Performance
The Music Faculty offers students a wealth of performance opportunities for all musical genres and traditions in the state-of-the-art Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities building, and venues across the city of Oxford. Collaborative projects bring students together with world-class artists from around the world, enabling creative dialogue, exchange of ideas, and sharing the stage. Cutting-edge studio and production facilities challenge the ways in which music is made and how we listen, and ultimately open up new ways of listening, creating, working, and sharing. The Bate Museum of Musical Instruments offers access to historical instruments, supported Music Faculty workshops and projects, to extend an understanding of musical instruments and their cultures as a living history. Associated student-led ensembles include Ensemble Isis (the Music Faculty's contemporary music ensemble); and the Bate Collective (historically-informed ensemble). The Gamelan Society curates ethnographic and non-score-based musical performance; and Oxford University Music Society is the umbrella that hosts various orchestral ensembles, music theatre, and jazz.
The Music Faculty Performance Scheme:
The Music Faculty Performance Scheme supports those wishing to develop their performance skills through a tailor-made programme of study. This includes the provision of a grant towards individual music tuition; regular hands-on workshops (‘Sandpits’) delivered by the Director of Performance, and eminent guest-artists and teachers; masterclasses; ‘side-by-side’ public performance projects with industry-leading musicians; and special showcase concerts.
Recent guest-artists who have coached students on the Music Faculty Performance Scheme include Nicky Spence, Roderick Williams, Castalian String Quartet, players of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Steven Osbourne, Benjamin Baker, Daniel Roberts, and Sini Simonen.
All students, considering taking performance, can apply to take part in the Music Faculty Performance Scheme. The scheme is separate from any Choral, Organ, or Instrumental Awards students may receive through their College.
As part of the Music Faculty Performance Scheme students will be allocated to collaborative performance projects in which they are expected to participate (work on repertoire, and rehearse regularly to develop your craft). These coached ‘Sandpits’ help students navigate the delicate balance between core skills, and increasingly independent direction and artistry.
Informal performance opportunities provide a way to gain confidence, develop stage presence, and critical development skills. Award holders are encouraged to participate in the Music Faculty’s public performances, and to have their progress recognised through invitations to perform in special showcase concerts.
As an award holder you will be expected to attend Music Faculty Performance Events as observers, and play an active role in music-making across the University. Award holders are encouraged to make the most of the incredibly varied and rich array of ensembles, performance spaces, and performance events across the University—as well as to initiate their own opportunities.
Undergraduate:
- Award holders of the Music Faculty Performance Scheme are supported to develop their instrumental/vocal technique through a termly grant for individual lessons;
- The Music Faculty Performance Scheme recognises that each student comes with unique expectations and needs. Individual advice empowers award holders to devise a tailor-made programme of study which either builds on existing teaching relationships they have established, or guides the student to forge new ones;
- Students are auditioned by the Director of Performance, and pre-allocated a pathway of collaborative performance projects that are matched to their current level. Performance projects are tutored by the Director of Performance, and by eminent guest-artists and teachers, in weekly group-sessions. These allow students to build core collaborative skills as instrumentalists/vocalists, gain expert discipline-specific feedback, and increase their confidence and stage presence through regular informal opportunities. These performance projects support student development broadening horizons, as well as developing a curiosity that pushes students to challenge performance canons—including the role of the artist in society—and benefit from the University’s research to discover and champion new repertoires and approaches;
- Students benefit from the variety of ideas and approaches from guest-artists and teachers, as well as the reassurance that their development is being overseen holistically through the regular contact time and formative feedback;
- Workshops on performance-wellbeing; industry-leading panel discussion and guest speakers further provide context and skills that equip students with an understanding of the dynamic nature of music performance in practice;
- Critical discussions in workshops (‘Sandpits’) introduce students to the emerging scholarly field of performance studies—its contexts, applications, and methodologies. In doing so it enables students to situate their musicianship within the interplay of interdisciplinary academia and practice.
Postgraduate:
A dedicated performance option at MSt and MPhil allows students to specialise in performance studies. Postgraduate students on this pathway are automatically part of the Music Faculty Performance Scheme. Students are supported and tutored by the Director of Performance. Their tailored programme of study recognises that many students are already performing at a professional level, and is geared towards empowering them to question their practices, and curate their own performance projects.
MSt and MPhil students on the performance pathway are supported by a more substantial termly grant; regular hands-on workshops (‘Sandpits’) delivered by the Director of Performance, and eminent guest-artists and teachers; masterclasses; ‘side-by-side’ public performance projects with industry-leading musicians; and special showcase concerts.
