through of Fauré’s Requiem.