University News Last updated 13 January 2023
Hello!
I sincerely hope that you have had a wonderful start to the new year and are looking ahead to a happy and healthy 2023.
As ever at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, we feel privileged to have your support, and I’m very excited and proud to share details of our Spring Season of live events with you.
Our ever-popular Lunchtime Music series featuring our excellent student performers returns on Monday 16 January. The Enceladus Trio perform Faurés’ Piano Trio in D minor, followed on Monday 23 January by the Broken Bones Brass Ensemble performing arrangements of Debussy and Dvořák, and Shuyi Danneil and Carlos Alfonso Ferri playing Brahms’ Sonata No.3.
There’s plenty to get your teeth into this term at Eastside Jazz Club, with visits from the great improvisational saxophonist, Dick Oatts on Thursday 19 January, Grammy Award-winning pianist Kevin Hays on Monday 6 February, followed by master of the drums Tony Bianco, who is joined by ‘force of nature’ violinist Faith Brackenbury on Thursday 2 March.
We host our Vice President pianist Peter Donohoe on Friday 27 January performing Chopin, Rachmaninov, Albeniz and Granados in The Bradshaw Hall. Another outstanding soloist Laura Snowden, one of the leading guitarists of her generation, treats us to an intimate lunchtime recital on Monday 13 February. Hear her own compositions as well as arrangements of Celtic folk music.
Onyx Brass, which counts RBC’s Head of Brass Amos Miller amongst its members, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a concert featuring the world première of Kiss Kiss by Zoë Martlew. They will also perform side-by-side with RBC brass students in a transcription of Richard Strauss’s epic motet Hymne on Sunday 5 March. Alumna Sarah Jeffery, renowned for her “fresh, surprising, and explosive” performances joins us on Thursday 16 March for a recorder recital including works by Steve Reich and Fumiharu Yoshimine.
For our Spring Opera, we are extremely excited to be staging Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen, generously supported by The Linbury Trust Fund. Our updated version will be performed at Digbeth Warehouse, Secret Space from 2-4 March.
As ever, our School of Acting is producing runs of engaging and challenging theatre across the city. In March, you can enjoy Stephen Berkoff’s adaptation of Kafka’s Trial, Speculators by Tony Marchant, The Penelopiad by Margaret Attwood and The Last of the Pelican’s Daughter by the Wardrobe Ensemble – full details available soon.
Typically, there are far too many concerts, gigs, events and productions to mention here, but please do check www.bcu.ac.uk/concerts for our full listings.
Among other things, do keep an eye out this term for a number of fantastically creative and thought-provoking final-year projects devised by our students. And of course, if you are inclined, please do follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for our latest listings.
With very best wishes,
Shirley