Course summary

The Performance Pathway will equip you with practical, theoretical, and professional skills and knowledge in music performance at an advanced level, nurturing your holistic development as a performer, and preparing you for a career within today's music industry. Full time staff include Director of Performance Ceri Owen, an award-winning collaborative pianist and scholar - who leads the pathway - as well as scholar-performer and early music conductor Andrew Kirkman. Tailored instrumental or vocal tuition is delivered through one-to-one lessons with leading professional performers employed either directly by the University of Birmingham or through the faculty at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. You also receive the opportunity to take advantage of the early performance opportunities afforded by the Centre for Early Music Performance and Research (CEMPR). Other performance staff in the Music Department include Simon Halsey, renowned chorus master of the CBSO and Berlin Radio Choir, and orchestral conductor Daniele Rosina. You will develop and refine your skills as a performing musician through a combination of expert individual tuition on your instrument or voice, together with performance classes, seminars, and tutorials. You will be introduced to research in music performance studies and guided in how to draw on historical and contextual perspectives to inform and nourish your musical understanding and your individual creative and professional practice. You will also have opportunities to develop professional skills and knowledge needed to foster a music career and identify transferable skills for adjacent career trajectories. Performance constitutes perhaps our fastest growing and most exciting venture, with ambitious plans developing from the £16 million Bramall Music Building, a facility equipped with the acoustically peerless Elgar Concert Hall - one of the most flexible concert halls of its type in any UK university - and Dome Room, designed by Birmingham Symphony Hall acoustician Nick Edwards. The recently opened University Music Hub offers a superbly equipped recording studio and flexible rehearsal spaces which are ideal for recording.