RNCM
The
Jonty Stockdale Interview
Professor Jonty Stockdale, principal of the Royal Northern College of Music, talks about the conservatoire’s past, present and vision for the future
Jonty Stockdale
Bill C Martin: Tell us about the RNCM’s history and about the profile of courses you now have on offer.
Jonty Stockdale: The RNCM was formed through the amalgamation of two institutions in 1972-73. The Royal Manchester College of Music had been founded by Sir Charles Halle in 1893 as a conservatoire to train elite performers, while the Northern School of Music, established in 1920, had maintained a stronger emphasis on teacher training. The institutions merged to form the
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Royal Northern College of Music, under the founding principal Sir John Manduell, who is still involved with the college today. We offer a four-year undergraduate bachelor honours programme, a four- year GRNCM/MusB(hons) with the University of Manchester and a range of postgraduate programmes, including MMus, MPhil and PhD. But my predecessor Eddie Gregson also took the decision to diversify in the undergraduate area. Conservatoires have often been considered elite, geared towards a particular part of the music profession. One of the hallmarks of this institution has been the capacity to challenge itself and find ways to develop a conservatoire-style music education in other genres of music. Just before I came to the college, in partnership with Access To Music, a two-year vocational session musician foundation programme was approved. The college buildings here are designed very much for acoustic performance, so it was absolutely the right thing to partner another organisation with the relevant expertise and access to specialist resources appropriate for this course. The students on that programme are RNCM students who graduate with an award approved by the College. The course is delivered by a private provider, Access to Music, largely across the other side of Manchester, in commercial recording studios. It’s perfect for that kind of provision; it’s the environment where those students will spend most of their working lives.
The title of that course is
‘Foundation Degree in Popular Music Practice (Session Musician)’ and it trains students to work in a particular context. Though the course is only in its third year of operation, it’s been hugely successful in terms of the calibre of students it recruits and retains. There’s a lot more contact on this programme than you’d find in a standard foundation degree, which mirrors the intensity of training we have elsewhere in the college.
The students on that programme are also interested in their interaction with other students at the RNCM, which has been largely facilitated at the student level. But we also have another partnership, with the School of Sound Recording (SSR) to the south of the city, which benefits RNCM Bachelor of Music students, the students on the
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