THE POWER OF MUSIC Annual Review 2020/21 www.stmarysmusicschool.co.uk
ST M ARY ’ S M USIC SCHO OL
Annual Review 2020/21
CREATING A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS Dr Kenneth Taylor, Headteacher “The second school closure over the second term of the 2020/21 academic year was, in many ways, tougher than the first closure during the third term of 2019/20. Mundane as it might sound, just keeping people engaged – our pupils, their parents, our staff – was a major achievement. In the second term we’re in the thick of academic teaching; so, as well as supporting our pupils to stay focused on their work, we also made sure they were coping with the challenges of the pandemic too. We absolutely achieved that.
Our ambition to deliver music workshops in and around Scotland, providing specialist music education to a wider community, was launched online with 256 people watching three excellent flute broadcasts by Lis Dooner; a further 136 tuned into Rachel Brady’s French horn workshop and Helena Buckmayer’s two piano workshops. A combination of pre-recorded video and live action via webinar resulted in an exciting and authentic presentation, happening in real time, which we replicated for our Open Days.
Being together in a classroom, even if it’s a virtual classroom, is important, so we had plenary sessions – using Zoom or Teams – where teachers addressed the class as a whole, whenever possible. Sharing a classroom is about more than receiving instruction, handing in work and getting it marked – it’s about creating a community of learners.
Recording and pre-recording became solutions too for the premier of Theory of the Earth, the first performance in our Seven Hills Project, and also for this year’s Directors Recital Prize, won by S6 cellist, Layla. In June 2020, this recital competition was recorded in Glasgow, under the tightest restrictions imaginable, but by June 2021 we were back in the Cathedral – without an audience but with the confidence and experience to livestream and give both performers and audience that essential quality of immediacy.
The demands to be innovative and flexible in our music making, while restrictions were in place, resulted in incredible creativity. Thanks to our Artistic Director, Will Conway, and his international network of connections, our in-person Masterclasses were reimagined as the online Celebrity 6 series, which saw 17 international musicians engage with our pupils and other youngsters with a passion for music, in the space of just one school year. We will reinstate the Nigel Murray and Edinburgh Masterclasses, in person, when we can, but we will continue with this new format too. Engaging and insightful conversations with musicians, led by pupils and teachers, add a whole new dimension to the music education we can offer. Just because a musician is based in Norway doesn’t prevent them chatting to us for an hour!
Finally, I must pay tribute to the ingenuity of the Sideby-Side competition, conceived by Paul Stubbings, Director of Music, who turned the challenge of being stuck at home into an opportunity for creative collaboration, with brilliant results. Music is the ability of humans to speak to one another, without words, and to share our humanity. Coming out of lockdown, I think music education is more important than it’s ever been. The things we used to take for granted – the ability to give a concert, to play music together, to have a lesson in the same room as a teacher – were all taken away. What ultimately remains is that the most exciting thing about music making is being in a room together and having that shared experience. We will never take it for granted again.”
“Our pupils – and, in particular, Eve, our Pupil Head of School – have been outstanding in their resilience and have looked for projects to keep spirits up ranging from physical challenges to important health and wellbeing initiatives. This has been a year in which the whole school community has been looking out for each other.”
CONTENTS 1. MAKING A MUSICAL NATION | John Wallace CBE, School President 2. FROM CELEBRITY 6 TO CELEBRITY 17 | Will Conway, Artistic Director 4. AT A GLANCE | Highlights of 2020/21 6. THEORY OF THE EARTH | Jay Capperauld, Composer 7. A SPACE FOR CRITICAL REFLECTION | Dr Kathryn Jourdan, Teacher of Academic Music 8. GOING SOLO WITH STYLE | Aaron Akugbo, Professional Trumpet Player 9. OUR FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE | Income, expenditure and fee funding for 2020/21
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S T MAR Y ’S M U S I C S C H OOL
Annual Review 2020/21
MAKING A MUSICAL NATION John Wallace CBE, School President Professor John Wallace CBE has been President of St Mary’s Music School since 2001. From 2002 until 2014 he was Principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and since then, among many other positions, he has been Chair of the Music Education Partnership Group (MEPG) – the key influencers in the Scottish Government’s recent decision to abolish instrumental tuition fees for schoolchildren in Scotland. John was awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music in the 2021 Honours’ List. “Becoming President of St Mary’s Music School is one of the greatest privileges of my life. I was asked, following Yehudi Menuhin’s death, just as I became Principal of the Conservatoire, so it felt as if I was part of an effort to join west and east together in a common musical purpose.
In removing barriers to accessing music education, we’re going to have to be inventive to meet increased demand for participation – but what a great challenge! When fees were removed in Dundee for example, participation rose to 20% and it’s already more than that in Shetland and the Western Isles. So, we will need more choirs, more orchestras and more music making in larger groups, which is why working with third sector partners will be a critical way to expand capacity. In addition to St Mary’s Music School, Scotland has four centres of excellence for music and I’d like to see them all reaching out to primary schools, showing very young children that music is fun, and that playing can become part of who they are.
Over the years, I’ve come in and played with and talked to the pupils, and I’ve attended events, but what I really hope to provide is inspiration. I think it helps students to see that if it’s possible for someone like me, from humble beginnings in Scotland, to make an international career in music, then it’s possible for them too. I started off playing in a brass band when I was seven and ended up having concertos written for me by Peter Maxwell Davies, James MacMillan and Malcolm Arnold.
“Music is one of the profound healing agents of society. It inspires your thoughts, gets your endorphins racing, sends shivers down your spine and helps you to be more human. Every creative person I know has undertaken projects during lockdown that they didn’t have time to do before, so there’s a tsunami of creativity ahead – we’re going into the roaring twenties and it’s going to be chaotically vibrant!”
“Music is just a route to being human – one of the many things that makes us tick. But I feel we need to do a Chris Packham. He wants to re-wild Britain and I want to re-music Scotland.” When MEPG asked me to become their Chair, I saw a massive job ahead because the education system in Scotland, like any other country, is very complex and music education particularly so. But Scotland has a very special place in the musical firmament, emerging – as many countries have – from a great tradition of folk music and we’ve been super collegiate in our approach. We’ve forged partnerships with schools and third sector groups, because I don’t think schools can do this on their own, and now we have all these important people like NYCOS, NYOS, Sistema Scotland, TRACS, Drake and the Benedetti Foundation involved. We’re developing a strategy to change perceptions of music and highlight its intrinsic importance to young people, and to their health and wellbeing, mentally as well as physically. However, to truly embed equality in music education, removing tuition fees is essential… but that’s a big, brave pill to swallow. We developed a fantastic relationship with John Swinney and Fiona Hyslop and, during lockdown, we pitched our Music for Scotland manifesto to all the political parties and had it adopted. That drove through three key changes: the abolition of fees for instrumental teaching; the opportunity for instrumental teachers to be GTCS registered; and the establishment of the ‘We Make Music’ platform for schools across Scotland.
Looking to the future of music in Scotland, I look at Calton Hill and see this fantastic opportunity for a national centre to irrigate the whole country, drawing it in through great partnerships. It could be world leading and it’s now within our grasp. It’s taken 20 years to get here and we’ll need to work hard for the next 20 years to get established. By 2040, I hope we’ll have a bigger music industry than London. That’s the dream.”
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ST M ARY ’ S M USIC SCHO OL
Annual Review 2020/21
FROM CELEBRITY 6 TO CELEBRITY 17 Will Conway, Artistic Director A founding member of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (and 40 years on, still its principal cellist), past principal cellist of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and current Artistic Director of the Hebrides Ensemble among many, many other professional responsibilities, Will Conway joined St Mary’s Music School in 2007 as Head of Strings. Today he is the School’s Artistic Director and the driving force behind the inspired genesis of the Celebrity 6 series, which saw 17 of the world’s most important international professional musicians engage directly with pupils during lockdown. Q: How does the role of Artistic Director contribute to the vision of St Mary’s Music School?
Q: Celebrity 6 is a triumph inspired by the adversity of lockdown. Where did the idea come from?
My role as Artistic Director is to listen to opinions, to lead on ideas, and to identify people who I know will bring something very special to the school. I have always been mindful that while we are a small school in Edinburgh, we are also a national music school, sending our pupils on to establishments throughout the UK and beyond. Other specialist music schools benefit from being further south, closer to London, where there is more access to a wider range of musicians, so we need to get those people to come to us. I’ve made it my responsibility to engage with heads of academies and conservatoires around the country; that, and my work with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe and international contacts I’ve made there, have helped me to identify players who can come to us and lead our Nigel Murray and Edinburgh Masterclasses.
When lockdown happened, there was an amazing response from the School. The collective energy, the creative solutions, the Zoom lessons, the recorded assemblies, the aural work and the fun quizzes all performed an incredibly important, galvanizing role. Paul Stubbings and I discussed how we could continue to deliver our Masterclasses series, John Cameron came on board with great ideas, and together we came up with an online solution using a combination of YouTube recordings and live Zoom. We had eminent musicians from all over the world stuck at home, not able to perform, and a whole term of online provision to create for our pupils. Six events spread throughout that first term seemed to fit and that’s why we called it Celebrity 6.
“Our public Nigel Murray and Edinburgh Masterclasses are only possible through the generosity of enlightened philanthropy – we can have the best ideas in the world but without philanthropy we can’t make them happen. The funding provided for the public masterclasses has allowed us to invite people like Steven Osborne, Renaud Capuçon, Nicola Benedetti and Nicolas Altstaedt to come to the school.”
I looked for people who represented the instruments and disciplines offered by the School and I used my connections, people I’d met or played with in my own professional career, through which to contact and invite these people. I also spoke to our own tutors and teachers and students and asked for their wish lists for instrumentalists and genres too. In the first series we had Tommy Smith – an entirely natural jazz choice for Scotland – and by the third series, at Eve’s suggestion, we had Arve Henriksen, the Norwegian trumpeter. I wanted to make Celebrity 6 as inclusive and collaborative as possible and that’s been an important part of its success. I’m spearheading it and using my own contacts but lots of people have contributed to this.
Q: How did you go about selecting the celebrities?
Q: Did the format changed at all over the three terms? Yes. To start with, it was about delivering a mini masterclass over a digital platform. It was straightforward for our guests - an hour of their time for the actual session plus a little prep time to review pupil recordings I’d sent in advance. But after the first term, we began to develop the idea of asking people to talk about their career in music and how it was being affected by the pandemic, so it became less about masterclasses and more about giving vision to our pupils.
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“As teachers and coaches, we’ve gone down the musical path already; we know where it leads and we know what’s in store for our pupils. Even the ones who don’t plan on being professional musicians will always have music as a big part of their lives and we’re offering a vision to them and a focus. Specialist music schools such as ours offer a huge breadth and depth of teaching and by inviting people to come into the school and work with our pupils, or inspire them with programmes of music, we’re creating an overarching education in music and performing and I think that’s the greatest thing we can do.”
Q: What do you think the impact of Celebrity 6 has been – and what will be its legacy? Although it will never entirely replace face-to-face, using a digital platform gave us scope to reach people that otherwise we couldn’t have had in school. It’s been so exciting for our young musicians to have these incredible soloists talking directly to them from wherever they are in the world – Manuel Barrueco was in the US, Gautier Capuçon was in France, Sarah Willis was in Berlin as was Tabea Zimmermann – but they’re connected and sharing their thoughts, right at that very minute, not presenting something written ten years ago. Those sessions were fantastic in terms of our own students understanding what their musical idols were doing, how they were spending their time practicing, what new repertoire they were discovering. Rachel Podger on Baroque music, for example, was fantastic and we’ve now got on record a little session on the way to think and play in a Baroque style - that’s an incredibly valuable piece of teaching material. People had unusual and interesting things to say, suggestions about where we’re going as musicians, how performance could be happening in the future.
Q: What’s next? Now that we’re back in the building, we’ll be returning to our Nigel Murray and Edinburgh Masterclasses but we’re running a new Celebrity 6 series too, this time called Creative Thinkers. It’s less about holding masterclasses and more about bringing in people who are instrumentalists… and more. So, our first session was with Pekka Kuusisto, the Finnish violinist who is a real polymath, and I’m dreaming up the names I want for the rest of the year – people from all areas of professional music – I need to carefully pick people who won’t just talk about performing but will offer big visions for the music world.
By the end of the year we’d had 17 of the world’s top international professional musicians in our school, on our screens, teaching our pupils and offering valuable insight into their characters, their aspirations. Together, all of those artists gave us so much to think about, from an insight into the microscopic detail of self-analysis and reflection required to perform and write music well, to their grand visions, their technical brilliance and the inspiration they bring to us all. It’s shown the confidence and ambition of the School and it was a fantastic thing for us to be doing.
17 WORLD-CLASS MUSICIANS TERM 1 Angela Hewitt – pianist | Gautier Capuçon – cellist | Rachel Podger – violinist | Lorenza Borrani – violinist Tommy Smith – jazz improvisationist | Lorna McGhee – flautist TERM 2 Sarah Willis – French horn player, broadcaster and musical educator | Steven Isserlis – cellist Zoë Beyers – violinist and Leader of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra | Malcolm Martineau - piano accompanist Tabea Zimmermann - violist TERM 3 Arve Henriksen - trumpeter and composer | Stephen Hough - pianist, composer and writer Manuel Barrueco – classical guitarist | Sir Antonio Pappano – Music Director of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome Judith Weir – composer and Master of the Queen’s Music | Alina Ibragimova – violinist
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ST M ARY ’ S M USIC SCHO OL
Annual Review 2020/21
AT A GLANCE Highlights of 2020/21 SCHOOL ROLL 2020/21
EXAM RESULTS 2020/21
100% pass rate
69 pupils (41 day pupils and 28 boarders)
• Senior instrumentalists 44
• Junior instrumentalists 8
• Senior choristers
6
• Junior choristers
11
across all exams SQA National 5
89% at A SQA Higher
88% at A SQA Advanced Higher
PUPIL ORIGINS 2020/21
Scotland (59)
Edinburgh 39 | East Lothian 4
Fife 3 | Midlothian 3 | Argyll & Bute 2
Aberdeen 1 | Dumfries & Galloway 1
Dundee 1 | Glasgow 1
Highlands & Islands 1
Perth & Kinross 1 | Stirlingshire 1
West Lothian 1
85% at A Cambridge PreU Music
100% at distinction Cambridge iGCSE Music
100% at ‘A*’ equivalent – grade 9
England (2) Overseas (8)
Art & Design | Biology | Chemistry | English | ESOL
INSTRUMENTAL & MUSIC TEACHING
French | Geography | History | Italian | Latin
Piano (Classical, Jazz) | Violin (Classical, Baroque, Jazz)
Mathematics | Music | PE | Physics | RME | Spanish
Viola | Cello | Double Bass | Recorder | Flute | Clarinet
SUBJECT TEACHING
Bassoon | Trumpet | French Horn | Trombone Saxophone (Classical, Jazz) | Percussion | Harp
SCHOOL CLUBS
Clarsach | Accordion (Classical, Traditional)
Book Club | Debating Group | Eco-Craft Group
Guitar (Classical) | Organ | Harpsichord | Composition
Eco-Schools Club | Gardening Club | Mental Wellbeing
Alexander Technique | Voice (Classical)
Group | Physical Challenges | Running Club Science Club | Scottish Mathematical Challenge | Yoga
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S T MAR Y ’S M U S I C S C H OOL
Annual Review 2020/21
LEAVERS’ DESTINATIONS 2020/21
Scotland
University of Edinburgh (English Literature)
University of Edinburgh (English and Philosophy)
Royal College of Music, London (Cello)
University of Bristol (English, deferred place)
Somerville College, University of Oxford (Music)
Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge (Music)
Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Jazz/Piano)
Amsterdam Conservatory, Netherlands (Piano)
England
Overseas
PERFORMING, LISTENING & LEARNING IN 2020/21 Restrictions due to the pandemic saw most of our usual activity suspended - live concerts, live audiences, live events - but we still managed to deliver an impressive number of music experiences for our own pupils and young musicians from other schools too.
Our pupils played in and were peer mentors in
14 ONLINE SCO ACADEMY SUNDAY CLASSES.
We delivered 17 CELEBRITY 6 ON LINE SESSIONS on Friday afternoons over three terms. Over 100 CHILDREN ENJOYED SATURDAY MUSIC CLASSES, running online throughout the year. Our free Term 2 Friday afternoon ONLINE ZOOM-TUNES led by Libby Crabtree saw up to 20 CHILDREN singing each week. Our FLUTE, FRENCH HORN, PIANO AND CELLO ONLINE WORKSHOPS attracted 392 participants.
903 PEOPLE registered to watch our three end-of-term online concerts and 188 PEOPLE registered for our two Saturday Music Class Concerts.
We have had 492 VIEWS OF THEORY OF THE EARTH (the inaugural
Seven Hills Project performance), 249 VIEWS of the 2020 DIRECTORS’
RECITAL PRIZE HIGHLIGHTS and 1013 VIEWS OF THE 2020 CHRISTMAS CONCERT.
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ST M ARY ’ S M USIC SCHO OL
Annual Review 2020/21
THEORY OF THE EARTH Jay Capperauld, Composer St Mary’s Music School’s ‘New Music’ project, led by Dr Valerie Pearson, celebrates composition, creativity and community using the topography of the Seven Hills of Edinburgh as inspiration. Jay Capperauld shares his thoughts on the creative process behind the first first Seven Hills Project composition, Theory of the Earth, which premiered in June 2021. “It’s a privilege to be involved in this project which offers a huge range of benefits for young people and wider communities. Through Seven Hills workshops, we’ll go on to introduce the young musicians of St Mary’s Music School to Higher and Advanced Higher Music pupils in schools right across Scotland, creating greater access to high quality music making and high quality composition experience.”
Part of the concept for Theory of the Earth is driven by Hutton’s findings, a really important aspect as the process of decay is reflected in the very design of the composition. I wanted to write a piece where we can literally hear the Earth’s primordial processes, that renewal and decay present in these elemental, embryonic musical ideas as they’re built up in layers, much in the same way as rock formations are built up.The music didn’t have to lend itself to material that was going to be incredibly difficult to play because I wanted it to be so fragmentary that any instrument or any musician would be able to approach it.
“I was really drawn to Alexander McCall Smith’s poem Arthur’s Seat and Geology, primarily because of its highly evocative imagery and the descriptions of Arthur’s Seat and its mythology. I could immediately imagine a musical landscape. I tend to approach composition with ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ on the one hand - essentially the pragmatics and practicalities of who is playing what on which instruments and how that all comes together to form the piece – and with ‘whys’ on the other hand. To me, the whys are much more exciting because they relate to the artistry of the composition. What I mean by that is you can ask questions around why an instrument is acting in a certain way and why does that then relate to the concept of the music. I find those questions exciting as a composer because they open us up to ask bigger questions… and that brings me on to James Hutton, who’s regarded as the founder of modern geology.
The initial line up of instruments was percussion, piano, wind and brass. However, as writing during the pandemic meant that wind and other breathing instruments couldn’t be included, I changed the scoring to percussion, piano and string quartet instead. As restrictions ease, I’m planning to add flutes and oboes, clarinet and bassoons into the mix. I wanted to create a score that was going to be instantly accessible and playable by a wide variety of musicians so that anyone could be involved. Essentially, it’s an open score.”
Alexander refers to Hutton in his poem and to the important discoveries that he made on Arthur’s Seat. Hutton was a man who was in search of the answers to the big questions - why are we here and how did we get to this point in time? What Hutton did was to analyse rock formations (a section of rock on Arthur’s Seat is known as Hutton’s Section) and from the results of this work he put forward the idea that the Earth was made up through a continual process of renewal and decay that happened over millions of years. At the time, it was a controversial doctrine that unseated long held religious notions about how the earth was created and how old it was. And so you’ve got Alexander’s poem, you’ve got Arthur’s Seat itself and you’ve got James Hutton’s findings. How do I put all of that into music?
To watch a short film and the premiere performance of Theory of the Earth, please visit St Mary’s Music School’s YouTube channel and open up the Sounds of Summer 2021 Playlist.
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S T MAR Y ’S M U S I C S C H OOL
Annual Review 2020/21
A SPACE FOR CRITICAL REFLECTION Dr Kathryn Jourdan, Teacher of Academic Music Academic Music is a compulsory, curriculum subject for pupils from S3 to S6, who study history and contextual analysis under Dr Kathryn Jourdan, a professional violist with a PhD in the Philosophy of Music Education. Here, they find a space in which to explore the often complex relationships between music and history, individuals and communities. The engagement of senior pupils has given rise to the recent establishment of an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) working group to explore and challenge narratives around these issues, in a musical context. “The pandemic broke open the question of what it means to be a musician. How do you help students prepare for a career in music against a backdrop of performers being advised by the UK government to retrain, and the wider profession experiencing a sharing of foundations?”
“Academic Music here comprises my own classes along with those of Paul Stubbings, composition taught by Tom Wilson, harmony by Dr Bob Marshall and the A-level jazz component by Andrew Robb. I feel that ‘Academic Music’ is a challenging title, setting up a false division between these classes and playing and performing. It’s all connected. The aural classes every morning, the work of vocal and instrumental teachers, the ensemble and pedagogy teachers, and the performance coaches –everyone’s involved in preparing pupils for the outcomes of Academic Music.
It’s always interesting – and rewarding – to see what happens as pupils move from S5 to S6; sometimes those who have previously focused exclusively on their instrument find a rich new context for their music making. During the second school closure, the whole S6 class was reflecting on – and questioning – their future as musicians. Two of our pupils from that period – Ben and Lachlan – are now reading Music at Oxford and Cambridge respectively, rather than pursuing the Conservatoire route. Eve, Pupil Head of School in 2020/21, was the instigator of our EDI working group which is beginning to raise challenging issues that St Mary’s Music School, along with all other musical institutions, must think through. This includes breaking down barriers and representing an inclusive vision for music making, addressing gender inequality, and exploring the relationship between music making and the environment. What’s fantastic is that our former pupils are providing a precious resource, giving us the tools to think about our practices now and how the School can move forward in nurturing hospitable and open young musicians.
We’re nurturing young people with an expectation of becoming professional musicians for the rest of their lives, so my aim is to make their engagement with Academic Music richer than the requirements of the GCSE Music examinations, for instance. It’s about being curious, developing critical awareness and an ethical orientation as a musician. Pupils in S3 and S4 start with the Medieval period, 12th century Paris and Notre Dame, the move from plainsong to polyphony; really the unfolding of western art music. In recent years, with the Pre-U syllabus for S5 and S6, our scope has been wider; a component on nationalism allowed us to explore critical issues to do with identity, place, and how we live with difference as musicians. Last year, that created space to process, in a musical context, what was happening with Scottish nationalism, Brexit and the wider European and North American political situations. We questioned what we understand by nationalism, how we served our communities and what our ethical responsibilities are as musicians. This really allowed pupils to grapple with issues they will face as they progress through their musical careers.
Coming out of lockdown it’s hard to overstate the joy of playing and performing together again. There is a power in music that’s bound up in repertoire as well as performance. Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 5 for instance, written during WWII, was performed by Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra for the reduced 2020 BBC Proms. It was played to an empty hall but was chosen to express what Simon felt the nation needed to hear in the midst of the pandemic – a kind of healing balm.”
“We need to know how we understand our tradition of western classical music; how we talk about it to the world and how we make our position understood. And we need to nurture young musicians to develop the skills, critical faculties and ethical orientation to be able to engage with other people’s music, and to have a healthy outlook, attitude and sense of responsibility towards other musical traditions which might be quite distant from their own.”
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ST M ARY ’ S M USIC SCHO OL
Annual Review 2020/21
GOING SOLO WITH STYLE Aaron Akugbo, Professional Trumpet Player Aaron joined St Mary’s Music School in P5 as a chorister, becoming an instrumentalist in S2. An ex-principal of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, he graduated from the Royal Academy of Music last summer and is currently trialing with a number of orchestras as well as playing with Connaught Brass, the quintet he set up. Signed up as a solo artist by Sulivan Sweetland Management, he is being hailed by them as ‘a future leading exponent of his instrument’. “For my final recital, Will Fielding, who was a pianist/organist at St Mary’s Music School and Hugh MacKay, who was a cellist, played with me. It was live streamed during lockdown so people in my year at school watched and loved seeing this reunion. And that’s a massive thing about going to a school like St Mary’s – we all get better as musicians and we meet again, three or four years down the line, and play together again. That’s really special.” For GSCE and A-level music, St Mary’s doesn’t just stick to the syllabus but encourages pupils to find interesting connections between, for example, the set pieces and three or four other pieces. We would look at different aspects - technical, performance, historical, social to end up with a well-rounded understanding. So, when we analysed pieces of music at the Academy, I felt my experience at school put me ahead. I’m not the most academic person but I knew far more than I thought. At another school you might also do GCSE and A-level Music, but at St Mary’s it’s the ear training, harmony classes, music history, music analysis – all those extra categories – that make the difference.
Q: What do you remember most about your time at St Mary’s Music School? I’d say that the chorister years set me up in the best possible way for what I do now. The amount of music we had to learn, the quick turnaround, the sight reading, the ear training… today, if I sit in an orchestra to play music I haven’t seen before, it’s easy - I’ve been doing this since I was 8 years old. I did four rather than five years as a chorister because my voice broke in S1. We’d come down to London to do a service at St Paul’s Cathedral and I was singing Haec Deum Celi by Tarik O’Regan. There’s a slow scale that moves up to top A and my voice petered out until it was just air. I was so upset! But I auditioned for an instrumental place for trumpet and got in. The brass department was pretty big then – trumpets, trombones, euphonium, French horn – it was so exciting and I got to play lots of music I’d never played before.
Q: And what’s next? A lot of trumpet vacancies came up during my 3rd and 4th year at the Academy. My first audition was Principal Trumpet for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and I did three trial concerts with them which meant that other orchestras saw me working professionally. Now, I’m trialing for principal positions with the Philarmonia Orchestra and English National Opera; for co-principal trumpet with the BBC Philharmonic and second trumpet with the London Symphony Orchestra; and I’m freelancing with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Sinfonia of London and Royal Philharmonic too. When you trial, you could be one of 20 people going for one position so you just have to focus on your own playing, work well with the rest of the orchestra and do your best.
Q: How did you find the transition from specialist music school to music college? When I auditioned for the Academy, I played the first movement of Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto, and scales and sight reading of course, but I also had to play in front of everyone else who was auditioning. Some people found that really daunting but I was OK because I’d had so much experience of performance at school. In reality, the whole format of aural training in the morning, technical assessment, lunchtime concerts and performance classes really helped with both the audition process and being a student. Part of my audition was writing an essay about how I would plan a concert. Because of the variety of instruments at School and the vast repertoire we all knew from hearing each other play, I could put together pieces I’d played, and pieces I’d heard other people play or sing, to create a programme.
It’s amazing to be doing this. I also got the opportunity to play with Chineke! in London, Europe’s first BAME orchestra, and was signed up by Sulivan Sweetland as a result – they’d also seen some videos I made of myself during lockdown, playing ragtime. So now I have an agent – and that’s pretty grown up isn’t it?
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S T MAR Y ’S M U S I C S C H OOL
Annual Review 2020/21
OUR FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE Summary financial report for 2020/21 Figures in tables are expressed in £000
INCOME SUMMARY 2020/21
• School fees and other charitable activities
£ 1,850
72%
• Donations and legacies
£
527
21%
• Grant from Scottish Government for COVID expenses
£
77
3%
• CJRS (Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme) Grant
£
58
2%
• Trading activities
£
26
1%
• Interest from investments
£
15
1%
Total
£ 2,553
Scottish Government Aided Place Scheme support of around £1.37million was received. Donations of £527,000 were received from over 200 donors, trusts and foundations, reflecting support for the Seven Hills Project. The lockdown in Term 2 caused a reduction in income from boarding fees.
EXPENDITURE SUMMARY 2020/21
• Teaching Costs
£ 1,380
55%
• Operational costs
£
851
34%
• Boarding costs
£
257
10%
• Professional costs
£
8
Total
£ 2,496
1%
Income losses during lockdown were balanced by tight control of operational costs over the school closure period. A total of 17 Celebrity 6 online masterclasses and conversations, funded through donor support, took place. Not included in the figures above, the Steinway School project continued with the purchase of two further Boston
Upright Pianos.
SCHOOL FEE FUNDING
• Scottish Government Aided Places Scheme
£ 1,358
71%
• Affordable contribution from parents and guardians
£
392
20%
• Financial assistance and subsidies
£
95
5%
• St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral Choral Scholarship Foundation
£
68
4%
Total
£ 1,913
12% of pupils received full fee support, with 10% of pupils receiving assistance with travel, uniform and meal costs. Donations to the Bursary Fund, received from 13 donors and trusts, helped to support scholarships for 10 pupils.
9
THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR MUSIC In October 2021, the City of Edinburgh Council formally accepted the Royal High School Preservation Trust’s proposals for the restoration of the Thomas Hamilton building on Calton Hill as a world-class centre for music education and public performance, for the benefit of the whole of Scotland. Submitted in response to the Council’s search for a sustainable, long-term use for the old Royal High School building, the Trust’s ambitions have evolved over time into a plan for a new National Centre for Music with clearly defined spaces for classical music education, community access, and engagement and performance. St Mary’s Music School is at the heart of this plan, which brings together a network of partner organisations including the School, the Benedetti Foundation and IMPACT (International Music and Performing Arts Charitable Trust) Scotland, with a shared vision of creating a new platform for musical collaborations both within the building, online and out in the wider community. Backed by an expanded gift from philanthropist Carol Colburn Grigor and Dunard Fund, totalling £55m to cover capital costs and support future maintenance of the building, the proposals were tested for economic sustainability by BOP Consulting who predict that the project will contribute nearly £100m to the Edinburgh economy over a 30 year period. Please visit www.rhspt.org for further information and updates and to download the full proposal.
OUR BOARD Jo Elliot (Chair), Fiona Akers (appointed November 2020), Jo Buckley, Graham Burnside, John Conway, James Cook (retired December 2020), Sarah Davidson, Kat Heathcote, Alistair Hector, Jamie Munn, John Reid and Neil Short (retired December 2020). St Mary’s Music School Trust Limited is a charity, number SC014611. Registered in Scotland, number 54504. Registered office: Coates Hall, 25 Grosvenor Crescent, Edinburgh EH12 5EL All images and text © St Mary’s Music School 2021 unless otherwise stated. Design by IL Design | Words by Allison Traynor | Photography by Tina Norris, Olivia Da Costa and Euan Robertson.
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