Choral Conducting - MMus / PgDip

Designed for recent graduates and suitably qualified mature students, our taught Master of Music (MMus) and Postgraduate Diploma (PgDip) Choral Conducting courses provide the technical training, collaborative opportunities and podium time necessary to help you prepare for a career as a professional conductor. Royal Birmingham Conservatoire is currently the most exciting destination for choral conductors, with an active recording and concert schedule.

Our established Choral Conducting specialism allows you to work with a dedicated chamber choir, rehearsing and performing a variety of works throughout your training. You'll be offered tailored individual tuition from our principal conducting tutor Paul Spicer (Finzi Singers), and will also come into contact with Jeffrey Skidmore (Ex Cathedra) through the Conservatoire’s Chamber Choir.

You'll work across the whole spectrum of the Conservatoire’s music making, from core contemporary repertoire and student composition projects, through the central romantic and classic masterpieces back to period performance techniques. 

It's normal for conducting students to be proactive in presenting performances of projects that they've generated themselves. You'll receive support and professional advice in pursuing such projects, which should be viewed as an essential element of your studies. Both PgDip and MMus courses provide excellent opportunities to develop other skills relevant to a future career in the music profession. 

You'll have full access to our superb £57 million facilities, including our Concert Hall, 150-seat Recital Hall, our black box performance space known as The Lab, and more than 70 practice rooms, ensemble rooms and workshops; all acoustically designed to provide a music-making environment that is world class.

At Royal Birmingham Conservatoire we provide a friendly and supportive environment in which you can pursue your postgraduate studies. This is a time when you need to think particularly carefully and strategically about the direction of your developing career as a musician. We therefore encourage you to be ambitious in pursuing your aspirations, and endeavour to provide you with the flexibility to mould your course to your individual needs, both within your Principal Study area and in complementary modules.

Similar Courses

Course structure

Whichever course you choose, work in the Principal Study area lies at its heart, and this involves the experience of managing rehearsals and directing performances, as well as developing essential musicianship skills. These modules will enable you to become self-directed in tackling, and capable of solving, technical and musical problems, and working autonomously in planning and presenting performances at a high artistic level. You'll be supported both by the specialist individual tuition you receive and by your experiences as a conductor throughout the course.

You will take a Career Development module, which will require you, near the beginning of your course, to reflect ambitiously yet realistically on your professional aspirations, and to formulate a plan that helps you stand the best chance of achieving your goals. You will also choose, in addition, some Professional Development Options from a varied list. The following gives an indication the kind of optional modules which may be offered in a given year, including some offered by Birmingham City University’s Schools of Art and Media (note, not all will run every year):

MMus students will additionally choose a 40-credit option from one of two categories: ‘The Emerging Researcher’ or ‘The Reflective Practitioner’.

Part-time options

There is some room for negotiation in how the course unfolds for a part-time MMus student over three years, or in the case of part-time PgDip students, over two years.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire has a growing community of international students from across the world.

We appreciate the challenges of moving to a new country to live and study and aim to be as supportive as possible.

Aside from being friendly and welcoming, we have various support mechanisms in place to help you settle in as an international student, including:

• An international students' 'orientation week', including a special Conservatoire welcome event
• A dedicated international student admissions administrator
• A full-time staff member employed as International Student Support Programme Director (who speaks Mandarin)
• A mentoring system in which you, as a new postgraduate international student, are mentored by continuing postgraduate international students who will be supporting you both pastorally and academically though weekly workshops
• Additional supporting classes for international students that are particularly designed to help you further develop your English reading, speaking and comprehension skills
• Additional academic skills support provided by expert tutors from the BCU's Centre for Academic Success

Further information for prospective international students is available on the University's international pages.

Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s £57 million music building opened in September 2017, and is located on Birmingham City University’s City Centre Campus in the Eastside ‘learning quarter’ of the city.

This brand new music facility include five public performance venues – a 500 seat Concert Hall, 150 seat Recital Hall, Organ Studio, Eastside Jazz Club and the experimental black box performance venue known as The Lab. As well as these stunning performance venues, we have nearly 100 practice spaces; including 70 small practice rooms and larger ensemble rooms and workshops.

Our new home is the first conservatoire built in the digital age, and as such it has been vital to ensure that the technical infrastructure installed is on par with any advanced commercial facility. We have seven recording studios, a mastering suite, a distance learning hub, and all of our performance venues feature high specification audio-visual equipment that enables interconnectivity and advanced functionality throughout the building.

These impressive modern facilities guarantee that we are excel in our unique dual purpose of providing the highest standard of music education deserved by our students, as well as meeting our role as a concert and performance venue for the people of Birmingham; taking our place in the vibrant cultural landscape of the UK’s second city.