Students raise the roof at music residential school

The week before Easter saw the return of the music residential school in Greenwich, part of the Faculty’s partnership with Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, for the first time since 2019. The residential week is the centrepiece of the Certificate: The Practice of Music Making (CPMM), a qualification taught by Trinity Laban, written jointly with the OU Music Department, and, under the partnership, a Level 3 module which can contribute to OU degree courses, including the BA in Music.

Nearly all the students on the module assembled in Greenwich, including several who had intermitted and banked their assessments a year or even two years earlier, in order to wait for the end to the pandemic and experience the residential week in person. For many, this was the first time in two years or more that they had spent extended time intensively with a group of people they hadn’t previously met in person (although the game of matching the person to the avatar from the module forum was one way of breaking the ice). After understandable nervousness on the day of arrival, however, the whole group “gelled” in a way that marks out groups of musicians making music together, and by lunchtime on the second day, the canteen conversation flowed as if between old friends.

Days were spent with time divided between sessions with students’ regular tutor group, and music making in smaller groups led by Trinity Laban’s skilled music professionals. And every day included a choir practice, with every student a choir member, regardless of previous experience or lack of it. Even your OU Partnership Rep was expected to sing, and did.

The week culminated in an evening of sharing the music created during the week, to an audience of tutors, assistants, visiting OU academics (including the Dean), and members of the Conservatoire staff. Each group had written, from scratch, a piece to show off whatever instruments and voices the group members had brought: a jazz trio with vocalists in one group; several flutes, piano, recorder and violin in another; a scratch rock band in another. Every piece was played with total commitment, and every group stretched its members in ways they had never been musically challenged before. Timid choir members became jazz soloists; classical players who never played without music became convincing improvisers. And the show ended with everyone on stage in the choir, singing songs arranged in several parts all of which had been memorised without words or music ever being used. The last number was a version of Nat King Cole’s “Route 66”, and this was the end of a long, winding road for every student, and a great way for them finally to get their kicks.

The partnership is something both Trinity Laban and the OU can be justly proud of.