16 MusicWeek 18.05.12 FEATUREACM LEARN BABY LEARN
www.musicweek.com
How Guildford’s Academy of Contemporary Music has grown into its role as a world leader in music industry education for both aspiring young musicians and business brains of the future
EDUCATION BY TOM PAKINKIS
had to be dragged down to Guildford so that the college could make its case to the music industry. Now, it’s a different story: “We weren’t as
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developed back then,” ACM executive director Julia Leggett tells today’s Music Week as she remembers the mag’s first visit. “Back then I just wanted you to know that we were here, what we do and that we’re very proud of what we do. Now I think we’ve really grown and we really understand our place... not just in terms of developing artists, producers and business people for the music industry specifically, but also more broadly speaking.” Indeed, not only is ACM readying new
generations for work in every aspect of the music industry including business, tour production and radio, as well as performance, it’s also working with people who have already embarked on a career in music. “We actually teach courses inside the music
industry,” Leggett explains. “We’re putting together programmes for signed artists that need some help in areas of development. “Management companies are bringing their
artists here and saying ‘Work with these people for a year.’ They’re still looking to break them but, in the meantime, they could be having vocal tuition, reception tuition, theory practice - as well as learning how distribution works, how collection agencies work and other aspects like that.”
ive years ago, the Academy of Contemporary Music was struggling to get the attention it deserved. Even Music Week
ABOVE Rock in chairs: ACM performance classes develop vocal and instrumental skills both individually and for ensembles
RIGHT Centre stage: ACM executive director Julia Leggett
minds and fresh perspectives. “Our guys are all about the future,” Leggett
elaborates. “We look back on the music business as context. From that point of view, it’s a brilliant perspective to have - but what’s next? These guys are going to be the forerunners of the industry because we force them to think in that way.” ACM’s commercial development manager for
Music Business Mike McNally explains further about the college’s growing relationship with the music industry and the response its students receive: “We have an interesting relationship with the industry. We go out there and sit down and talk for hours about what’s going on in music and I get radically different perceptions from each different sector.” “We work with majors and indies, we work
“We have a much deeper level of interaction
with the industry now,” she adds. “You could almost see ACM as a development agency. “We come up with all
kinds of flexible ways of working with people so there’s something for everyone, regardless of what stage of your career you’re at.” For Leggett, apart from
‘We’ve had many years of focusing on our Guildford campus being the best it can be but
with iTunes and streaming companies, we work with live companies – everyone,” he adds. “More and more, the feedback we’re getting is that our students are adding value and coming out with a different vocabulary and a different set of ideas than is already there. “They’re discussing
now we’re taking that model and applying it in various different formats to other countries, territories, areas and age groups’ JULIA LEGGETT, ACM
the new talent it produces every year, it’s ACM’s youthful outlook that makes it so valuable to the music industry. It instills a certain philosophy in its students, who come to the table with clear
things at a junior level that companies have not been talking about and they find it really interesting. I think that’s why ACM students do so well.” For McNally, it’s
important that those new ideas and perspectives continue to be fed into both ACM’s teaching and the work it does with established music businesses. “What we do is ask them to question
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